Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Discrimination (for any reason)

[C.C. Barron (ccbarron]

sbraun wrote:

> Maybe it is human
> nature: maybe we should "allow" for people to seek out sameness in their
> neighbors. But we ought not ever, ever deny housing or access to
> housing, either overtly or covertly, to somebody because they are
> different from us. And I believe we ought to work very hard to expand
> our tolerance for differences to include meat-eaters, tv-watchers,
> grease-cookers, public-schoolers, beer-drinkers with pot bellies,
> addicted sports-watchers, video-game junkies, juice-box consumers,
> perfume-wearers, smokers, advocates of the war in Iraq, and people with
> smelly armpits, not to mention the old and the young.
>
> Enjoying the discussion,
>
> Sheila
>

I too have been following this thread with interest.  Sheila's assertion
above really set me back.  Applied to our community, her statement suggests
that our interest in encouraging members to self-select around values like
ecology and simple living might be a form of bigotry.  In the spirit of
self-questioning Rachaeli has been modeling, I had to think about that one a
while.

I came up with three ideas that might be pertinent...

1. (I think someone else made this point already, maybe me, but it bears
repeating) -- values are to a certain extent a choice and demographics
(race, etc.) aren't, so there is a difference between preferring to live
with people who hold similar central values to one's own and preferring to
live with other white people.  The latter is prejudice and by definition
superficial, since those white people around you might have very different
values.  The former might be called discernment instead of discrimination?
2. I'm much more tolerant of other adults I interact with than I am of the
children my children interact with -- I feel the need to protect them from
values I don't share.  It's one thing to agree to disagree with others about
such things as violent toys and TV-watching when their children don't have
direct contact with one's own.  I do want some shared values with the
parents of the children my children are freely playing with.  Part of why
I'm interested in cohousing is that I've had enough already of neighborhoods
in which all the boys are popping out from nowhere and ambushing people with
their toy guns (too common in Texas, unfortunately).  I frankly want to keep
my 1- and 4-year-old sons away from that kind of thing until they're old
enough not to be swayed by what all the older boys are doing.
3. I hope that my attitudes in 1 and 2 above doesn't prevent me from living
in a community which is diverse in other, interesting ways.  (In fact, our
community is already diverse in many ways, while retaining a core of shared
values, so I think I can assert that this is indeed possible.)

Cat Barron
Oak Village Commons
Austin, TX
www.oakhillcohousing.org

P.S.  I am a big fan of cosmologist Brian Swimme, coauthor of The Universe
Story.  He has made the point that in order to create a new community it is
necessary to separate a bit from the larger community.  If you subject
yourselves to all the evolutionary pressures that have created the current
solution, you will be forced back to that solution.  He cites the analogy of
Australian animals -- they evolved differently because they were cut off
from the mainland populations.  In my mind this justifies a partial
separation from mainstream consumerism, for example, in order to foster
simple living.  This intentional separation from some mainstream values may
seem to be intolerant in a way, but perhaps it is necessary in order to
foster new social forms (like cohousing) which promise to lead our society
in a new, healthier direction.  Of course I'm aware one could take this too
far...



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