Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: WHAT CREATES COMMUNITY

[Graham Meltzer (g.meltzer]

Buzz offers ... 

>** I'de like to see the subscribers of this list do what Mike just did - submit
>a quick and simple list of:  WHAT CREATES COMMUNITY - for you.  Not in theory,
>but for each individual.  A staw poll of how people feel about this fundemental
>issue.  

Lots of luck Buzz ... I imagine there are as many or more perceptions of
community as there are subscribers to this list. 

I have lived within numerous intentional communities over twenty five years
... urban communes, rural communes, kibbutz, cohousing and others. I had
different kinds of community experience in each one, but I think the place
in which the 'sense of community' was most palpable was on kibbutz. The
reasons for this I beleive were little to do with religion or nationalism
... I spent a year in each of two kibbutzim, both seccular and apolitical.
For me, the principle reason for this hightened sense of communtity was
having a comon purpose which was made manifest in the sharing of a range of
activities. A typical day would include working in agriculture together ...
a neccessarily closely coordinated activity requiring much give and take ...
eating three meals together ... spending an hour or two at the pool or the
basketball court ... meeting again at the shop and the laundry ... spending
the eveing togther hanging out in the bar or playing backgammon or bridge
... strolling home together on warm nights along traffic free routes winding
through common lawns and gardens. 

If I sound nostalgic ... 

That's not to say that it was always congenial. In fact relationships were
often strained, occassionally explosive ... but disputes were generally
resolved, often very publicly, out of neccessity. You just cannot easily
carry unresolved disagreements with someone with whom you share so much time
and activity. 

Now I would only have had the sort of close, fully supportive relationship
that Rob describes with a few people ... but sure as hell ... I felt a
strong community bond with each and every one of the two or three hundred
others on the same kibbutz. It was the feeling of common purpose that comes
from committing your whole self to the group. So the common economy and
shared decision making about vital, life matters was also a large part of that. 

We know that the kibbutz movement has been in crisis for some twenty years
or so as many of their distinctive communal structures are being eroded ...
due in part I think, to the influence of middle-class imigrants, typically
from the US and Australia, who have introduced the trappings of comfortable,
suburban, nuclear family living. But that's another rave.

Just a few thoughts. I have to run now ... to the job which supports my
comfortable, suburban, nuclear family life-style.

Cheers
Graham Meltzer