Cohousing-L Mailing List: Cohousing is a state of mind. by Russell Mawby

[Fred H Olson WB0YQM (fholson]

Russell Mawby in care of Tom Ponessa  TOMP [at] TVO.ORG
is the author (I think (Fred))  of this message but due
to a listserv problem it was posted by the COHOUSING-L sysop (Fred).
I also changed the Subject on this one. Fred
****************  FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS *********************

Russell Mawby writes:

A few weeks ago, I posted a presentation I was
working on that included a comment suggesting
that, in my opinion, cohousers seem to be of two
types - those who see cohousing as a radically
new way of living, or those who see it as plain old
common sense.  Perhaps I'm just seeing what I'm
looking for, but recent conversations on this
mailing list seem to validate this statement.

I am firmly on the side of common sense, which is
not to say that I don't also recognize cohousing as
a radical re-interpretation of the way we tend to live
in our society.  Yes, cohousing does offer elements
of anarchy, anti-consumerism, "alt.lifestyles",
alt.religion, and, especially, alt.spirituality.  But I
must admit to being nervous about any movement
that tries to _offer_ these things to me.  If
cohousing lets me reduce my reliance on
bureaucracies and other institutions like consumer
industries, organized religions, social bondage to
particular lifestyles or what have you, then, In My
Opinion, it's because cohousing provides a place
where I can discover those things for myself.

The one phrase - among many - from recent
postings that triggered all this for me was a
comment that it would be better to live in
cohousing on a really bad site than to continue the
danger of living in single family houses.  Two
things strike me about this.

The first is the "(co)housing at any cost" approach.
I have seen a similar attitude in non-
profit/social/public housing here in Ontario, and let
me say that it is a very dangerous and ultimately
self- defeating approach to building good places to
live.

The second, and related issue is, "what is so bad
about the single family home that cohousing is
going to magically fix?"  I would suggest that
assuming that the problem with the world is that
one is not living in cohousing presupposes that
cohousing is somehow something different,
removed from the nasty stuff "out there".  As
someone else said, once you strip away the
cohousing, you've basically got a housing
development.  Cohousing cannot make toxic sites
safe and benign.  It cannot prevent your new
neighbours from doing things you don't like - and
vice versa - and it cannot make right all the
baggage, attitudes and behavious that are the
sum of our lives.  That world we are trying to
escape from is as much a part of us as our
language.  Cohousing is but a part of that world.
A very nice part, the part I want to live in, but still
just a piece of a greater whole.

Sorry to go on so, but I wanted to make the point
that, to me, cohousing is a state of mind, not
bricks and mortar, although when arranged in
supportive and pleasing manner bricks and mortar
do help that state of mind.  Cohousing can
(should?) begin right now, wherever we happen to
be - we already have neighbours, after all.  What
would it really take to get involved with them, to
start sharing something of ourselves and of our
lives, to take cohousing "out there".  I know it can
happen, because I've lived in places, and seen
others, where cohousing already exists - no formal
agreements, no convoluted constitutions, just a
bunch of people getting along, helping each other
live their day to day lives.  I know that many of the
places and institutions we've built for ourselves
don't support this behaviour, which is why so many
people are willing to meet for months on end to
build places that do.  But I have made it my
mission to find ways of bringing cohousing to the
world I live in and to challenge the behaviours,
language, culture and practices in that world that
can make it such a miserable place for many of us
to be.

I may not be doing a good job of explaining myself,
probably because I'm still working it out on a daily
basis, but the most insightful discussions I've
recently read on the way we fit into our world(s) is
"An Anthropology of Everyday Life", by Edward T.
Hall.  I highly recommend it, and I'm moving on to
his earlier work "The Silent Language" just as soon
as I'm done this.

Without giving away the ending - it's an
autobiography - Hall suggests that we see the
world through very selective filters, especially the
filter of language.  Seeing, and the resultant
thinking, is a transaction - a two-way process
whereby we configure the visual sensations our
eyes receive into impressions of the world, but
these impressions are shaped by our expectations,
experiences and, dare I say it, pre-conceptions.
This is not news, I'm sure, but in relation to
cohousing, the point is that seeing the world
through cohousing eyes literally changes the world
we see.  This is powerful, but also dangerous,
because it doesn't necessarily change the world
everyone else sees, and it can cause us to miss
seeing some things, some very important things
about what we are doing.  It is part and parcel of
the "group think" behaviours that social
psychologists have written about for years (see
JFK and the Bay of Pigs/Cuban Missile Crisis in
your nearest social psych textbook), but it is a
behavioural phenomenon that I think many
cohousing groups fail to account for.  In other
words, we can literally become blinded by the
splendor of this wonderful vision called cohousing,
and forget that what we are trying to do is make a
better place to live.

That better place may well be somewhere new,
with other people who share cohousing eyes, but it
could just as well be where we are right now.  To
me, it means a place where I can start exploring
this new world, but not forgetting that it really is the
same old world, with the same problems,
difficulties and opportunities.  I suppose, in the
end, all I am trying to do is to urge anyone who
starts to think of cohousing as some panacea for
the ills of the world to stop, take a look around, and
think about how much cohousing might already be
there waiting for you to see it.

Russell Mawby - CoHoSoc, Toronto