RE: Political diversity
From: Rob Sandelin (Exchange) (RobsanExchange.MICROSOFT.com)
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 11:15:54 -0500
One point to add about all this diversity stuff: The people you start
with on this journey, are sooner or later replaced by others. Do not
gnash your teeth if your original community is all white, male, morman,
accounting majors. Once you get it going and built, the next wave will
include all sorts of randomness, uh I mean diversity.

Political diversity is unlikely to happen if your community mission
statement reads like a liberal manefesto.  It is always a good idea to
have outsiders read your mission statement and give you feedback on what
they sense from it. So I had my grandpa, a 92 year old reactionary
republican borderline John Bircher react to Sharingwoods mission
statement.  He nailed it on the spot: "Sounds like a bunch of damn
liberal Dem-O- crats to me."  And he was right, we are a largely a bunch
of liberal democrats, with one libertarian, and one moderate republican.
 It is interesting to me that our neighborhood had 100% voter turn out
in the last election and it was great having all those dinner
conversations about school board candidates, judges, and fire
commissioners; positions I would have had no clue about how to vote
otherwise.

I think as a community you need a certain amount of conformity to
purpose and goals in order to function. Within the conformity to the
community goals, whatever diversity you can get is fine.  For example at
Sharingwood we have a 5000 square foot house and a 100 sq. foot house,
we have a millionaire (not me) and a guy who could be the poster boy for
the simple living movement (he lives in the 100 square foot place -
which is made entirely out of recycled stuff).  The two of them get
along pretty well, although they span a pretty good range of diversity
between them. However, in another environment, say your typical suburban
neighborhood, I would be amazed if they would even talk to each other.  

So hurray for diversity, 

Rob
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