Cohousing-L Mailing List: Sharing [Was The rugged individual}

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Dec 4, 2004, at 10:04 AM
> Aukema <aukema [at] riverrock.org>

>    Here at River Rock Cohousing we have tried the shared approach to 
> tools for gardening,
>    cooking, videos, etc., but have found many people don't return 
> items, or trash them
>    completely.  Sounds like you don't have that problem.  How do you 
> deal with people who
>    trash the tools, or simply don't return them to the community? We 
> have tried sending
>    out e-mails and asking nicely, but have gotten no response.  We 
> have tried humor,
>    serious, and everything in between.  Any ideas?

I looked at your website but didn't see any numbers to indicate the 
size of your community, but I'm interested in this question in relation 
to people numbers and the closeness of the community physically. As 
someone just mentioned an ecovillage where the houses are far apart and 
you can drive from one to the other is very different than a 
multi-household building (or 2 or 3 multi-household buildings) My 
thought is that proximity and small size builds a different kind of 
community than geographic distance. And specifically that size matters 
most.

Schizophrenics are known to have larger personal boundaries than 
"normal" people, meaning that they feel fear and invasion at a much 
closer distance than most. I wonder if there is a similar measure in 
numbers of people between which you can informally share with a respect 
that falls apart with twice the number.

In schools for example, with more than 500 students, graffiti and 
violent behavior increases and the need for rules and restrictions 
greatly increases.

With close to 100 people in a community it takes a lot more education 
to keep everyone on the same page, and a lot more monitoring to even 
know when something is amiss, than it must with 40 people.

I've also found that some people do not have good boundaries. They just 
aren't aware of having stepped over them and these people need more 
"patrolling" in community than others. It's just a fact and you learn 
where to go look for things. And some people require rules like "if you 
break it, you replace it. You have a choice of replacing it yourself or 
we will replace it and bill you."

I don't think it is necessary to have these "rules" plastered all over 
the workshop wall because it means the people who don't need to see 
them become oppressed by them and those who need to see them don't read 
them, but they do need to be somewhere -- like in the bylaws or the 
community rules.

Sharon
---
Sharon Villines, Editor and Publisher
Building Community: A Newsletter on Coops, Condos, Cohousing, and Other 
New Neighborhoods