Cohousing-L Mailing List: My final comments on ...

[Craig D. Willis (willic3]

>I think one of the things this thread and its predecessor make clear is that
>people involved in cohousing do *not* necessarily agree about politics in
>the large.  Can we agree to differ and leave it at that?

I actually don't think that this thread indicates that there is
necessarily any great disagreement on substantive issues, unless the
disagreement is about the value of making the effort to understand
someone else's point of view before blasting it.  The posting by
biow [at] cs.UMD.EDU (it would be nice to have a name to refer to) seems to
imply that there is some great disagreement.  However, except for the
parts that caricuture me as a "wild and ignorant conspiracy-monger" I
actually agree, in a certain sense, with most of what he said.  There
were certain inferences drawn by him about what my views are that are
totally in error (in fact I thought I was being pigeon-holed as the
very kind of person that he *enjoys* tearing into... sorry, just my
subjective impression of the tone of the letter) and there seemed to
be a certain implication that our system (whatever its faults or
virtues) shouldn't be questioned and couldn't be improved upon (which
I certainly wouldn't agree with), but the basic facts, as presented,
were, I felt, generally cogent.  I did feel that I was being *SHOUTED*
at, though.  And the explanation for why the S&L's went bust, I found
unconvincing, although maybe I could be persuaded that the factor
cited was actually a major one (this seems to be his area of
expertise).

But the real point I would make is that his remarks were almost
uniformally not relevant to the point that I had tried to make in my
original posting.  The reasons for this seem clear enough.  Gross,
unwarranted assumptions were made about my views without having made
an effort to understand them.  The issue of the subtle ways that power
manifests itself is a *very* complex one, and has not been done
justice in this thread at all.  However, I don't think that a lengthy
discussion of this issue is really *warranted* in this group.  My
original posting could be summarized as trying to justify the idea
that there *are* political aspects to cohousing (the issues being,
potentially *very* broad) and that some of those issues *would*, I
feel, be worth discussing.  (I couldn't rattle off exactly which ones,
but the kind of decision-making process that a group adopts; the
political nature of the community being created; the relationship
between the nature of the community and its ability to attract people
to cohousing, keep people working at the process, and make their
efforts successful are issues that come to mind.)

I think this scenario is very illustrative and relevant to what I was
getting at in terms of the kinds of shared values that are of such
importance to me.  This thread is not, in my view, really about widely
disparate views.  It's about (or at least can be seen as) an inability
or unwillingness to communicate respectfully and effectively.

I had actually thought of responding to Ray Gasser's comments:

>On the other hand, I think it gets a bit dangerous to be living and hanging
>out only with those of similar belief. Conversation and discourse can get
>a bit boring... 
>And besides being *boring*, dealing only within one limited viewpoint can
>lead to narrow-mindedness, and  if it is rarely challenged with opposing
>ideas, can lead to a feeling of "correctness" or elitism. "If nobody around
>me tells me I'm wrong, I must be right!"

by saying something like: yeah, we all get together during our evening
meal and the only topic of conversation is truth and justice (and
personal growth).  Marxism, democracy, anarchism, capitalism... all
passe.  Nothing at all to talk about but truth and justice (we're all
so dedicated to it!).  It sure would be nice to have a bunch of
sociopaths in the house and maybe even a psychopath or two just to
liven things up a bit, challenge me with their views on the value of
totally self-serving behavior and even (perhaps) their right to carve
*me* up.

Actually I didn't have a problem with Ray's posting.  Maybe he just
didn't see my clarification of what I meant by shared values.  Also, I
want to say that I rather enjoyed Jeff Papineau's "hive theory"
posting and Edward OConnell's brief riposte.

One last point, wrt "Can we agree to differ and leave it at that?".  I
know that a lot of people feel the unpleasantness of this sort of
thing when real communication breaks down.  But (imho) we shouldn't be
too quick to abandon the process of communication when it seems not to
be going well.  If some efforts are not made in this regard, then many
opportunities will undoubtedly be lost for us to understand each other
better.

That's enough bandwidth on this particular thread for me.  I responded
with a private email message to Bob Morrison's comments/questions and
if anyone is interested in seeing what I had to say, let me know and
I'll be glad to email you a copy.

Craig