Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Consequences ?

[Diana Leafe Christian (diana]

We do have something at Earthaven called "a graduated series consequences" 
adopted by Council many years ago since before Suchi was Firekeeper and when 
Vedanta (Larry Cohen) wax alive because I got the first of the five 
consequences. Vedanta came to my door to ask me to pay my overdue tractor bill 
and i paid it. It was hilarious; he came to my door as "Guido" a mafia 
collector.  We had quite a laugh about it and I paid the bill right away.


I thank many many not know about our "Graduated Series of Consequences" 
processes, or may have forgotten it. I don't recall Earthaven ever having a 
Council proposal to not have it anymore, so that means we still have it. That's 
right, isnt' it? 

Would someone please find it on the EH Hive's past decisions for us and display 
it here?   It isn't awful Karen B; you would like it. First Consequence — 
someone knows on your door and asks you courteously to please keep the 
agreement. Vedanta did that, but he was funny in how he did it.
If you finally do keep the agreement it, good, the first consequence worked. If 
not . . . 

The second consequence is, several people come to your front door and know and 
ask the same.
If you do it, good. If not . . . 

The third is, a heart hare is held to talk about the effects on your not 
complying with our agreement and it's effects on us. And to ask a third time.
If you comply with the agreement, good. If not. . .

The fourth is, to have a meeting to ask you a fourth time, and if you don't do 
it, to consider whether or not to ask you to leave thee community. 
If you finally do comply with the agreement after being asked four times,  
good. If not you're asked to leave Earthaven.


Please will someone confirm if we still have this, or if we had a Council 
Decision to not have it anymore. 
Diana


> On Sep 9, 2023, at 10:09 AM, Karen Gimnig Nemiah <gimnig [at] gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> When you ask about consequences, I’m curious what your goal is? Getting
> clear about this is essential determining a path forward.
> 
> Typically the answer I get is that folks want to change the behavior
> (leaving dishes, poop etc). I’m sure we’d all like a magic wand for
> changing other people’s behavior. The follow up question is: At what cost?
> Certainly there are consequences you could institute that would change
> behavior, and I’ve never met a community yet that is willing to use them.
> It turns out that we’d rather be nice to each other and support connected
> relationships than keep our common house free of dirty dishes.
> 
> Consequences are fundamentally about applying pressure to make someone
> behave differently than they would otherwise. This is a power over approach
> and like all power over approaches it will always harm relationships. I
> can’t tell you whether it’s worth it. That’s your call, but mostly folks I
> work with decide that it isn’t worth it for these kinds of things.
> 
> So if we aren’t going to try to force people to change their behavior, what
> options do we have? At least the following two:
> 1. We can live with the behavior. We can decide that the benefits of
> community, of which there are many, are worth the cost of sometimes
> cleaning up someone else’s mess and make our peace with that.
> 2. Vulnerability. We can share our wants, needs and expectations, without
> blame or judgement and trust that our neighbors care enough to take our
> needs into account. This is hard work. If it is outside your community’s
> capacity right now, there are ways to grow that capacity. CohoUS offers
> trainings that would help including one I’m teaching on conflict starting
> later this month.
> 
> For me it’s usually a combination of the two that works best, and it’s a
> lot of emotional work to get there, but I think it’s worth it. I grow every
> time I do it.
> -- 
> In Community,
> Karen Gimnig
> 678-705-9007
> www.karengimnig.net
> Scheduling Calendar
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