Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Giving or Taking

[Kay Argyle (argyle]

> ... people are willing to do things voluntarily
> that they resent being required to do ...

I answered separately about childcare specifically, that being a simpler
issue, since it is not where this particular intractibility currently
manifests in our community.

Nearly three years after move-in, Wasatch Commons has only a small handful
of house rules -- and I wrote and pushed through five of the six, over
sometimes considerable resistance.  In each case, much of the community
agreed from the beginning that what I was proposing was sensible &
beneficial (indeed, often was already an unspoken rule). The content of the
proposed rules seemed to create less controversy than the simple words, "It
is proposed that the following become a house rule."

One chief opponent to the concept of rules has recently started talking
about the need for some sort of written, descriptive information to give to
new members on how we do things.  She calls it a "handbook," but it's
basically our old friend the house rules book under a more acceptable name.

One rule/agreement we've never been able to attain is who does the community
work.  Much community work is still being done on a volunteer basis, as a
game of chicken -- the first person who can't stand the mess any longer,
does the work.

We've gotten work agreements passed in bits and pieces, addressing common
meals and cleaning the common house.  No standards have ever been agreed on,
so some months the floor is clean enough to eat off of, and some months the
ants are doing just that.  The lawn gets very shaggy at times.

For a couple of months now we've devoted half of every community meeting to
discussions aimed at creating a more comprehensive participation agreement.
I was feeling hopeful about this process -- at least we were discussing it!
until the last meeting, when we had break-out sessions assigning various
jobs to categories of "essential," "important," "nice," and "not a community
responsibility."  Weeding/planting didn't even make the cut into the
important category.

It took me a while to figure out why this made me angry.  It wasn't just
that most of my work contribution is landscaping, so the community seemed to
be denigrating my efforts.  More importantly, residents keep fretting over
the nearly $9,000 bond the city holds, which we need to finish landscaping
our entrances & boundaries to get back.

As a responsible member of the landscape committee, I feel a duty to the
community.  I supervise half a dozen work parties every year and spend a lot
more hours working on my own.  In return, they dismiss what I do as
"nice",expect that I should also do "essential" jobs, and then wonder why
the flower bed in front of the common house has disappeared into the
encroaching grass (I was busy with other areas this year, and when I posted
the job, nobody volunteered).

I love gardening.  It gives me joy when others express their pleasure at the
results of my work.  However, sometimes I feel like I give and give and it's
never my turn to take -- I don't have children to play on the climbing dome
I helped put together, I don't eat common meals, nobody has set up the
crafts room for use; I don't benefit from anybody else's work (or at least,
that's how I feel in dark moments).

Ideally, both parties should feel they are better off after a gift exchange.
If reciprocity is inadequate, however, one party eventually feels used, or
used up, but can't say so, because it's rude to hint for better gifts*, and
they begin to begrudge giving.

*And there's a difference between a gift and a market economy -- in a market
economy, you can say, no that isn't enough, I want more for my goods or
services.

Kay Argyle
Wasatch Commons
Salt Lake City, Utah
argyle [at] mines.utah.edu


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