Worldbuilding Well-being: A Shared-Income Commune Approach to Loneliness Restricted; Files Only
Nayar, Saanvi (Spring 2026)
Abstract
This thesis discusses how studying systems of radical sharing in communes can expand public health approaches to addressing an American epidemic of loneliness. The majority of health interventions identify loneliness as an experience rather than a fleeting emotion, capable of causing significant harm to one’s physical, mental, and social well-being. Influenced by former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and Social Neuroscientist John Cacioppo, I posit that these interventions majorly prescribe social connection as a solution to loneliness, failing to consider connection with, first and foremost, the self. Drawing on Economic Philosopher Karl Marx’s theory of self-estrangement, I argue that late-stage capitalism causes loneliness by fragmenting one’s selfhood. The human inclination towards cooperation forms the basis of my inquiry towards systems of sharing in American communes. I posit that Twin Oaks Community and East Wind Community, two American communes founded on mutual concepts of egalitarianism, nonviolence, and shared-income, emphasize the imaginative process of world-building and intrinsic value of cooperation necessary to reconstituting selfhood. Through conducting qualitative fieldwork – participant observation, 13 semi-structured interviews, and archival research – completed during visitor periods in these respective communities, I advocate for a radical ideology of sharing – resources, income, labor, care – as a means of understanding how individuals have the capacity in alternative spaces to reconcile with the self, thereby reconceptualizing the conditions necessary for subjective flourishing.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
That Which Is Common 3
The Loneliness Epidemic 6
Research Aim 9
Method and Methodology 11
Travel and Logistics 16
Conducting Interviews 18
Framework of Inquiry 20
Chapter 1: Reconceptualizing American Loneliness as Estrangement From the Self 22
Loneliness in Public Health 22
Redefining Loneliness: American Capitalism and Self-Estrangement 26
American Social Fabric Under Capitalism 30
The Active Project of Selfhood 33
Chapter 2: Radical Sharing in Intentional Communities 36
Sharing as Reconciliation of Self 36
Roots of Critical Dissent in Twin Oaks and East Wind 41
Intentional Cooperation: Ideology, Income, Resources 43
Labor and Governance in Community 48
Chapter 3: Twin Oaks Community 55
I, Too, Have Felt Estranged 55
How Should I Be In The World? 59
A Dogma of Reflexive Sharing 62
A Brief History of Racial Equity Discourse at T.O. 69
The Creation of Earthly Wilds Community 75
Chapter 4: East Wind Community 83
New Blood on the RB Porch 83
Delineating Communal Selfhood vs Individualism 88
Do I Feel Unified With East Wind? 90
East Wind’s “Natural Order” 96
Creation, the Closest We Get to the Divine 102
The Opposite of Loneliness 107
Figures 114
Bibliography 126
Appendix 135
About this Honors Thesis
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File download under embargo until 28 May 2028 | 2026-04-20 17:54:40 -0400 | File download under embargo until 28 May 2028 |
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