Personally, although I often entertain the thought of living in a group with other furs as roomates, I wouldn't be immediately willing to get into such a complex relationship as trying to live together in a 'pack structure'. I'll explain why:
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I love the idea of having an online 'pack'. ((I do have two furs I would consider lifelong 'packmates', but the process is slow because these are people I would do almost anything for, and that doesn't come overnight. (I'm not actively adding to it, either.. these are just the furs that I would truly consider myself close to, in a kinship sense.))
When it comes to Real-Life, though, the thought of living with a group in a complex heirarchy structure that they KNOW about gets complicated, fast. It's a fun structure for a time, but it's unstable and tends to fall apart quickly.
In normal human relationships, there's already a dominance heirarchy, and often people don't realise it. It's a delicate balance.. People in dominant positions must maintain an air of respectability so that the structure stays intact. If the people below don't respect the people above, it shifts so that the people above don't actually have any true influence over the others.
In an artificial structure, such as a furry 'pack' where the people in the pack CHOOSE the heirarchy structure, it doesn't always reflect people's natural tendencies to follow certain people's leads or accept their influences. (This doesn't necessarily mean that there's a 'boss' marching around giving orders, it just reflects the natural tendencies of people to focus their attentions on the natural 'leader(s)' of a group.)
So, if you're putting people in dominant positions who don't actually hold that much sway (or 'power', if you prefer), there's a shift regarding which people are actually followed (the natural alphas), and which people are pretended to be followed because that's the artificial structure that's been set up for them. (The delegated 'pack' alphas.)
Essentially, in this case, you're spending your entire life pretending to be in a social position that you're really not. Although it can be fun, this type of lifestyle quickly wears on the participants and tires them out emotionally. This is why you don't see long-lasting packs, and it's also why you don't see this kind of artificial heirarchy in more aspects of society. For the real world, there are 'real heirarchies' that work much more efficiently.
Relating it to sports: If you designated certain players on your team to be the 'aggressors', it may not actually reflect those people's natural tendencies. So, even if it might work well to have some aggressors out there, it's better to leave it to the naturally aggressive players than to designate agressors based on an artificial system of choosing.
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On another thought:
I love the idea of living with a large group of people. Especially furs. And I don't have an issue with polygamy, although I prefer my mates to partake moreso than myself; I'd prefer to be the celebate one.
I actually do plan to live with a large group of people at some point. But you need to be careful..
In the professional world, it's fine to live with many roomates. But when you start getting into a polygamous situation, you need to be careful how comfortable you get with it.. If you have different people showing affection to you in public, or you're open about your relationships on the internet, you're asking for trouble. Polygamy isn't accepted in mainstream culture, and as unfortunate as that is, your employers aren't all going to share your mindset. By living in a 'pack' like this, it makes it difficult to advance in the professional world because you're always hiding the truth of your relationships.
Often, this will end in lying.. If someone asks if you have a significant other, it's going to be hard to maintain your reputation as 'relatively normal' unless you lie about it. And lying can seriously wear you out emotionally. And although many of us furs don't care about being seen as 'normal', trust me when I say it's going to matter in the professional world.
Most people can understand if you've got wierd hobbies like making fursuits and keeping pet snakes, but when you get into the realm of 'All six of my roomates sleep together, and we're all OK with that', it gets ugly.
The biggest issue with trying to maintain a pack, and have solid relationships with most, if not all of them, is that there will eventually be some preferential selection going on. You'll want to be with one person (be it cuddling, socializing, sleeping with, etc), more often than certain others. And it can switch, too. But this will more than likely cause problems somewhere along the line.
It's tought to find even ONE person that's completely cool and calm about all aspects of sharing space. (although you're out there, and you're all so wonderful.
) Having a large number of people living together often causes stress in the best of times. Even if they're great, easygoing people, stress does happen. Disagreements happen. Add in the factor of multiple relationships involving all of these people, and it gets WAY more volatile.
I'd love to live with a bunch of furs, but I certainly wouldn't want the drama of trying to DATE them all at the same time. Polygamy seems to work best when your other mates aren't always RIGHT THERE in the same house with you, seeing your actions with other mates. It can work wonderfully, yes! With the right people, with people who don't get jealous in a bad way, or who can take the natural jealousy that most of us do have and turn it into something positive, it can work just fine. But trust me.. finding five or six (or more) people that are ALL that cucumber-cool is a very difficult task.. There's going to be a lot of sulking and emotional upset eventually, if not some outright angry arguments and door-slamming good times.
This is added to by the fact that many furries aren't that deep-down confident in the first place, so add in some artificial heirarchy stress of an alpha trying to boss you around for the sake of pretending (and sometimes it's fine, but if you've got that kind of artificial construct, sometimes it will result in people trying to be dominant in an incorrect way, or a way that will bother someone else emotionally), and some more stress from seeing your mates with other people, and the added stress of trying to hide this whole situation from the working world, let alone your parents if you're at that stage, and you've got the recipie for some serious breakdowns.
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I think as a concept, it's neat, and as internet-play, it's wonderful. At furcons, sure. But trying to live in a situation like this, especially where you're trying to jump into it for the sake of having a pack, and not for the fact that you actually have some solid crew that you want to live in this situation with, it will end badly. But it's an experience either way, so if you're comfortable with it, you can certainly give it a shot, and then say you've tried if it doesn't work.
I think a more logical situation would be to attempt a pack situation by living together (polygamously, if you are all OK with that), but let the dominance heirarchy be set up on it's own. Then, if you WANT to desegnate positions such as alpha, etc*, you can let it play out for a few weeks, and THEN just be able to sit down as a group and say 'OK, this person seems like the most dominant. Let's give them the title 'Alpha'." And then, you can hope it works out when you've given them the title of power, and hope they don't mess it up (by becoming less-than-alpha or by abusing the position.)
*(although I think going further than the 'alpha' designation, except to mabye the sub-alpha(s) if you have enough people, will cause problems because your omega (lowest) will eventually become a punching-bag for everybody else).
If you've got people who can handle the polygamy aspect and are all pretty cool furs, it could be possible. As long as there's strong communication.. It would definately be beneficial to organise weekly meetings to discuss how things are going. (And of course, you'd gt to have all the fun play of having the 'alpha' sit at the head seat, etc.)
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With regards to rent, etc.. there's no logical way to not pay an equal share and have it actually work out. If it's unequal, eventually there will be resentment, which then unfortunately leads to bleeding from throat wounds.
If there were kids in the mix (which I would stay FAR away from, in my own situation.. don't need the added stress of small children in a situation like that.), I could logically see the responsibilities being shared. That's how a normal group situation would work if it was healthy, too. I imagine the parent(s) would be expected to take the most responsibility, though.. you can't expect a group of furs to take care of your own kids more seriously than you do because you'd rather be out doing other things.
The whole situation would need to be cleary discussed by all furs; all those little details would be worked out so that everyone's comfortable with them.
In other thoughts, we are aiming to have a group living situation soon, where everyone pitches in a fair chunk of money, and we purchase a place outright. Then, there would be a plan set up so that anyone who wanted to leave would begin to get paid off a portion of what they paid in, based on how long they'd been there. So, if you're looking for a group furry situation, you'd certainly be welcome in ours.
Cheers,
-Sephren
