Our world is currently held hostage by a political system where resources and power are wildly concentrated, leaving most of us feeling vulnerable, stressed out, and disempowered. While a few live with impossible wealth, everyone else is told that resources are scarce — that to achieve health, security, comfort, and happiness we must compete with one another. We are told that the way to find the safety we seek is through submissive participation in this economic system — even when this experience is exhausting, diminishing, and often humiliating. The state has always been a vehicle for the consolidation of wealth. Even so-called ‘socialist’ states aim to concentrate resources, usually under the guise of fair distribution down the line. Regardless of intention, this means that everyday people’s ability to feed, clothe, and shelter ourselves becomes dependent on the whims of a governmental body — this level of power is dangerous, and easily wielded against us.
The stakes could not be higher. We are talking about the material conditions of our lives, our ability to access resources we need to survive and to support our loved ones’ survival. But, when you look a bit closer, it is clear that the security offered to us by employers is brittle and liable to fail — what happens when money turns back into paper, when health care and housing and healthy food are impossible to access with the wages you earn from a job that is killing your body and quashing your life-spark? When ‘saving’ is a relic of decades past?
It is time to take a step back and identify other, more reliable, support systems.
We have seen how networks of mutual aid serve as a lifeline for communities experiencing crisis. What if we chose to emphasize this resource sharing in advance, on purpose? Not as an afterthought or a stop-gap in case of emergency, but a central component of how we think about our daily security. The more we share, the less we need, and the more able we are to make life decisions from a place of security rather than scarcity. We can choose to work at a job we like that pays less or work fewer hours and divert that time to even more sharing, which then will come back around when we have needs our friends can help with.
This is quite actionable right now, on the scale of your friendships and family. Are you a dentist, plumber, preschool teacher, mechanic, food grower, or good at mending clothes? Do you know how to cut hair? Can you help paint a house, harvest apples, preserve dumpstered veggies, construct a deck? Do you have extra space in your house or extra clothes you don’t wear anymore? Your friends and neighbors all have helpful skills and resources, too! Maybe your household has someone who works at the farmers market (produce), while another gets food stamps (high-calorie staples), while a third loves to cook? What habits or structures can you set up to share more often?
There are also interesting examples where this idea has been brought to a bigger scale. To reach that bigger scale, we will need to think big, and act big. But the only way we’ll get there is rooted in a robust and networked community of folks who can and do share essential goods and services, who together form the basis for that bigger thing. So start where you are, but don’t just stay there. The abundance is here, and an even more abundant future awaits us!