Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: The price of community

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

The thesis that community depends upon authority would need much more 
evidence before I would ever subscribe to it.  I would say that placing 
the good of the group over personal self interest could put "the 
community" in a position of authority and thus in that scenario the 
community would depend on it.  The egalitarian nature of cohousing 
depends not at all on authority, but personal cooperation and honest 
communication, both of which are SKILLS WHICH CAN BE DEVELOPED AND 
LEARNED BY ANYONE.  Sorry for the shouting, but my experience has 
taught me that the crux of community success is the 3 C's of 
Cooperation, communication and commitment.  The catch is that 
cooperation and communication skills are NOT taught in general 
schooling, and are specialty classes done mostly by the healing trades 
such as mediators and counselors.  Of course commitment comes from 
within and that is the one thing that can't be taught or processed.  
None of these things depend upon authority and are actually the 
antithesis of authority.

I agree whole heartily with the notions that:  What we badly need to 
do, ..., is to rebuild some anchors of stability to help  us through 
times of equally unsettling change. I very much see community, and its 
attendant sense of belonging and sense of place, to be very much the 
anchors of stability.  I feel, although can not adequately express, 
that community provides in many ways the, "family values" which have 
been espoused by conservatives. Family families in this context are the 
values of working together as part of something more than just 
yourself.  I do agree that many social ills have come from the 
fragmenting of the family and the loss of the sense of place and 
belonging and the destabilization those bring.  Communities are tribes 
of families who hold some degree of interdependency on each other and I 
see the large growth of the communities movement in general as 
validation of the need for this new tribalism.  Stability is belonging 
to something, be it a community, a church, a gang, a relationship.

I heard offhand that the number of people living in an intentional 
community of some sort or other has doubled in the past 3 years and 
will double again in another 2 years.  This phenomenal growth is coming 
from somewhere, and Cohousing is big part of it.  Let us be generous 
with the gifts we have, and sow the seeds of knowledge and 
encouragement freely and with grace.  May our tribe increase.

Rob Sandelin
Feeling philosophical again
Sharingwood