Re: Breakthrough at conference?
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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