"His father, a banker, intended for Arnold to be an accountant, which Arnold found preposterous."

"He couldn’t stand math. 'I was supposed to fulfill his desire and to be a successful capitalist,' he snorted. He was a 'hotheaded' teenager attracted to the religious fervor of the 1970s — like the Jesus movement, a youthful West Coast evangelicalism — and its intersections with social-justice movements. The way that the Shakers put their commitment to faith, pacifism and equality at the center of everything they did appealed to him. He soon began visiting Sabbathday Lake, the only active Shaker community accepting new members, after high school.... The self-abnegation required of this level of communal Christianity necessitated some internal rearranging.... Subordinating your own dreams, preferences and even personality to the interests of the group and the pursuit of Christlike virtue. Over and over, for the rest of your life. Brother Arnold nearly quit in his first year over an argument with an older sister who wrongly accused him of some minor, long-forgotten transgression. 'I’m just 21, living with people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s. You can’t talk back to them. I had no redress, so I just had to take it. Helpless.' He smiled. 'I didn’t really think that that was right.' He appealed to Brother Ted, who told him that it didn’t matter if Arnold was right; he needed to get ahold of his wounded ego. Brother Arnold fumed while he worked, debating whether to leave. Eventually, he calmed down. Brother Ted was right. 'If you’re here, you’re supposed to be here as a vessel of love,' he told me. 'You’re not supposed to be here to be yourself. You’re supposed to be here to be better than yourself.'"

From "There Are Only Two Shakers Left. They’ve Still Got Utopia in Their Sights. Their numbers have dwindled, but the remaining members are imagining what comes next" (free-access link).