How do you take courage in the face of what seems to be insurmountable odds? How do you face challenges, with an understanding that victory is not guaranteed? When you know action is called for, do you step up? Or walk on?
In the USA we face difficult and uncertain times. The alt-right, extractions industries, corporate banksters, collapse of infrastructure, destruction of education, and environmental uncertainty. We face long odds in overcoming the damages being inflicted by the fascist in the White House. It’s difficult to take courage in these times, and yet courage is exactly what is called for if we want to leave a life-sustaining world for those who are yet to come.
Our current model for society is based on the so called free market, with profits being the driving force behind progress. However, profit is a poor incentive for sustainable change; and sustainable change is critical. Creating profits has been a detriment to livability in the USA. Jobs are outsourced, wages are stagnant, and retirement age keeps being pushed back, while the value of retirement nest eggs steadily decline in worth. A dollar just doesn’t go as far as it used to.
I know my life is meant to be lived for more than profit. The value I bring to the world cannot accurately be measured in dollars alone. My worth is greater than any amount of money I may earn in my lifetime. Because experiences and emotions are values which dollars cannot be easily wrapped around and bought. However in the USA we pretend that money is the real value. We pretend a person without money is worthless, and poverty shaming is built into society.
This system of profit ahead of people is deadly. People die in the USA for want of medicine, because of poverty. People freeze to death in the streets for lack of housing, not because there aren’t enough homes, but because there is no profit in housing the poor.
How do we make these values obsolete? How do we look at these morals and ethics and go beyond decrying them to the point where mutual aid and survival are not in doubt? How do we teach empathy to a culture addicted to judgement and condemnation?
In my mind co-ops are an obvious solution. Creating common unity around the elements necessary for survival. We already have many kinds of co-ops in the USA, co-op housing, co-op stores, co-op farms, even co-op office buildings. When we work towards common goals it builds empathy. Creating shared experiences around our work, food and housing helps us to understand the efforts required to hold common space.
It’s simple in concept. Sharing the weight of any given burden lightens the load for all involved. Achieving together what would be impossible alone. Making progress the bar by which success is measured, leaving out the idea of profiting beyond anyone else involved in the cooperative.
It seems like a foreign concept to many, that sharing work and resources could somehow be an improvement on our current system of fierce individuality. Collectivism over corporatism. Putting shared success ahead of personal success. Cooperation is common in sports, music and labor, we really do need each other.
In my life I have lived in and worked on ecovillages. I have been a part of communal living and pursued a more simple lifestyle. I have invested myself in labors with the idea that creating benefit for the many is more important than creating wealth for myself alone. The idea that I can use the system of white-male-patriarchy for my financial benefit is not lost on me, I just believe that our system of corporatism has had it’s day, and that the future is in shared resources and cooperative success. In the words of poet John Donne “No man is an island.”
If you enjoyed this post, check out my recent blog about the extraction industry, and the way corporate america threatens our drinking water.
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