Cohousing-L Mailing List: Cohousing as a crucible for values

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

As a general trend I think it is safe to state that most people in cohousing
would be more towards the liberal side of the political spectrum. That is
certainly true of all the cohousing projects which I have visited.
Cooperation is seen as a liberal, heck even radical activity and it seems to
attract people who are more liberal. Cohousing is by design a place where it
is easy to have conversations among neighbors, and news and politics
certainly are talked about. From this ever ongoing conversation participants
get the insight and reflection on the values of their neighbors.  One of the
difficulties that emerges in this milieu is when people want to insist that
their values become the stated values of the group.  This is where things
like anti-war or environmental activism can create conflict. It is often not
that the sentiment is unsupported, rather it is the intensity of the actions
or feelings that differ. 

It is my own personal observation that in my youth I fiercely denounced
family and others who were living the "wrong way", and I used all sorts of
judgmental words attached to their wrongness. I wanted to convert them to
rightness and I annoyed them to no end for several years.  I have been much
more satisfied in my life when I began applying my own values only to me,
and stopped trying to apply them to others. My expectations then are that
you are free to follow  and live to your own values and you don't have to
live up to mine.  Granted, there are extremes which I do not condone, but I
rarely ever encounter them. It is true that I make choices with whom I hang
out with, largely based on similarities in values but this is not exclusive
anymore.

As a community you have this balance between personal values which can be
often clearly defined and group values which are often not well defined.
This balance often tugs back and forth in your decision making as a group
and sometimes when things are stuck, dropping down to what is the value
being expressed here might be useful.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood
Snohomish County, WA