Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: What’s so funny ‘bout peace love & understanding?

[John Carver (jcarver]

On 11/02/2016 10:38 AM, Igor Cerny... observed, if I may paraphrase, 
that while postings to coho-L have a lot about the mechanics of creating 
and maintaining cohousing, "what I don’t see as often are discussions 
about such things as kindness or civility within communities."

In fact there often are discussions about dealing with difficult people, 
who may be unkind or uncivil, but I don't think that's quite what he's 
getting at.

Perhaps there's an underlying assumption that anyone wanting cohousing 
wants an atmosphere of kindness and civility so it's not worth 
discussing. Or is it that we don't know how to create it?

It's long been my view that we can engineer environments but we can't 
engineer people. To illustrate, we can design a common house that we 
perceive to be welcoming and that invites warm and friendly 
interactions, but we can't design how people will feel or interact 
within that space.

John Carver
Pacific Gardens Cohousing, Nanaimo, BC
http://pacificgardens.ca/
(a warm and friendly environment)