Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Organic Food and cohousing

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Jun 5, 2005, at 10:36 AM, Racheli Gai wrote:

> However, the issue of buying organic has a lot to do
> with a viewpoint which places high priority on creating a sustainable 
> way of life. [snip]
> On a more general level, I'm finding (after nearly 5 years in my 
> cohousing community), that the
> idea that people of all ideologies can live side by side happily is 
> truly NOT a viable one, partly because
> of the close proximity in which we reside:  Someone who wants an 
> "organic" neighborhood, finds it hard
> to live in close proximity to someone who thinks that using pesticides 
> is a viable option

There is another spin to this too -- vegans who eat horribly unhealthy 
diets. White Wonder bread, sugar colas, processed food. Their standard 
is that it has no animal products, not whether it is organic or poison. 
After years of being macrobiotic and studying the principles of raw 
food diets this drives me nuts. Vegan works well if you do lots of 
greens and raw foods and whole grains but not if it just excludes 
animal food.

I've essentially opted out of our meals because of noise and chaotic 
serving but also the food is just too unpredictable. If it weren't for 
the chaos I could bring my own meal. But we have open shelves in our 
kitchen and I'm embarrassed to see some of the foods on them. Canned 
vegetables, white flour mixes, pasteurized soy sauce, sodium instead of 
sea salt, etc. I do eat junk food -- I love MacDonalds but once a month 
is fine. I can be _that_ much of an American and enjoy it. On birthdays 
I want "real" cakes, not politically correct ones with no fats, no 
sugar, etc. I like tofu when it is tofu, not when it is ice cream. 
There is only so much you can do to pizza before it is no longer pizza. 
A lot of dead food gets served in our kitchen.

It is hard to live closely or even to undertake an educational program 
with people who have a very different sensibility. I would love it if 
we had community standards and allow exceptions. A standard would 
gradually raise the community awareness of healthy food. No fat does 
not equate to healthy.

> The ambiguity serves the initial and paramount need of selling units, 
> but really sets things up for trouble in
> the long run, because it creates a great likelihood that people with 
> potentially incompatible sets of values end
> up living next to each other.

I would phrase this a different way -- when most cohousing communities 
are forming they do not have a clear sense of what they want because 
most cohousing members have NOT lived in intentional communities 
before. Many people have moved into cohousing because it allows them to 
have community "without living in an intentional community" which they 
think is synonymous with a commune.

What I think is important is that cohousing be willing to include the 
full range of communities. As Racheli says, having a mainstream 
American community is also a restriction, just a different one.

"Cohousing" is a helpful term as long as it is broadly (or narrowly) 
defined as "a self-managed residential community that is 
architecturally designed or modified to increase resident interaction 
and that all the residents joined with the intention of participating 
in the community life."

Then from there specific communities can go where they like -- Senior, 
Christian, Vegetarian, Sustainable, etc.

I doubt very much that many communities who think they are very diverse 
are actually very diverse. The self-selection process automatically 
limits diversity. When we have more cohousing communities I think we 
will find more people moving from one community to another one to find 
greater harmony with their own beliefs.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org