Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Porches and other things

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

Harry asked:  Do you really believe that we are all anti-social beings? 
That we could
survive as a species for millions of years without socializing, cooperating,
caring for each other? That's pretty heavy.

My analysis is the history of human culture, which I will freely admit 
is very slim, leads me to believe that all our history we have DEPENDED 
upon working together and only in late American culture, starting say 
since 1950's just to pick a date, this culture I live in has become 
less and less dependent upon working together.  In my short lifetime of 
39 years I see a huge gap between the neighborhood culture of my 
recently deceased Grandfather, and the general neighborhood culture of 
my peers.  My peers seldom stay in the same town they grew up in, 
seldom live close to their family, seldom stay in one residence more 
than 5-7 years.  My parents lived in the same house for 21 years, my 
grandfather died at 92 in the house he was born in.  Me on the other 
hand, and I find myself to be very much a reflection of my peers, have 
not lived in the same place more than 4 years since leaving home.  ( By 
Christmas I will have set a new personal record living at Sharingwood 
for 4 years, 2 months).

American culture of today in my estimation is pretty anti-social in 
general, especially compared to other cultures.  My own theory of this 
is that TV is a large part of this, but that's another rap.   Houses 
are "investments" until the next career move and so little effort is 
expended to build relationships with the neighbors.  I just finished 
having a discussion with one of my coworkers about her  neighborhood.  
They were having a problem with a neighbors dog and since the neighbor 
was a stranger they had called the local animal control authority.  I 
asked why she didn't just talk to the neighbor about it and she looked 
at me like I was from Mars.  We don't talk to the neighbors, they are 
strangers and they therefore scary and dangerous.  So here is a typical 
profile of a the perfect anti-social day.  Get up in the morning, go to 
work, work in isolated cubicles all day, come home, eat dinner, watch 
TV, go to bed.  Repeat 5 days a week.

I give a fair amount of talks about cohousing to various audiences and 
one of my typical introductions is to ask the audience to raise their 
hands when I ask some questions like:  How many of you can give the 
names of the neighbors who live on all sides of you?  How many of you 
could borrow a car from one of your neighbors?  How many of you have 
had dinner with at least one of your neighbors?  Etc......  Typically 
very few hands go up to these sorts of questions and the lead in to 
cohousing is then obvious.  I find lots of people who come to cohousing 
orientation type talks to be very hungry for a more social environment 
and so it seems to me that our TV cultural isolationism is leaving many 
people unfulfilled.

So I think that American culture has moved away from its historical 
roots of cooperation and  socialization and is moving into greater 
personal isolation.  I base this on what I see all around me.  Other 
perspectives?

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood