Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Secrecy in Cohousing

[O3C11N6G (normangauss]

Dear Michael Barrett:


My emails are not meant to seek validation.  This assumption that there are 
ulterior motives in my emails is prevalent in my community and detracts from 
the real goal of seeking information.  Sometimes I detect suspicions that I 
am really seeking to (1) criticize or (2) blame somebody or else (3) I have 
an axe to grind.  Nobody seems to care that there may be unhappy members in 
our community, and that ignoring them or trashing them is the best policy.

Often when I send emails to my community, I get either (1) no responses, or 
(2) defensive reactions, or (3) questions such as, "What do you want me to 
do about it?" or (4) defiant deletion of my emails because the people do not 
want the messages cluttering up their inboxes.  I have a reputation of being 
unhappy with the status quo and many people do not want to hear this from 
any member.

I have no political agenda with my emails treating secrecy or closed 
meetings.  I merely want to find out if these practices are common in 
cohousing communities.  If I had to guess, I would say they are rare.

In my view, establishing community spirit requires openness and 
collaborative thinking.  The minute fear and secrecy intrudes its ugly head, 
you have the beginning of the breakdown in the community. There are several 
ego-driven people in our community that are within our top-down command 
structure.  They either (1) have the urge to control others, or (2) are 
fearful of being criticized or blamed, or (3) want to be able to "lay down 
the law" and have people respond without question.  The very fact that these 
people are influential because they are Board members or are chairpersons of 
key committees implies that there is indeed a top-down command structure 
here.

The very idea of a command structure smacks of odious authoritarianism such 
as in the military.  I have mentioned to at least one person that I find his 
authoritarianism haughty and unfriendly. He has not spoken to me since.  We 
indeed have a quasi-police state here because I was threatened with police 
arrest for vandalism because I did some lawn repair work without 
authorization from the presumed authority figures.  There was great 
confusion among the "powers that be" on determining whose turf I was 
violating.  I still may be asked to pay damages on an as yet to be 
determined damage assessment.

The item of "hijacking meetings" has been brought up before in our community 
discussions.  In California law, any person may attend any meeting but may 
speak only with the permission of the chairperson.  Thus it is impossible to 
hijack meetings if all of us followed this protocol.

Norm Gauss