(Note: this article appeared in Waging Nonviolence)

As people across the United States face massive cuts to Medicaid, SNAP and other vital programs, many are asking: What happens when the systems we rely on fail us? And what happens when our communities are torn apart by toxic inequality, political fragmentation and declining social trust? 

The solution may lie in something that humans have been doing throughout our existence: taking care of each other, often without realizing it. Today that’s what some of us call the “solidarity economy.” 

I first heard the term in late 2008, and I wasn’t impressed. I believe the term I used might have been something like “boutique-y.”  

Those were different times. After the George W. Bush era ended, the idea of painstakingly building positive local economic alternatives to exploitative systems seemed far less promising than the direct route of pushing for massive changes in public policies. 

It seemed to me then that windows to achieve major changes were about to open. My heart was set on reforming labor laws to make union organizing easier, approaching universal health care, domestic spending to counter the Great Recession and climate action.  

Some of those opportunities were squandered, but it wasn’t all a waste. There were gains in health care, stimulus spending and child nutrition. And a lot of things didn’t get much worse for a while. But those same windows to affect positive policy change tend to be shut more often than open.  

Beyond the rock 

As we’re seeing today, the gains of the past can be undone. I am often reminded of Sisyphus and his rock. Over time, I’ve come to realize that while policy struggles and resistance are more necessary than ever, repeatedly rolling the rock up the hill only to see it roll down aren’t the only options. Positive alternatives to the dominant system that help people meet basic needs and relate to each other in new ways started making a lot more sense. 

The New Economy Coalition defines the solidarity economy as “a global movement to build a just and sustainable economy where we prioritize people and the planet over endless profit and growth.”  

According to the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network, which emerged out of the 2007 U.S. Social Forum, the principles of this new economy include: solidarity, cooperation and mutualism, equity in all dimensions, participatory democracy, sustainability and pluralism. 

Examples include Indigenous approaches to survival and sustainability, cooperatives, community land trusts, credit unions, peer lending, mutual aid, community-led economic development, bartering, community-supported agriculture and fair-trade products. They can also be found in the informal ways in which family, friends and neighbors come together all the time to help each other. 

A concrete informal example: I live on a dead-end one-lane country road in rural West Virginia. When a tree falls across it, the first person who is able shows up with the chainsaw to clear the road. If someone has a wood stove, they catch a break. When bad weather hits — an increasingly frequent event — people check on each other. When a garden is abundant or chickens lay a lot of eggs or a hunter has good luck, these things are shared. We even look out for each other’s dogs. This support cuts across potential lines of disagreement on contentious issues, of which we may have a surplus. 

It’s the kind of thing that goes on just about everywhere, just about all the time, but we often don’t recognize or articulate it. But it’s more important than ever these days. 

Why now? 

First, we are facing a historical shredding of the social safety net and an unprecedented transfer of wealth from the working class and poor to the ultra rich. While local economic alternatives are no substitute for SNAP, free school meals or Medicaid, they can help people meet basic needs at least to some degree — and possibly provide opportunities to resist and organize for a better future. 

Second, these alternatives can help rebuild social connections. It’s been 25 years since Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam published “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,” but I still find many of the ideas expressed there to be relevant. 

Putnam’s main thesis was that social capital — all the formal and informal ways in which people interact — has declined in recent decades, and that’s a problem. His research suggested that communities and individuals with more dense networks of social capital are healthier and more able to solve social and personal problems.  

He identified two main kinds of social capital: bonding and bridging. Bonding social capital occurs within like-minded groups, while bridging can link diverse groups together. Both have their place, but bridging can bring in new people, new ideas and wider possibilities. 

In “Bowling Alone,” Putnam placed a lot of blame for the decline of social capital on suburbanization, long commutes and mass media. Throw in more recent trends such as extreme inequality, political hostilities, inflamed rhetoric, social media echo chambers, smartphone absorption and the lingering effects of COVID-imposed isolation and the results are toxic. Family, former friends and allies often wind up polarized.  

Aside from the traditional division between left and right, weird new political tendencies have emerged, blending themes from both with a strong ingredient of conspiratorial thinking. Naomi Klein referred to this phenomenon as “diagonalism” in her recent book “Doppelganger.” 

