Cult of the Family
As the family's fortunes followed those of many people who got rich in the 1980s, cracks began to appear in their edifice of equality and democracy. Some members of the family worked much longer hours than others - "It bordered on workaholism," says Luv, and it undermined their ability to bond with each other emotionally. Hierarchical relationships formed among the members, leading to power imbalances and cliquish schemes. And on top of all that, the commune was run in a way that made it harder and harder for its members to express their feelings and reservations honestly.It also bordered on being a cult. Many Keristans say in retrospect that they should have noticed the telltale signs: They were forced to agree to Jud's principles without question, and nonconforming members were gestalted into submission. Although it was supposed to be a vehicle for self-discovery, the gestalt-o-rama evolved into a way for Jud to abuse people who disobeyed or displeased him. Many family members fled the group after three or four years because "being gestalted" hurt so much and seemed unfair. Psychologically, the group was ruled by Jud. Sometimes, his praise lifted them so high that they could succeed at anything; but sometimes he gestalted them to tears. He was their patriarch, their inspiration, and perhaps, sometimes, their cult leader.
And yet to friends of the group, it seemed much more like a close-knit community than a Scientology setup. "It was totally uncultish," says Daniel Kottke, a former Apple employee who attended many Kerista events and parties, and dated a Keristan after the group broke up. "It's true that everybody took those new, three-letter names, but aside from that they just threw parties and had fun. There was no recruiting." Eva Way says the cultiness of the group wasn't glaring. "There was nothing totally weird, just little weirds, like the way Jud would be rude but you couldn't call him on it," she says. "He would always turn it around and say you were the one at fault."
What is a cult but a dysfunctional family writ large? I think of my own father, a patriarch as principled as Jud tried to be, screaming at me for hours about how I would never amount to anything because I refused to follow his elaborate rules and adopt his opinions. I was a liar, stupid and lazy - except for those times when I was perfect, the best daughter in the world who could do anything. I've heard those fights and witnessed bipolar swings between irrational wrath and adoration in other families too. Even in the most loving, stable families, there are moments when abusive hierarchies develop: overworked fathers berate stay-at-home mothers (and vice-versa); parents unfairly punish their children; an older sister locks her younger brother inside the laundry hamper.
Even more common, although less widely acknowledged, is the fact that families smother our true feelings. It was in a family where I first discovered that coercion can substitute for intimacy, and that having an emotional outburst is not the same thing as sharing feelings.
These lessons also seem to be what the Keristans ultimately learned about the family they built together. Because the preferred method for resolving problems was the group gestalt-o-rama, there was little room for individuals to work out problems with each other in private. Instead, there were just rules and their public enforcement. At their worst, the gestalts became a way to force clusters to accept new partners even when several members weren't sure they wanted to. "There were times when I consented to new women that I didn't really connect with sexually," admits Luv. "There was peer pressure, and a lot of people found themselves in awkward situations as a result."
In hindsight, it's easy to use bad times to color everything that's gone before. But the Keristans, like many families, supported each other as often as they tore each other down. They even invented a word, "compersion," which means "taking pleasure in another person's happiness." It is the opposite of jealousy, the sort of idea which could only take root in a community centered on sharing and group life, rather than possessiveness and individualism.
Mutineers
Jud feels the commune began to drift away from him after he became impotent in his sixties. "I was the old man rather than the lover," he recalls sadly. He blames the breakup of Kerista on a group of people he calls the mutineers. They went crazy, he says, and took his money and projects away from him. But the story is obviously more complicated than that.It was 1991, and the big chain stores like CompUSA were driving independent computer dealerships like Abacus out of business. The Soviet Union was collapsing and the papers were full of headlines about how an entire confederation of states was rebelling against a socialist system the Keristans couldn't help but compare to their own. Everybody in the group hit their mid-life crises around the same time. Eva Way says they all got "sick of communism," but Luv believes they had become such workaholics that everybody just burned out.
Eve thinks the Keristans tried to mandate desires in a way that simply went against human nature. Especially when it comes to whom we lust after and love, democracy may not be the best policy. "There were too many compromises," sighs Eve. "You can't get a large group to agree on most things, and we wanted people to agree on everything." New ideas were shut down, and the old platitudes were wearing thin. Meanwhile, Jud had become increasingly depressed and combative. Longstanding members of the group were thinking about leaving to escape his verbal assaults.
Led by Eve and several other members of the Purple Submarine cluster, the Keristans eventually agreed that the next time Jud called gestalt they would fight back. Eventually the day came. There was a gestalt over something fairly routine for the group -- a conflict had developed over whether they should allow a couple of new men into the family. Jud started on a tirade and tried to get members of the group to go along with him. But nobody would. He pushed harder. The group refused to toe his line. And then, for the first time, they began to gestalt the gestalter. It wasn't long before Jud left in a huff. Days later, the Keristans voted to dissolve their family.
Eve and five other Keristans moved to Hawaii, bought some land together, and tried to continue their polyfidelous family. But they quickly paired off into monogamous couples - two of the couples are still married today. Very few of the Keristans are poly these days. "I wanted the intimacy of monogamy," says Eva Way. "I didn't want to be equally special to ten other people - I wanted to be number one!" Most of the other former Keristans seem to share her sentiments. Jud, however, remains staunchly polyfidelous. He's still close to a few of the former Keristans, including his daughter.
Today, many of the Keristans have jobs related to what they did in Abacus. Several are in business for themselves, doing computer-aided graphic design, financial planning, and nonprofit work. A few of them, like Luv, live in group houses.
But for the most part, the Keristans have left communal ownership behind. They remember their social experiment fondly, but can't imagine doing it anymore. Even the Hawaiian contingent eventually divided up their land into separate houses and plots. "All we own together now is a tractor," Eve says.
I think about that tractor a lot.
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