An Overview

            For this class, I learned a lot about many communes in the United States. Before this semester, I knew nothing of communes; I didn’t even know what they were. This class taught me a lot, to not judge any group by their cover and that cults and sects are not all bad. I also learned how much of the media are lies to hurt others. It was fascinating to see how much judgment can be found in those media articles, meant to scare the rest of the world. By passing judgment and terror through their words/pictures, the media manipulates their readers so that they take up their beliefs. With this new discovery, I was able to make my own opinions about communes, realizing that they are not that bad. But I also have to remember the fact that some might be bad and some might be good. Of course, we can all remember the violent incidents that happened within some communes, but it is our duty to understand that it does not mean that every commune is violent.

            In terms of the Rajneesh movement, I also learned a lot. This class helped me learn about this commune in a way that was fair and understandable. Since I was researching about this project all on my own, and did not have any details about what exactly I needed to research, I was on my own most of the time. This was good for me because it let me paced myself in my work and I was able to research things I wanted to research. For this reason, it made the project more interesting because I wanted to research topics that I wanted to learn about. When I went about researching this commune, I was careful to time myself accordingly so that I did not spend multiple days researching the same things.

            The Rajneesh movement was also interesting to me because I had never heard about them before. They were a fascinating bunch because they were diverse and different. I liked that this commune was not only in the United States, but that it was part of the entire world. What surprised me the most was that the movement did not with the founder/leader but it just quietly died down. It was also fascinating to learn that the commune went and founded a new “colony” in Oregon were they established their little village. The downside to this research was to learn about the violence and the terror they caused. One terror they caused was to poison the residents of their Oregon city so that they would get representations in the city government. There were a lot of other incidents that may have happened but because the media tends to lie to judge people. This was the bad part of this project, trying to figure out which sources were telling the truth and which ones were lying.

By: Claire Maurel