Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Political context of cohousing

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

Craig Willis wrote:
1) that I desire *more* than just to live in a *somewhat* closer-knit
community than is the norm for our (extremely isolating) society.  I
desire a true community of like-minded people.  And for me that is
basically a *political proposition* revolving around the issue of
trying to become more aware of (and do something about) the systematic
ways in which our political and social systems foster and perpetuate
social injustice,



Having people share your values is nice in cohousing, but it is not 
mandatory to the functioning of the group beyond survival.  Once you 
move in there can be a wide difference of values tolerated and even 
celebrated - its in the crucial start up phase where values 
disagreements can have fatal results.  When a group is undergoing the 
development process, it is fragile.  Major distractions and conflicts 
over values at this point can derail the group.  Having some general 
agreed upon values, or keeping values offline and out of the process of 
the development can help maintain an even keel.

Cohousing differs from some other forms of intentional community in 
that groups can get together without heavy political agendas, and 
succeed in creating cooperative housing.  What cohousing produces may 
not be what some people want or are interested in, that is OK.  What 
cohousing does, IMHO, is offer a touch of cooperative living to the 
mainstream culture.  At Sharingwood there are 3-4 people who share many 
of my values and I am closer to those people, spend more time with 
them, than with those who don't.  Seems to be the way things work.  I 
personally would not want everyone to share my values - I find the 
diversity of ideas and values to be stimulating and a challenge.  I can 
live with people who are different, have different politics, 
viewpoints, etc.  I think having that diversity gives the group some 
good strengths.

If there is one thing I have learned in living in cohousing for the 
last 3 years is that groups are not static.  Values, levels of 
cooperation, methods of communication all change to meet the changing 
needs and interests of the group. My observation is that groups start 
out less cooperative then become more so over time.

I would be cautious about the words "true community".  What does that 
mean?  Because Cohousing often doesn't have intense value sets which 
you must subscribe to, having a cohesive group, which follows the 
agenda described in Craigs post, seems unlikely to occur.  There are a 
number of other types of intentional community however where this could 
be pursued.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood Cohousing