Re: Breakthrough at conference? | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Stuart Staniford-Chen (staniforcs.ucdavis.edu) | |
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 13:03:08 -0500 |
John Hunter writes: <description of conference closing> <description of group ceremony inspired by conference closing> > So what gives? Is cohousing a mundande, planned living arrangement or a > crypto-religious movement? If it's the latter, I say it's spinach and I > say the hell with it. I'm glad you raised this issue John. I was at the conference, and I had very strong, and very mixed, feelings about the closing ceremony. I'm an atheist/agnostic on religious issues too, and as such I frequently find it annonying when others in my community or the larger cohousing movement assume that I'm along on the same spiritual trip that they are. My personal view is that cohousers predominantly fall into two groups - people who believe that all religions have a common core of truth which they are, more or less, searching for, and people who believe that all religions are, more or less, wrong. There are also a small number of people who strongly believe in a particular spiritual tradition, but that seems less common (amongst cohousers). Let me use the terms "spiritual" and "sceptical" to describe the two tendencys, with the understanding that this grossly blurs out the complex nuances in many people's views - there's only so complex I can be in a short mail message. At the conference closing, we had a situation in which the spiritual folks were running the show and doing things the way they liked. Since it was the closing for the whole conference, there was an assumption that everyone would want to do that. The result was that spiritual people seemed to be extremely happy with it, while sceptical people ranged from indifferent to seriously annoyed (at least judging by the small sample I talked to afterwards). I personally feel some confusion over the issue. On the one hand, there is a little effrontery on the part of the organizers in assuming that everyone would want to do this (Zev - are you the guilty party here? :-) On the other hand, singing and dancing with other people is a really basic human activity, and it *is* naturally uplifting. Those of us sceptics who are angry or annoyed, I wonder how much we are really reacting to past hurts and unresolved issues with our own religious upbringing? (Certainly this is an issue for me). I'm probably going to offend everyone here, but I suggest that the proper attitude for a sceptic in the presence of spiritual displays is to judge the activity by the intent of it, and just be sceptical/amused by the means. In other words, if someone is trying to heal cancer by thought, we can be pleased by the good intent while remaining sceptical that it is going to help the patient. What is the basis for anger in this situation? Since we do not believe in it, it should be meaningless ritual to us - at most irritating as a waste of time. If we find ourselves bristling at certain words ("God" say) then I suggest we need to do some thinking about why we are still angry over some earlier religious experience. Appropriate cause for anger is when the intent of the ceremony is bad (eg the desire is to stop the use of contraceptives), or the ceremony is being used as a means to address a problem which affords and demands more effective solutions (Christian Science healing comes to mind here). I have not experienced either of these situations in my cohousing experience. To spiritual folks I have less to say since I don't understand the mind set very well - but you might want to think about the fact that a significant body of people are going along with your ritual to avoid an unpleasant scene rather than because they are genuinely with you. Is that what you want? Stuart. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Stuart Staniford-Chen | Dept of Computer Science stanifor [at] cs.ucdavis.edu | UC Davis, Davis, CA 95616 | and | N St. Cohousing Community Home page is http://seclab.cs.ucdavis.edu/~stanifor/
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Breakthrough at conference? John Hunter , October 9 1995
- Re: Breakthrough at conference? Kevin Wolf, October 10 1995
- Re: Breakthrough at conference? Stuart Staniford-Chen, October 10 1995
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