Re: multiple communities (was: Re:: Diversity of Cohousing)
From: Racheli Gai (jnpalmeattglobal.net)
Date: Wed, 3 Jul 2002 13:58:01 -0600 (MDT)
Hi Howard,

Who exactly are you arguing with? - Did any of us say that one should work
so much in cohousing as to exclude participation in other communities? It
seems to me that you and Sharon have put up a straw-tiger which you can
knock down, which doesn't have much to do with arguments presented by me
and some others.  Notice that I said below: ...Why are people who don't
want to give ANY of their time to the community..." ie: I didn't say OR
imply that all of one's time should be given to cohousing, or even the
major part of one's time.  
So, please do me the courtesy of arguing with what I'm actually saying,
not with some alleged arguments which it's convenient for you to assign to
me.

As I've said in another posting, I'm an activist, and am doing a lot of
other stuff other than what I do in my cohousing community.   It's still
the case that I don't get why people for whom cohousing is very low on
their list of priorities in terms of what they want to spend time and
effort on are there in the first place.  And while a community can support
a certain number of relatively uninvolved people, I think that if they
make more than a *very small* portion of the adult population of the
community, their presence is detrimental to the group's well being.   
 

>>> One point which keeps coming up for me is: Why are people who don't want
>>> to give any of their time to the community in cohousing in the first
>>> place?
> 
>> Because they want to live in a community that is also connected to the
>> larger community. They don't see cohousing as their only community or the
>> limits of their community. It is the place they live and they live with
>> their neighbors in a closer relationship that they can live elsewhere. But
>> they don't want cohousing to limit their involvement in the larger community
>> or other activities..

>Bingo.  I belong to a lot of communities, and many of them are global.
>The community of electronic engineers.  The community of mathematicians.
>The community of scientists.  The community of songwriters.  The
>community of poets.  The community of Aikidoists.  The community of
>polyamorists. The community of Go players.  I could go on.  Environmental
>concerns are often global as well.

>Then there are the larger local communities, like Martinez Park
>Neighborhood, City of Fort Collins, Larimer County, State of Colorado,
>USA.

>And there is the smaller community of the family.  I have 5 children,
>including twins just this last January.

>Each of these communities has some rights to my time.  I don't
>necessarily want the cohousing community I live in to eat up 90% of my
>"community" energy, leaving little for all these other communities.  Some
>weeks, I would rather be translating Rilke or attending a conference on
>combinatorial game theory or playing with the babies than attending
>committee meetings. And so I do.

>I love my neighbors, but they're not the only thing in this world that I
>love, and I'm not going to act as if they were.

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