Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: [C-L]_Consensus in cohousing

[Raines Cohen (rc2-coho-L]

On 8/7/03 7:38 AM, Becky Schaller <bschaller [at] theriver.com> wrote:

>So I'm interpreting that to
>mean that no one who is a  member of an older community  (people living in
>the community for five or more years) still use consensus for major
>decisions.  

That seems a bit of a stretch, for the reasons you outline in your 
message and others. Any given question posted here on Coho-L is likely 
(historically speaking) to get a response from just a few communities, 
and once you narrow down to the few communities that HAVE been living 
there for 5 or more years, and add in filters for people interested in 
that topic, willing to respond, on the list, and not on summer vacation, 
that is a pretty small sample size to draw a definitive conclusion from a 
non-response. If the question were phrased as the negative, that might 
provide more definite info.

>If anyone knows of a way to get this information or has already gathered it
>in another way, would you please let me know.

Perhaps an anonymous survey via web page would provide a greater level of 
trust. We can certainly ask in future e-newsletters and when researching 
articles to reach a much wider audience than Coho-L.

Swan's Market Cohousing (Oakland, CA) has been living together for a 
little less than five years; Berkeley coho for a bit more than five 
(nearly 10 years if you count its 
pre-condo-conversion-retrofit-living-in-community-while-renovating-and-expa
nding history), although I'm a recent addition so I can't speak 
definitively to its entire  history. Both make major decisions by 
consensus, and have evolved sophisticated processes for particular tasks, 
like budgeting, that let everybody be heard, taking the temperature of 
the entire community -- and some might say that these processes cross the 
line into (gasp) voting, but I believe that information-gathering 
exercises that help create a proposal (such as a budget) that ends up 
coming to the community for consensus approval is still consensus.

Yes, it's a lot of work sometimes. But as Chris mentioned, the benefit is 
not expediency, but community and connections.

I'm very interested in the recent list threads exploring the deeper 
meanings of consensus and the different interpretations in spiritual and 
other contexts of what it means and how it happens.

>If someone says their community
>doesn't use consensus any more, does that mean they are no longer a
>cohousing community.

Not in my book. Consensus is a tool, and one of the identifying traits of 
cohousing, but by no means the only one.

I think my key learning along the way is that it is not the end result 
that's so important (as much as people get vested in particular outcomes 
for decisions), it's the process of getting there and what you learn 
about each other and the solutions you come up with along the way that 
facilitate our ability to live in community. And part of that process is 
the process of (re)defining what consensus means in your community - if 
it wasn't evolving (perhaps beyond what some recognize as consensus by 
whatever their trainings or definitions began as), then I would be 
worried.

Raines

Raines Cohen <my initials,2,dash,coho,dash,L at my first name .com>

  Member, Swan's Market Coho [Oakland, CA] <http://www.swansway.com/>
Possibly hosting a regional facilitator's training 10/26, depending on 
interest from nearby communities.

  Secretary, Berkeley [CA] Cohousing
Where a shed meeting last night made good progress in a slow but steady 
process.

  Pass-the-baton-guy, East Bay Cohousing <http://www.ebcoho.org/>
Where the new group is interested in adopting the old group's rules 
without necessarily understanding why.

  Boardmember, Coho/US <http://www.cohousing.org/>
Excited about the new Cohousing magazine issue with conference report, 
about to hit the press.


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