Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: decision-making process

[Patricia Lautner (lautnerp]

Actually, for us it's been very clear.  I'll give you an example, not from
my group but one that I've heard.  There was a cohousing community that was
planning their annual Thanksgiving dinner. Since there were both meat
eaters and vegetarians in the community, the menu was always vast and
included options for all diets.  One family, who is vegetarian, made to
block the menu because they really didn't want turkey at all to be anywhere
in sight for this celebration.  In this example, they were not allowed to
'block' the menu decision because "vegetarianism" was not a value the held
in common. Of course if the community was convinced, via the consensus
decision making process, that they should try one year without the turkey,
then that would be fine.  That's compromising, not blocking.

We have a list of common values and it just wouldn't be possible to block
for a self serving reason while also convincing the community that they are
protecting a common value.

Without the common values 'check', members could potentially impose all
kinds of personal values onto the community inappropriately.

All the best,

Patti
JPCohousing - Boston
www.communitasdevelopment.com

On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 4:17 PM, Muriel Kranowski <murielk [at] vt.edu> wrote:

>
> I am soooo skeptical about how it protects the group process if you make
> the blocker explain their objection in the politically correct manner. Any
> clever-enough person can come up with a community value to cite for almost
> anything unless it is just so transparently self-serving that there are no
> words, in which case you probably didn't need to go through the exercise.
> Some people really are all about the good of the community whether they use
> the right words or not, and some are more about what is good for them,
> ditto.
> _________________________________________________________________
> Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/
>
>
>