Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: rules and regs. more and more and more.

[truddick (truddick]

From: ken <gebser [at] speakeasy.net>
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Re: more perspective on rules and regs

>Hans G. Ehrbar wrote:
>> (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.

It may seem tedious, but who gave anyone permission to decide who was
"good"?

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was not "good" according to the Kennedy clan
and the FBI.

EVERYONE is going to act according to ego and self-interest-except in cases
of mental illness.  Now, if you want to identify people who do the
sociological function of "defection" rather than "cooperation" then you are
more neutral and more objective-but those terms aren't "good" and "bad",
they're just strategy.

Note that I didn't bring up this issue when Hans originally posted his
maxim.  In his context, "good" as a value judgment is framed in the context
of the effect of rules, not as a perspective.  And it's true.  Rules are for
the entire community; judging people as "good" or "bad" depends on
perspective.

Moreover, "good" members of the community get what the sociologist calls
"idiosyncrasy credits"-they get to violate the rules in certain ways.  Much
like the senior faculty member who continues to smoke in the classroom and
never gets reprimanded.

George W. Bush thinks that Don Rumsfeld is a good public servant.  Bush is,
after all, the one who writes the rules for our nation today.  Are you
comfortable with that framing of who's good, based on the existing rules?

___
  !    _    Thomas E. "TR" Ruddick
  !   !_)   Nunquam Vadis Levis!
      !  \