My most generous interpretation (and the one I cling to because I hope to live in cohousing one day) is this: cults and many religions answer big questions for you, meaning you’re not background-level concerned with those things any more. Your stress goes down. They help you sync up your behaviours and world-views in a way that typically many of us struggle with in the “urban West”. I guess/intuit/hope that cohousing does the same. You’re (mostly) out of the housing market; you have (likely) had a hand in planning how you live; you know most of your neighbours and likely have built (or designed and managed) roads, drains houses and gardens with them; you have met or helped set guidelines about the neighbours who weren’t involved with the build; your outgoings are (hopefully) lower; your daily surroundings are (hopefully) nicer and you’re a (part-)owner of them, and have a rota for helping manage them.
Re:230 people living communally on 175 acre eco village [video]
by the_other on Sunday October 24, 2021 @08:49AM
(#28977418)
I visited a cohousing project in Leeds, UK[0], a couple of years ago. I experienced first-hand the “cult-like” and “suspiciously happy” vibes.
I think there's many layers to it, but the super sweet ambient music with suspiciously-happy people also made me very uneasy. One aspect of why could be because video fails to capture the actual atmosphere: for example we have no smells. Another one is because such scenery immediately reminds me of cult clichés: in mainstream media and movies when we're presented which something that looks so nice there's usually a plot twist coming up :)