Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: RE: [C-L]_Value of Work

[Robert P. Arjet (rarjet]

cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org writes:
>  If not enough people want to cook,
>I question the value of eating together.

For some reason, that just made me sit up and say "damn straight!"  I
think it cuts to the heart of what a lot of the debate has been about. 
Assuming that common meals are essential to the cohousing group (and this
assumption has recently and trenchantly called into question) I would
suspect that in any group that is having to coerce people into cooking the
problem is not labor distribution, but either a) a lack of a shared
agreement about the value of eating together, or b) a lack of
understanding about the amount of labor necessary to produce common meals.
 

I'm not qualified to plan green building for our group, but I know that it
is important, and I am glad that there are others who can sit on that
subcommittee.  If, however, people started telling me that there were not
enough people on the green building subcommittee, I would consider two
possibilities: either green building is genuinely important to our group
and I should educate myself and start attending subcommittee meetings, or 
the group has tacitly decided that green building is not part of our
vision, and we should, as the Quakers say, "lay it down." 

Thus, in a group where cooking for common meals has become a source of
resentment, I would question the members of the group and find out if
everyone really believed this to be a central part of the cohousing
community.  If people are sincerely behind it, then they should be able to
put their sweat where their mouths are and step up to the (serving) plate.
 If it's only the concern/passion of a few, then perhaps it is more of a
hobby-group matter than a central part of the community. 

All of this with the caveat that our group is still in the
pot-luck-after-general-meeting stage, and I may have absolutely no idea
what I'm talking about. 

Robert Arjet
Central Austin Cohousing
Austin, TX

-------------------------------
"Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape
it." 
   -Brecht

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