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

[Kay Argyle (Kay.Argyle]

"Laws are coercive and lead to cultural rigidity, social mores are
cooperative, commonsensical and adaptable, more able to find best-fits. Laws
presume the worst, social mores assume the best." - Wayne Tyson

If you like making sweeping statements, you need to learn to insert weasel
words like "often," "many," "typically," "in my experience (YMMV)," and so
on.  As it stands, your statement is demonstrably untrue in many specific
cases.

Two generations ago, the social mores among a small subset of U.S. society
changed. That subset was in a position to push through certain federal laws.
Those federal laws coerced others parts of U.S. society to act against their
own social mores. It was authoritarian, undemocratic, top-down, coercive --
deplorable, right? 

It was called the Civil Rights movement. Those coercive laws greatly sped up
evolution of mores against racism among the still-racist parts of U.S.
society, but it is a multigenerational process still underway. 

Laws prevent defense attorneys from arguing that a rape victim was "asking
for it" by being in the "wrong" part of town, or outside at the "wrong" time
of day, or by wearing clothing urged upon her by the culture. The problem
wasn't that attorneys said it -- but that your average jury of twelve people
regarded it as a perfectly adequate, appropriate defense. This attitude is
still common; spousal rape laws are still controversial.

In parts of India, setting a woman on fire or beating her to death is
regarded as merely a mild over-reaction to her parents' failing to provide a
promised refrigerator to her husband's family. I believe that likewise has
been made illegal, but last I heard it still happened and was often not
prosecuted.

I don't think that assuming the best of racists, rapists, and wife murderers
strengthens community.

It is the misbalance of power in a society that makes agreements coercive,
not whether they are official or informal, written or unspoken. Let's
rephrase: "[Non-egalitarian rules and customs] are coercive and lead to
cultural rigidity, [consensual agreements or laws] are cooperative,
commonsensical and adaptable, more able to find best-fits."  That's at least
slightly more true, IMHO (there's another weasel word for you!).

... and this is where this conversation is relevant to cohousing. Writing a
rule down is a device to obtain better compliance, which is independent of
the society's balance of power. Obtaining the consent of the governed when
devising a rule leads to rules more beneficial to the governed. Isn't better
compliance to beneficial rules a good thing for a community?

I'm not arguing for law-like enforcement of agreements within a cohousing
community. I'm simply tired of arguing about what the community did or did
not agree to, or of community members being left high and dry after keeping
their side of a bargain which other people "don't remember" making and
therefore don't feel bound by.

Kay
Wasatch Commons