Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Intimacy with 10, or 200?

[John Major (JMAJOR]

>The theory goes that it is pretty easy to achieve intimacy with 10 people
>and noone would expect intimacy with 200, but in between is an
>awkward number.

This brings to mind a quote from Kurt Vonnegut along the lines of:

"We all evolved in communities where everyone we met on a daily basis
was someone we were *related* to. That explains why modern urban
life makes us so crazy..."

It was something that laid the ground for my involvement in CoHo - we've
lost the "middle ground" between close family, and strangers - that is
why that intimacy is so difficult to achieve these days. But wasn't that
middle ground (in the millions of years of Stone Age evolution) where
culture happened, adolescents became adults, adults passed on, and the
Stories were told? I wonder how long it will take for us to rediscover
what we've thrown away?

John "Amateur Anthropologist" Major
Wasatch Cohousing
... where we are eyeing warily the difference between the costs of our
beloved units, and the market values in our area...