Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Re: more perspective on rules and regs

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Apr 19, 2006, at 4:06 PM, Hans G. Ehrbar wrote:

> (1) It is not possible to design rules which, if followed,
> turn you into a good community member.

This is true but it might get the floor mopped. And this leaves open 
the question whether communities should tolerate, and thus encourage, 
non-cooperative behavior. At what point does it become co-dependent?

From this I would exclude this example from a friend who spent time 
studying the work policies on a kibbutz. New Russian immigrants were 
consistently shirking work and taking more than their share of goods 
and services. My friend questioned this and the "supervisor" said, it 
takes three (6?)months or so for them to wake up and realize that they 
are no longer in Russia. We wait them out, then we take action.

> (2) As long as capitalism is rampant, self-serving parasitic
> behavior is encouraged and even necessary.  People who are
> socialized this way are not necessarily bad.

I don't think the issue is whether people are bad or not, but whether 
they can live in cooperatively with others. We are all raised in 
capitalist society so why does one person act one way and another 
another way.

This the same logic that says an artist is a good artist because he is 
schizophrenic. Not all schizophrenics are artists.

Sharon
---
Sharon Villines
Building Community: A Guide to Creating New Neighborhoods
http://www.buildingcommunity.info