Cohousing-L Mailing List: "Political" composition of cohousing groups

[Craig D. Willis (willic3]

>... find and agree on a housing site and buy or build houses together,
>people must have similar mind-sets.
>
>On the other hand, I think it gets a bit dangerous to be living and hanging
>out only with those of similar belief.

Even before I saw Ray's response I felt a need to clarify what I said.
The comments above make it obvious why.  The attributes I have in mind
when I say that I want to live in a community of like-minded people
are: having a strong interest in truth, justice and personal growth
(forgive the cliche, but at least I didn't say "the American way"),
and be willing to talk about and stay open to new ideas as they try to
make sense of the world around them.  It is *that* desire (to *really*
want to *try* to do this) that I see as an essential attribute of
companions that I would really be *thrilled* about trying to create a
community with.

I definitely agree that cohousers are a *lot* more likely to have
these qualities, but I also think that there could be (and are) a wide
variety of reasons for why people get interested in cohousing.  So I
don't see it necessarily as a given.  In fact, my experience is that
almost *all* people have learned to become quite reticent (at the very
*least*) about seriously delving into the nature of the reality around
them, perhaps because there always seem to be so many more pressing
problems to be dealt with.

As I indicated in my previous post, I really don't care much about
whether people are Republicans or Democrats or whatnot (or whether
they even vote or not---dedicated voters are probably more naive than
idealistic).  Cynicism and disillusionment are the normal response to
be expected given the political climate we live in, and I am truly
admiring of anyone who is able to rise above that.

I found Kevin Wolf's analysis of the political composition of N
Street, and the "rent before buying" nature of their community very
interesting.  I wonder if other people in other groups would be
willing to briefly describe the nature of their "membership" in this
vein?  It helps me to get a much better feeling for what the community
is like (to the extent that a small amount of information can) and
associates an individual character with a site (in this case, N
street) that otherwise would remain pretty much anonymous in my mind,
given that I can't easily associate all the individual comments that
have come from each cohousing community member.


Craig Willis
willic3 [at] rpi.edu
518-477-4406