The Sidestep
In the primary article for the Community in Sustainable Democracy, it came up in comments that there are two key issues. The first is that opposing the corporate structure and world based around it is extremely difficult; the second, is that there are certain parts of society/culture that you cannot sidestep around to achieve goals. What I had in mind in proposing a ’sidestep’ though may help to answer at least the most basic parts of these problems.
The approach that I envision - whether ultimately practical or not - is to sidestep the first problem in order to attack the second.
Convincing the corporate and governments worlds that radical community change is necessary to promote the well being of society and democracy would be all but impossible. They have become ingrained in ways of thinking about what is right and wrong that work wonders for their own profit and popularity bottom lines. Thus any argument to the contrary, especially those proposing radical change, are not just ignored but actively fought. The common result of fighting the man is failure under the weight of the budget that can be thrown at you.
Therefore, I believe that it is that system or direct argumentation to create radical change that must be sidestepped. The key is not to follow in the paths of many other alternative communities that have come before. Of the many alternative or sustainable lifestyle communities that have come, it seems that many of these successful ones have become isolated. They accomplished the goal for a small number of people. This is a noble and worthy task, but I believe it should be taken farther.
The goal is to create example communities. There are hundreds of small and very open minded communities in our nation. Using one or more of these to conduct radical change at first the social and then community level is the path most likely to succeed. By re-engineering small communities to be models of both social connectedness and productivity they should be able to gain mass appeal while remaining inside the consumer driven world.
Because I am reacting to comments for this article, I will keep things short. My ideas on this matter are many, but they aren’t all well planned out or connected. This should, though, give something to keep thinking about. And hopefully spur you on to criticize the flaws in these ideas so that they can be improved.
So now I give the soapbox to you! Tell me why this very brief idea could fail and in what ways it could.
7 Responses to “The Sidestep”
By Alex Roshuk on Jan 26, 2008 | Reply
The corporate world uses the vocabulary of democracy; they have votes, and now on the internet they even have “communities” but these communities are nothing but means to capture free or low cost labour in such projects as eBay, Amazon, or Wikipedia. I hope what you have in mind here does not end up as what I consider most of the so-called “social networking” on the internet to be, failed attempts at best at creating communities in which the members of the community ultimately loose all real possibilities of being heard or of meaningfully contributing to building a sustainable democracy to be replaced by corporate spokespersons that have no real criticism of the failed model that make consumers so relatively powerless.
By Havvy on Jan 27, 2008 | Reply
Alex: You can’t compare Wikipedia to eBay. One is Non-Profit. The other is For-Profit.
Oh, and Alex, most communities you have to put things in to get things out.
Also, you can’t really have large effective communities.
By Chris Schaffer on Jan 28, 2008 | Reply
@ Alex - Excellent points. Far too often we take the vocabulary of democracy to be the practice of it. I do not plan to build any kind of network or community in which the individual members lose out to corporate replacements.
How to move to replace the failed machines that now exploit us is, however, a much harder problem. And it is a problem that I do not have a full answer to yet.
@ Havvy - Good point on the separation between profit & not for profit. I do the point Alex was making, but the distinction is necessary.
I agree that very large communities tend toward being ineffective an inefficient. The macro-scale economics and industry will probably always require different systems. Although I feel that the individual has lost the normal community connection and nature that we thrive in.
We should truly begin breaking things down into much smaller elements. Even large cities can be reorganized into much smaller communities. Similar projects at urban community developments in Asia are doing this. Replacing packed housing areas with more integrated infrastructure that supports gathering locally and building connections.
By Lon Sarver on Jan 30, 2008 | Reply
“I feel that the individual has lost the normal community connection and nature that we thrive in.”
One of the reasons for this is the decentralization of the physical community. I have not had a job closer than 15 minutes drive from my home in more than a decade. My nearest friends live three miles away. The nearest grocery store that stocks all I need to supply my family for a week is two miles away. The same is true of all my neighbors.
Another reason is the nesecity to be mobile in the current job market. I have moved three times in the last ten years, two of those moves being in the last five years. It’s hard to put down roots when one knows one is likely to be moving again in the near future. The housing market doesn’t help. I rent, and if my landlord does not renew my lease, I have to move again.
Both of these contribute to the decline of the kind of personalized community you speak of. These are problems that need to be addressed.
A community must be capable of supporting its members, at least partially, in some needed way. In the earlier post on community, you noted the oddness of online communities thriving when real-life communities are hard to sustain. This is because online communities do not face the problems above: They are central, no matter where one’s body happens to sit.
An emotionally and socially central community cannot happen sustainably unless it is also physcially centralized.
By Chris Schaffer on Jan 31, 2008 | Reply
@ Lon Sarver - Excellent analysis. I think solving some of the parts will be simple - mainly supplies against location.
When I was living in Japan, everything essential except my job was in walking distance (1 mile or less). Luxury items or specialty foods (like Mister Donut) were still within walking distance for me, but maybe pushing the boundary for people who don’t like walking as much as I do. The dispersal of small commercial/retail areas through mainly residential areas is vital, particularly as population density rises. I think this is the easy part to solve through simple rezoning and business incentives, but I will write further details later.
The big problem that you touched on is where we work. The current mobility in jobs and the distance to work is tough. I think work needs to be done examining solutions for communities of 10,000 or fewer residents first to see if a scalable model of any kind presents itself.
By Myku on Feb 5, 2008 | Reply
Chris,
Indeed very interesting. It’s nice to see what started out as generalized idealism become increasingly refined post by post. I look forward to more.
As for your idea of sidestepping, I’m not sure I understand how this is possible. To create such communities like you’re describing, wouldn’t you have to directly influence “The Man?” Personally, I don’t have the resources or the influence to ensure that my community is re-zoned, etc.
BTW, it’s interesting what you said about Japan. I lived in China for a number of years and was quite impressed with their transit system. You could get from any point in the country to any other point just by jumping on a bus- from the most remote villages to the biggest cities and vice versa….