> It is truly a new level of human excellence. The Epicurean garden of our age.

> This has never worked without the WORK involved. People clean, people have a forum for regular discussion, people have responsibilities, and people come and go.

> If you want a better life sometimes you have to game up with a better self.

I think it’s funny to hear the concept of teaming up with other people, putting in the work, sharing responsibilities, and having discussions among the community unit is described as “a new level of human excellence”

Because this is just describing what it’s like to have a family and a household. Many people do this. A lot of this thread feels like single people reinventing the concept of family to fill a void. That’s fine, of course. The funny part is being it described as a new and novel form of human excellence

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raffael_de 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Because this is just describing what it’s like to have a family and a household.

Actually, not at all. A co-living arrangement of adults (or WG for Wohngemeinschaft, as we call it in Germany) is not well advised to work like a family household. A family has someone being the father, someone else being the mother and then there are children. While some WGs might stabilize into such a pattern for a while, it is certainly doomed to fail and end in drama. It's more like a team at work - which infamously isn't a family either.

	▲	em-bee 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		actually, i disagree. being a family should be more teamwork than it often is. in other words families would work better if they work like a team. that includes the children. it's a bit of both. in teams you too have people who are weaker in some aspects. in a good team, you help those people and support them. in a family you should give everyone a chance to contribute and participate in decisions. mother and father are not predefined roles. the parents should work as a team like senior developers, they act with authority because they have more experience, and they include their children like you would include junior developers.
	▲	Aurornis 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I was talking about the virtues described in the parent comment, not a specific German Wohngemeinschaft

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danaris 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> this is just describing what it’s like to have a family and a household

It's describing what it's like to do so well.

IME, most people do not approach family with sufficient intentionality to achieve what sunscream89 describes. At best, they settle into a comfortable set of unconscious agreements and patterns that work OK for each other. At worst, those patterns cause constant friction that eventually tear them apart—or cause them to go to therapy and start adding intentionality to the relationship(s).

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Aurornis 4 days ago | parent [-]

> It's describing what it's like to do so well.

And the comment above is describing the absolute best case communal living arrangement

> IME, most people do not approach family with sufficient intentionality to achieve what sunscream89 describes

In my experience, most roommates don’t do anything even close to what sunscream89 describes.

However most families at least make an attempt be a family, not just roommates.

	▲	sunscream89 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		A family is completely different. I have a large family, this is nothing like even a functional family. Nothing. I have lived in over three intentional communities (some others were too casual). From elaborate roommate situations to full on company town. Working and living together in the “Epicurean dream” is intentional community, one lost to main stream awareness. And that is a form of excellent living! I guess there are those who find living and working for others the natural way, and those who would live and work for themselves (as a community).

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archagon 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Uh, that’s a weirdly cynical take on it. They’re not “reinventing” the concept of a family, they’re choosing their family. I’m not sure why that’s so strange to you versus, I guess, raising kids in some sort of isolated nuclear family type environment?