Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: rules and regs, cooperation and self-preservation

[Dave and Diane (daveanddee]

On Fri, 21 Apr 2006, at 06:16 AM, truddick [at] earthlink.net wrote:

> It may seem tedious, but who gave anyone permission to decide who was
> "good"?

Each cohousing group, as an entity, gives itself permission to decide 
who
or what is "good." This is what is meant by a "bottom-up" approach, 
where the
power comes from the members, as opposed to the "top-down" approach 
mentioned
at the very end of this email.


> EVERYONE is going to act according to ego and self-interest-except in 
> cases
> of mental illness.

According to a research paper by Robert Axelrod, this is not true. 
Below is a bried quote from this
extremely interesting article. the rest of it can be fond at
http://www.jyi.org/volumes/volume11/issue3/articles/hourigan.html

"Can cooperation evolve in a society of egoists without the existence 
of a central authority? This an intriguing question because, in nature, 
we find that evolution rewards the efforts of individuals with selfish 
motives. With a limited supply of life-sustaining resources available 
to a population, an organism must compete with others in its population 
to obtain resources essential to its survival and maximization of 
reproductive success. Since it is the selfish behavior of the organism 
that ensures its self-preservation, there is no reason for cooperation 
to take place. On the other hand, we know that cooperation does indeed 
take place—ants work together in construction and the gathering of food 
for the benefit of the colony; people cooperate with one another on a 
day-to-day basis.

This question—the problem of cooperation—has been investigated in the 
work of Robert Axelrod (1984). In his work, Axelrod uses a model known 
as the prisoner’s dilemma game to studying cooperation. Two players 
take part in the prisoner’s dilemma game. Each player must make a move, 
either to cooperate or to defect with the opposing player, without 
knowing what the other player will do. Scoring is calculated as shown 
in the payoff matrix (Figure 1). It is known by both players that 
acting selfishly—defecting—yields a higher payoff than cooperating no 
matter what the other player does, and so the natural decision is to 
defect. However, it is also known that by cooperating, both players can 
collectively do better than if both defect, hence the dilemma. Axelrod 
proposes that for cooperation to take place, a series of games must be 
played so that players can anticipate future interactions, and base 
their move decisions upon previous game outcomes. In this model, the 
iterated prisoner’s dilemma, it becomes rational to cooperate."

> George W. Bush thinks that Don Rumsfeld is a good public servant.  
> Bush is,
> after all, the one who writes the rules for our nation today.  Are you
> comfortable with that framing of who's good, based on the existing 
> rules?

No, of course not--that's why we went through five years of blood, 
toil, tears, and
sweat in order to set up a cohousing community--a subset of the general 
population
that plays by different rules. I think you would be hard-pressed to 
find a single
person that approves of either George W. Bush or Donald Rumsfeld in 
this community.

--Diane(:^|

marketing facilitator
jp cohousing  617-522-2209
Box 300420 boston ma
http://www.jpcohousing.org
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"The people who surround you define the quality of your life."