Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: community agreements on conflict resolution

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Nov 13, 2024, at 12:25 PM, R Philip Dowds via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l 
> [at] cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> There’s always the possibility that “irrational" interpersonal conflict 
> impacts the community's quality of life.  For instance, some members 
> seriously dislike and mistrust each other but somehow end up in the same 
> meetings and events anyway.  Their chronic bickering and sniping ruin 
> everything for everyone.  They refuse to back off and stand down, so the 
> community … does what?

In sociocratic schools, the children do rounds whenever something disturbs the 
harmonious functioning of the classroom. How are you feeling/thinking? What is 
affecting you? What do you think is going on? How can it be fixed for you? The 
function of a round is to equalize the energy in the room. Part of that is 
bringing all the information into the circle. 

No two people exist in a group alone. The whole group is part of the dynamic. 

An interesting insight I gained from recent discussions by political 
consultants about how to change people’s minds— the subject was Trump voters 
who think he is truthful. The answer was that the voter has to hear from every 
kind of person — a trusted expert, a volunteer knocking on their door, a 
neighbor, a cousin, a woman behind a counter, a child, etc. People respond 
differently to different sources. You never know who will have the response 
that will change someone's thinking. 

A round gives equal respect to everyone and it also gives equal responsibility 
and agency. There is a good chance that one of those people will reveal a part 
of the conflict that others have not understood—even something that explains 
the two people to each other. We don’t all know why something pisses us off or 
makes us feel ignored. And not everyone who is part of the seemingly obvious 
dynamic between two people realizes that they are also contributing to the 
conflict.

Like every child grows up in a different family, we all speak a different 
language. Words = assumptions. Many of us speak several languages — to 
understand what someone means requires locating them in a language. Are they 
speaking from a world of oppression? Of being privileged? Of medicine — the 
world of keeping people uninfected? From the world of bodywork believing that 
the body is part of communication?

One of my eternal frustrations about cohousing is people who don’t want to 
attend meetings or have email discussions. 

What is their idea about how we can understand each other well enough to 
resolve conflicts? Resolving a conflict requires understanding the issues. How 
do you plan to do that? Or do you want to just vote?

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