Re: Re: more perspective on rules and regs
From: Liz (lizsignificant.com)
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 09:30:49 -0700 (PDT)
Also, different kinds of rules in terms of who makes them.
top down autocracy
top down but with input democracy
top down but with representation
community created, by a vote
community created, by consensus.

The idea of consensus, I think, is that we don't have any rules for the community that we haven't agreed to. So they are almost agreements, rather than rules.

-Liz
(The Rev.) Elizabeth M. Magill
liz [at] significant.com
508-450-0431



On Apr 21, 2006, at 10:46 AM, Alexander Robin A wrote:

Couple of points - there are different kinds of rules. The ones I object to and call "bureaucratic" rules are ones that are easy to state and enforce but don't necessarily accomplish the intended goal. Having worked many years in education I am painfully familiar with such rules. We are setting up a new cohousing in Madison and had a discussion of rules regarding pets. The first proposal was to limit the number of pets to 1 or 2. This is a canonical bureaucratic rule - easy to understand, easy to enforce but mostly irrelevant to the implicit goal of having pets not be a nuisance. (A similar rule is used in many apartments that take dogs - if they are under 20 pounds, say.) One badly behaved dog can be much more of a nuisance than 3 or 4 well trained an good natured dogs, for instance. We threw out the bureaucratic rule and substituted what we actually wanted to accomplish - dogs will be kept on leash in the common areas, poop will be picked up, etc.

I think people are more likely to react positively to rules that make sense rather than arbitrary or bureaucratic ones. Also, my philosophy is to not make a rule unless there is a good reason for it. Some people bring up the example of condo rules, which are often extensive and detailed. I propose that while condos and cohousing are similar in some senses, there is a key difference. In most condos, there is not the intention to live together in some form of community. In condos, the set of rules are a substitute for the intention to work together constructively to deal with the problems of living in community. Cohousers are, or should be, more willing to learn and practice constructive conflict resolution.

I don't quite agree with the last statement below. People focused mostly on self-interest and egoism, in my experience, won't pay attention to the rules anyway. Trying to enforce them on unwilling subjects can cause a lot of problems in a cohousing. For "good community members" rules help clarify expectations and reduce confusion.

Robin Alexander

________________________________

From: ken [mailto:gebser [at] speakeasy.net]
Sent: Fri 4/21/2006 6:31 AM
To: Cohousing-L
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Re: more perspective on rules and regs



Hans G. Ehrbar wrote:
Thank you for forwarding the New York Times article
reference.  I live at Wasatch Commons in Salt Lake City.  In
our community we tend to think that one cannot force people
to be good community members, this must and will come
voluntarily.  Of course, if we don't enforce rules, this
makes it possible for parasites to encroach, as the New
York Times article says.  What can we do about this?

I teach Marxism at the University of Utah, and from my
perspective, we should resist the temptation to fall back
onto a more rule-oriented regimen.  Reasons:

(1) It is not possible to design rules which, if followed,
turn you into a good community member.

Rules aren't for good community members.  They're for those who tend
toward self-interest and egoism.



(2) As long as capitalism is rampant, self-serving parasitic
behavior is encouraged and even necessary.  People who are
socialized this way are not necessarily bad.

True.  But neither are those who profess IC visions and values
necessarily good.



(3) Our economic system is such that most people get robbed,
oppressed and exploited 8 hours a day on their jobs, and
they don't seem to mind.  But if they perceive their
neighbor to act a little selfish, they are all up in arms
about it, although the damage to them is usually not very
great.  The greatest damage is that it discourages us, but
we do have that under control.  We can just laugh it off and
not be discouraged.  If we can survive capitalism, we can
certainly survive cohousing.

Setting up, or even just getting into, cohousing requires more time and effort and perhaps too more money than just buying a single-family house in the burbs. The compensation and rationale for enduring these is that
we'll have a better, nicer place to live than what the larger society
has to offer. So people's expectations for community are higher and, to
my mind, these expectations are justified.  (This isn't to say that we
can't see failures with a sense of humor and a bit of tolerance.) So I hope we wouldn't excuse crap here because there's crap there. This is a
setup for a "slippery slope" argument.




(4) Participation in the community is fun and very fulfilling.
People who don't receive the benefits of this will probably
move out again.

Hans.


Having read most all of the posts on this thread and having both agreed
and disagreed on both sides of the rules/no-rules arguments, it seems
that rules are necessary at times and so should be in place.  But the
community should strive to live and work together without having to
resort to using rules, i.e., that the community's common values and
vision by themselves should make things work and make people happy... or
at least content.  When values and vision fail-- which we'd hope would
not happen often-- then the hard reality of rules would kick in. Aren't
more options generally better than fewer?


--
"This world ain't big enough for the both of us,"
said the big noema to the little noema.

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