To paraphrase William Butler Yeats’ prescient poem “The Second Coming,” the center does not hold. 

Reweaving 

For these reasons, economic impacts aside, I’ve come to believe that solidarity economy efforts, great and small, can help reweave the social fabric. 

Farmers markets, which have nearly tripled in my home state since 2019, are a perfect example of how a once marginal economic alternative has gone mainstream, with benefits beyond fresh food and cash in farmers’ pockets.

“One sociologist calculated that people have 10 times as many conversations at the farmers’ market than they do in the supermarket,” Michael Pollan wrote in an essay for the New York Review of Books. “Socially as well as sensually, the farmers’ market offers a remarkably rich and appealing environment. Someone buying food here may be acting not just as a consumer but also as a neighbor, a citizen, a parent, a cook. In many cities and towns, farmers’ markets have taken on (and not for the first time) the function of a lively new public square.” 

Imagine the possible positive effects if there was a similar growth for other solidarity economy models. Every such effort could be a training ground for new ways of cooperating and communicating while also building a more just and sustainable future. 

Baby steps 

Here are some ideas about how we can build the solidarity economy: 

De-commodify what we can. Not everything has to be subject to money — but even if it is, profit maximization doesn’t have to be the only goal. Think flea markets, yard sales and livestock swaps. Experiment with formal or informal mutual aid practices. These can include bartering, sharing time, resources and skills, and receiving help yourself. Rediscover the ancient gift economy in ways as simple as little free libraries or “blessing boxes” with free food. 

Consider self-provisioning. Are there things we can do, make, share or grow for ourselves and others? Possibilities include arts and crafts, music, gardening, preserving food, making beverages, raising chickens, do-it-yourself projects and knitting. 

Think about where the money goes. Consider moving it from big predatory banks to credit unions or locally-owned financial institutions. When possible, spend yours on locally and sustainably produced goods and services and fair-trade items, preferably made and distributed by union labor. Buy from worker-friendly businesses. When possible, buy food from local small farmers. 

Support cooperative or alternative enterprises — or consider starting one. Worker, consumer and housing co-ops and community land trusts can be a way to meet basic needs and support economic democracy. 

Research more possibilities. There are a huge number of resources and organizations that can help you learn more and find a niche to support this growing movement. Check out the websites of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network and RIPESS, an intercontinental social solidarity economy network. 

Show up. One thing that Americans are pretty good at across the political spectrum is showing up for neighbors and strangers when misfortunes and disasters happen. Unfortunately, we’re going to see a lot more opportunities to do that as extreme weather events escalate. As much as we’d prefer to prevent such events, they can shock us into new ways of relating and often bring out our best. In “A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster,” Rebecca Solnit wrote, “It’s tempting to ask why if you fed your neighbors during the time of the earthquake and fire, you didn’t do so before or after.” 

Break out of the bubble. Mix, mingle, talk and most importantly listen respectfully with people outside our usual circles or comfort zones. 

For this kind of economy to grow, however, there need to be easy on-ramps for people with diverse backgrounds and opinions to engage in these alternatives. I’m convinced that the more people experience the humanizing benefits of direct connections and mutual support, the more bridges can be built in the future.  

We can learn by doing. As the saying goes, we can act our way into different ways of thinking more easily than we can think our way into new ways of acting. 

 

  

 

The dream cure

Healing temple of Asclepius at Kos, by way of wikipedia

The ancient Greeks had some interesting ideas about healing illnesses. One of these was the custom of using dreams to find cures. It worked like this: the patient would visit  and sleep in an Asclepeion or temple dedicated to the semi-divine physician Asclepius, son of the Apollo. The dreams of the patient would be used as the basis of the treatment.

I've always been interested in dreams and tried to pay attention to them. Sometimes they're just static, sometimes funny or scary, sometimes transparent wish fulfillment a la Freud. But sometimes, as Freud's renegade disciple Carl Jung argued, they're very deep. They can represent the insights of our unconscious mind, the oldest and biggest part of our mental apparatus.

I had a pretty good one last night that speaks to our current situation. In it, I was working to repair the roof of a house pretty far from the ground, something I'd never be able to pull off in real life. The slope of the roof was steep and I was in danger of falling off.

