Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Common House Use Proposal

[Naomi Anderegg (naomi_anderegg]

(1) You just slammed urban areas! Are you feeling elevated? If not--what was 
the 
point of that? 


(2) If the group decides on the rule, then rules are seen as an a well 
articulated agreement of social expectations. They aren't disrespectful--and if 
you see them that way, then that's your personal issue. It's not like one 
person 
makes the rules and everyone else has to follow them. Instead, the process of 
writing down rules is a process of clarifying social expectations prior to any 
sort of conflict occurring. The fact of the matter is that expectations vary 
from person to person, and one would hope that articulating them and discussing 
them helps to get everyone on the same page. No one is forced into cohousing, 
so 
they aren't laws. You can leave whenever you want to. But, having rules allows 
us to avoid confrontations (or resentment) over one individual not living up to 
the other's expectations by defining expectations that everyone participating 
can live with. People like me (who tend to have relatively high expectations 
and 
get let down a lot) are reminded from the beginning that "X" is too much to 
expect, but everyone is OK with the expectation that "Y". People with lower 
expectations than the rest of the group have it made clear to them what exactly 
the expectations are as well--and if they feel or think that they can't live up 
to those expectations, then maybe they shouldn't be part of this particular 
group. 



________________________________
From: Wayne Tyson <landrest [at] cox.net>
To: Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Sent: Wed, May 11, 2011 9:29:49 AM
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Common House Use Proposal


James, Roz, CoHo:

The community I grew up in was far from perfect, but among the prevalent 
shared values was courtesy. When one did something for someone else, one 
felt better about one's self. Except for maybe the town bully, almost no one 
felt elevated when one failed to extend courtesies, such as holding doors 
open for others, taking care of someone else's chores when they were unable, 
loaning possessions to those who didn't have needed items, stopping for 
someone crossing the street, which happened frequently in the absence of a 
pedestrian law, and the like. People didn't analyze motives very much or at 
all; social behavior was woven so tightly into the community that such 
things were just unconsciously done. I must admit that has changed over the 
years, and many people now feel elevated when they put someone else down or 
get the advantage over another. The latter seems more common in the more 
urbanized areas, the former more common in rural ones.

There is something subtly disrespectful implied by posting rules; it implies 
that the poster is in a superior position in an hierarchy of coercion and 
the subject is inferior, in need of instruction from superiors who presume 
the worst about their subjects, rather than the best.

WT


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Kacki" <jimkacki [at] mymts.net>
To: "Cohousing-L" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2011 9:27 PM
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Common House Use Proposal



Roz & Wayne & others,
The 'Smith Family" paper that Roz supplied a link for  was also very
interesting.
To pull out a quote from it:

Six categories of motivations or psychological functions that
may be met by volunteering have been identified (Clary
et al 1996):
1. Values function: people may volunteer to express or
act on values important to the self (e.g. altruism);
2. Understanding function: people may volunteer as
they see it as an opportunity to increase their
knowledge of the world and develop and practice
particular skills;
3. Enhancement function: volunteering may allow
people to engage in psychological development and
enhance their self esteem;
4. Career function: people may volunteer to gain
experiences that will benefit their careers;
5. Social function: volunteering may help people ’fit in’
and get along with social groups they value;
6. Protective function: volunteering may help people
cope with inner anxieties and conflicts.
Using a survey instrument known as the Volunteer
Functions Inventory (VFI), researchers have been able to
confirm the validity of these six categories

If these reasons were understood and discussed by cohousers,
do you think that understanding could be actively used to
increase the  appreciation of voluntary work and reduce conflict
that sometimes occurs around that issue?
James




On 10-May-11, at 11:03 PM, list [at] moz.geek.nz wrote:

>
>> Ah, good question. Data? Surely you jest.
>
> The plural of anecdote is not data, to give you the famous quote.
>
>> Just how would one go about gathering "data" on such a phenomenon?
>
> Well, we have a big group of cohousing communities here, most of which
> depend on (ongoing) volunteer labour for their existance. I think
> it would
> be relatively easy to gather data on them starting from this email
> list,
> should someone feel so inclined.
>
> I'm going to assume the question is "Why do people do voluntary work
> within their communities" or something similar. Please correct me
> if I'm
> wrong.
>
> A quick poke around the internet showed me a local journal that
> seems to
> focus on the subject "Australian Journal on Volunteering" as well as a
> bunch of papers on the subject. This paper looks at why, how and when
> people volunteer (at a very high level):
> http://www.thesmithfamily.com.au/webdata/resources/files/
> Briefing_Paper_4.pdf
> There are more detailed investigations.
>
> Off the top of my head I've read papers in psychology, economics, game
> theory, sociology and electric engineering on the topic. They all have
> interesting takes on what is a pretty fundamental part of society.
>
> What's interesting for me is the micro version of this that applies
> within
> a small community like a cohousing setup. Especially since the
> group I'm
> in continues to struggle to get people to volunteer (and we're
> still in
> the wishin'n'hopin stage).
>
> Moz
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/
>
>
>

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