Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE- Diversity and value

[Stuart Staniford-Chen (stanifor]

Karen Frayne writes:
> I could live with (have tried it) lots of noise and a quantity of
> partying around me.  I wouldn't want to live next door to somebody who 

> deals crack or somebody who is on a mission to convert me to a religion 

> I don't believe in, or someone who puts out rat poison, or someone who 

> lies to me.  Wow, I just invented neighbors from hell:  would such 

> people even exist in coho?  But I come back to something else Rob said:   
> chances for community are better in coho than the world outside.  I 

> agree.  But what about chances for disaster:  what a heartache it would  
> be to have to move out after living so closely and forming friendships.   


I will just say that it is a lot easier to live in a community with  
somebody than it is to live in a house with somebody.  I do both, since I  
live in a shared house which is part of a cohousing community.  There are  
definitely people who I enjoy very much as neighbours, but could not share  
a house with.  A lot of issues which are big sources of trouble between  
housemates (music and noise, cleanliness, moodiness/low self esteem, TV  
watching) are much less of a problem between neighbours.

I do agree that shared values help.  I feel like it's this way: every  
important value which is *not* shared is a source of conflict.  A  
community can deal with a certain amount of conflict, but if there's too  
much its going to fall apart.  The stronger the community is, and the more  
mature it is in resolving its conflicts the more diversity of opinion and  
values it is going to be able to stand.  


So its certainly not the case that you have to agree about everything and  
think alike to get along together and have a great community life.  For  
example, N St shares some values - we all pretty much believe in a  
low-impact lifestyle, composting, recycling etc.  I suspect no-one here  
listens to Rush Limbaugh with much pleasure.  However, we have wide  
diversity on other issues.  We have some vegans, some very committed  
vegetarians, and a number of enthusiastic meat eaters.  There is (I'm  
guessing) a five-fold difference between the largest and smallest wage in  
the group.  We have some folks who passionately believe that food which is  
not organic is poison, and others who believe that's nonsense.  We have  
people who are strongly into new-age type spirituality, but also a bunch  
of hard-headed scientists who think channeling, crystal-healing and  
aromatherapy are total hogwash.  We have keen landscapers and gardeners  
and other people who think its bourgeouis and pretentious to spend a lot  
of time on the way the place looks.  We have people who think that being a  
good place for kids is the main raison-d'etre for a cohousing community,  
and others who find kids an irritating nuisance at best.  We have  
gun-owners, and people who think gun-owning is crazy.

Sometimes these differences cause conflicts of course, but we have  
weathered them (so far anyway) and still have a strong sense of community  
and caring for each other.

Also, the fact that we share some values does not protect us from  
conflicts in those areas.  If anything it makes the conflict worse because  
we all care about the issue.  For example, our most obvious shared values  
(after community/conflict resolution/communication type issues) is  
environmental stuff.  But this does not make it easy to agree.  On the  
contrary we always have a very hard time deciding, say, on materials for a  
project because lots of us care about the environmental impact.  Is  
tropical wood worse than metal in a chair?  If you don't care about your  
impact this is a non-issue.  If you all agree that your impact is  
important, this could be a long debate.

People who share a value at the big picture level still have great  
potential to disagree on what should be done in detail.  Shared values are  
great, but shared conflict resolution skills are more important.

Stuart.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Stuart Staniford-Chen           |       Dept of Computer Science
stanifor [at] cs.ucdavis.edu            |       UC Davis, Davis, CA 95616
(916) 752-2149  - work          |               and
(916) 756-8697  - home          |       N St. Cohousing Community
Home page is http://everest.cs.ucdavis.edu/~stanifor/home.html