Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Community size

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Sep 14, 2014, at 3:53 PM, R Philip Dowds <rpdowds [at] comcast.net> wrote:

> A different kind of challenge is that of sharing both responsibility and 
> benefit of the commons: the common house, the common truck, the community 
> garden, the common digital projector, for instance.  But learning how to 
> share is a major point of living in cohousing; this is not a bug, it's a 
> feature.

One of the fallibility's of people who want to change the world, or at least 
live in it differently, is that they want to help people. This leads them to 
encourage people to join cohousing who are incapable or unwilling to share 
anything except the privileges. People who are barely able to cope in their own 
nuclear lives. Are they going to hold up, in our 43  unit community, their 
1/43rd of the social or physical work? Even if work were equally distributed 
and it really was only 1/43rd that we need them to do. The social stuff is work 
too.

People share facilities very well. It's the work they are often blind to. I 
don't think they ignore it necessarily but they don't see it or they don't see 
that it needs to be done. Our last two workshare groups have disbanded with the 
statement that there isn't anything to do. Everything critical is getting done. 

I don't think there would be cohousing if that was the common attitude.

But talking about this here is like preaching to the choir.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org