Utopia, Virginia

Last week I was doing some research on a quote for the Weekly Report. I found info on B.F. Skinner, noted American psychologist and the father of behaviorism. Behaviorism is essentially the idea that human behavior is the result of stimulus and reinforcement. A few clicks later, I was deep down in the “rabbit hole.” I read about his utopian novel (or some might say dystopian) Walden Two and then I started looking at utopian societies based on his theories aka “communes.”

Fascinating stuff. In the early 70s, there were more than 3,000 communes in the U.S., with the largest concentration in New Hampshire. Today that number is less than 300 and most aren’t in New Hampshire anymore….however, more than 10% of them are in Virginia. (and most of Virginia’s communes are in Louisa County)

Over the last 50+ years, the word “commune” developed a bit of a negative connotation, since the vast majority of experiments in collectivism failed. Communes became popular in the 60s and 70s hippy culture and some religious communes turned deadly, ie. the Manson Family, Jonestown, Branch Davidians, etc. To separate from this image, communes essentially rebranded as “intentional communities.”

So why would you want to gather up friends and family, buy a piece of cheap land, and start an “intentional community” in Virginia?

Probably the same reasons why 1.3 million Americans in the Northeast and Midwest moved south last year. A whopping 550,000 New Yorkers left last year and most moved south. When polled, three of the top reasons for North-to-South migration were “better quality of life,” “lower cost of living,” and “better schools.”

So maybe these folks are now learning what we’ve known for a long time, Utopia might be found in the Commonwealth of Virginia. But with so many people moving here, can our state stay that way? 

The numbers would suggest not. Virginia’s population has grown by more than half a million people since 2018. The data suggests this is taking a toll on cost of living, schools, and quality of life — the things people move here for in the first place.