Cohousing-L Mailing List: Individualism and togetherness

[Joaniblank (Joaniblank]

A current thread on individually designed houses and another on cohousing
meal arrangements that permit people who choose not to eat any common meals
to opt out of the cooking rotation, have given me pause.  I also talked
recently to a visitor here (Doyle St.) who told me that in her incipient
group back east somewhere, most of the future residents don't want one sq ft
less space in their cohousing house than they have in their current houses.
And these are several couples in their mid-fifties who currently live in
substantial houses.

Perhaps I am overly idealistic, but somehow I got the notion that people who
were eager to live in cohousing were not only willing but actually eager to
give up a large measure of individualism (assuming they still would have as
much privacy as they might require or desire) in order to maximize all the
goodies of living in community in their new living situation. (ya get kinda
zealous with idealism if you hang around Chuck Durrett too much!) Am I too
pessimistic to think that those who opt out of the dining/cooking will be the
same folks who rarely come to meetings, who don't know "our" kids too well,
who share themselves very sparingly with others in the community, who do their
 share of the work mechanically if at all? I even worry that certain
expressions of individualism, if practiced by a significant percentage of the
group, could lead to its eventual demise.

Perhaps some readers will be critical of me for putting non-sharing of meals
and individual house design in the same category. I certainly am not pointing
a finger at any individual or household. It's just that reading these two
threads over the last few weeks has made me feel uneasy about this. Does
anyone have similar concerns or want to tell me that I'm worrying
unnecessarily?

Joani
JoaniBlank [at] aol.com