Hi there,
I’ve just come off the phone from a friend who is thinking of living in community. It will be a big gamble of putting their money: him and his wife, into a venture which may or may not succeed. Why are they doing it? For the richness that community brings, and for their work life to both pay into their property security, and for the social impacts of it to come back around in a feedback loop.
This has lead me to feel connected again to the plight of so many people trying to find community. As I like to do, I tend to think into the macro big picture: from the small to the big. So I am going to articulate one very simple feedback loop about why our society is how it is, and one mechanism that will need unpicking to move into a genuinely sustainable society.
This is the feedback loop. For the ‘typical western’ person (for want of a better term):
Community = Workplace.
Workplace = Financial growth.
Ergo Financial growth = Community.
What this equation is saying is, like by line:
That for ‘typical western’ people much of our rich sense of community is tied to our workplaces:
Directly, in that our colleagues and work relationships form the people we engage with and are known by and feel (hopefully) valued by.
Indirectly, in that much of our sense of value or self worth can come from the roles we take in society.
Indirectly, in that our employers and the salary they provide us with determine to a large extent where we are located, the security of our homes, where our children go, whether we have the disposable income to attend the groups we feel a part of; gyms, clubs, holidays, memberships.
That’s that. The second part of the equation is workplace = financial growth:
What I’m meaning here is that businesses typically need to pay off their debts with interest and cover all of their overheads as well as pay salaries. If they don’t raise more income than they spend then ultimately it may mean ending peoples employment or the entire venture being liquidated by the banks funding it. Cue endless financial or economic growth as a pre-condition of workplaces. Of course, in recessions some businesses survive. That’s typically because they have the reserves to weather the storm, as well as the skills to navigate. But in that scenario someone still looses, even if it is the other workplaces that were out ‘competed’.
Thus we come to the last line: this thesis. We ‘typical western’ people have our sense of community balanced precariously on the workplaces we depend upon, and thus as a large group our sense of wellbeing and community is balanced precariously on top of economic activity.
I consider that our economic paradigm is ultimately extractivist and colonial in its programming of continual growth, consumption and competition.
Therefore to bring us into secure senses of community and wellbeing we’ll need to transition our hive society away from this colonial economic framework.
Hence the incredible value and importance of community solutions, both within this paradigm, and their central consideration in blueprints of the great transition.
Thanks for reading.
Existence is Real 