Cohousing-L Mailing List: Who are servants?

[Jose Marquez (marchpower]

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professionals or craftspeople...
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Who are the people who offer service?  Is it the Mother?  The Father?  The
Policeperson, Doctor, Garbageperson, or Farmer?  How often, in how many ways
are we routinely served by people and not know it?

I think we need to remember that we can't do everything, and by asking
someone with a skill we lack to practice their skill in our house this trade
of skill for money is what helps all individuals put food on their table and
send their kids to college.  I also think that by focusing on those people
who perform jobs "we" don't like and proclaiming them sufferers or lower
class people without a good life is a HUGE INFERENCE!  I have a
sister-in-law who is married to a millionaire, but she still cleans other
people's houses (for $50 an hour...believe it or not) because she likes her
clients, she is also somewhat obsessive-compulsive about cleanliness, and it
makes her feel good to leave a clean house!  Andy Kaufman worked as a
bussboy at a restaurant while working on the incredibly popular show
TAXI...so we need to think a bit about this assumption that what "we" hate
must be equally gross to another person.  Also, if my Midwife hires a person
to clean her house each week so she can get up at all hours of the night to
help women give birth...then that housecleaner is a vital part of her
success!  And thank goodness for that housecleaner!

MOST people do not live in a community with every skill covered...without
trading skills we'd all have to learn everything and the time spent learning
everything (to only a rudimentary level) would cost a lot of money in lost
work time...and perhaps cost lives as non-experts tried to do everything.
LIKE cleaning!  If you don't know to not mix cleaning solutions you can die
from invisible, smell-less, taste-less fumes!  Or damage furniture using the
wrong furniture polish, or scratch the pans using the wrong sponge, etc.
So, even housecleaning is a skill...and not necessarily the work of only the
uneducated or disenfranchised...see what I mean?

So...hiring a person to practice his or her skill (homebirth to oil changes
to toilet cleaning) isn't necessarily good or bad...it depends on the
perspective of each and every person selling his or her skill.  And I'm not
going to assume I know anyone's reality until they share it with me
themselves.

~March