Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Learning to Play Nicely with One Another

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Sep 24, 2012, at 1:31 PM, Zev Paiss <Zev [at] abrahampaiss.com> wrote:

> manner) that cohousing is not about getting what YOU want but helping  
> everyone come to decisions that benefit the community as a whole

Except that a community is composed of individuals. It has no existence without 
those individuals.

"Benefit of the community as a whole" in practice to often comes down to 
majority rule. "Everyone" wants this except YOU. The invoking of the good of 
the community can easily become used as a social control by "The Majority." Or 
the elite that I described last week in the Tyranny of Structurelessness.

Unless there is a policy in place that governs the decision, one individual's 
druthers are just as important as X number of other individual's druthers.

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines, Historic Takoma Park, Washington DC
"Behavior is determined by the prevailing form of decision making." Gerard 
Endenburg