Oh God, here goes Rob about ideology again | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Rob Sandelin (Exchange) (RobsanExchange.MICROSOFT.com) | |
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 11:22:55 -0600 |
In my humble opinion, one very large MYTH, about cohousing is that is has no ideology. You can maintain that myth by defining ideology in a very narrow way, for example, cohousing imposes no political or religous doctrines on its members as a requirement of membership. However useful that is as a definition, it ignores the notion that working cooperatively, which is absolutely a key requirement of cohousing, is in itself an ideology. I have a pretty good collection of cohousing mission statements (the cohousing web site is a good place to find some of these by the way) and everyone of them that I have seen makes at least one, if not several ideological statements. So to call Cohousing a "non-ideological form of community" is in my opinion nonsense. The purpose of such statements is soley to appease the banks, planning depts., and potential residents that our proposed housing developments are mainstream enough to be considered as a viable option. I personally see this as very reasonable. You tell the banks, the planners, etc. that cohousing is a form of resident-developed housing and sell that story to them. However , you need to be careful in what you tell potential future residents. In my experience, if half the people join your project because they want a deep committment to community, and the other half join because they want a more practical living experience, you will find several places where those two very different views will collide. Frame your goals and ideologies clearly at the begining and pre-filter folks who want the same thing will save you lots of frustration later. Of course you can have as much diversity as you want, but in my observations from around the communities movement, you want solidarity in regards to the community mission statement, not diversity. Rob Sandelin Sharingwood
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