It occurred to me that I needed some kind of supporting connection, like a rope tied to something secure to keep from going over the edge. There were images of different kinds of knots--bowlines, square knots, slipknots and others I've long since forgotten from my volunteer firefighting and scouting days. Obviously, the knots and connections represented relations with others.

I think that's a pretty good metaphor for the social connections we need during this outbreak to keep from going over the edge, even if they involve social distancing or occur over long distances. Even if they're just remembered.

I'll take that. Thanks, Asclepius!

Sad but true

A friend of mine just send me this link from the NY Times about declining membership in volunteer fire departments (VFDs)  around the country. If you live in a big city you may not realize this, but in a huge chunk of the country if things catch on fire or a disaster of any kind happens, volunteer fire fighters will be the ones to deal with it.

The Spousal Unit and I had a short but happy career in our volunteer fire department and the Times piece rings all too true. Running a VFD takes a lot of money and there is constant pressure to raise money. In our case, that meant weekly bingo games, regular boot drives, and grant writing. All that can pile up on an already strained pool of volunteers.

The decline of VFDs shows two sad features of contemporary American life: the decline of social capital and the nation's unwillingness to invest sufficiently in public goods.

WHAT'S NEXT, WV?  If coal jobs keep declining, what is going to take their place?

A WORD ABOUT WHITE PRIVILEGE here.

THERE ARE TONS OF STEREOTYPES ABOUT WEST VIRGINIANS. Some of them, however, may not be too far amiss.

What the peahen saw

I hadn't planned on blogging so much about the animals on Goat Rope Farm this week, but then I ran into an interesting article about what female peahens look at when a peacock is displaying. For some time, people thought it was the eyelike features on their tails, but that doesn't seem to be much of a factor, at least when the peahen is fairly close to the male. 

Based on this clever experiment that involves using little cameras to trace eye motion on the female, it may be the case that they pay attention to the size or width of the display. (Let it be noted that I resisted the temptation of making an adolescent remark that would have occurred to some immature minds after reading that sentence.)

As I write this, our peacock, Woodstock (he really looked like the Peanuts character when he was a baby) has started to lose his feathers. In a week or so, he will look like faded glory indeed. Meanwhile, it's my job to gather up the feathers so that the Spousal Unit can give them out as favors to her students this coming school year.

Darwin had a hard time with peacocks. The  males seem to put a huge amount of effort into growing and regrowing feathers, an annual event. But the feathers are so huge that they can get in the way of the survival of the animal, which could seem to go against the grain of natural selection.

I think peacocks keep score differently. My suspicion is that they prefer...shall we say...romantic success to longevity. And there are no doubt many who feel the same way.

CRUMBLING DREAMS. Here's a great essay by influential sociologist Robert Putnam on what happens when the economy leaves communities behind. Putnam, you may recall, helped put the idea of social capital front and center. Too bad it tends to fall apart when inequality grows and opportunity shrinks.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND VIOLENCE. There appears to be a link. Of course, WV's ruling class would tell us not to worry since there is no such thing, as is demonstrated by the fact that they get money from coal.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Stuck with ourselves

The theme at Goat Rope lately is the work of 19th century American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. At the moment, the focus is on his signature essay Self Reliance, which is a kind of spiritual declaration of independence.

Today I want to highlight one passage of the essay that reminded me of a tough time when I was in high school. My situation at the time seemed untenable, but somehow I knew deep down that it was better to be miserable as myself than happy as someone else. Here's how Emerson put it:

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried...God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace.

 

His advice seems to be this: become yourselves. No wonder Nietzsche loved him.

WAY COOL. The Roman Catholic bishop of WV urged Gov. Tomblin to expand Medicaid coverage to low wage working people.

SOCIAL ANIMALS are we. If we want to live long, anyway.

NOTE: busy days and travel ahead so posts may be irregular.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The Junto

The American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia was an offshoot of Benjamin Franklin's Junto. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Lately Goat Rope is hanging out with founding father and all-round interesting guy, Benjamin Franklin, but you'll also find links and comments about current events. The series started last week with Poor Richard's Almanac if you feel inclined to take a look.

For the next few days, I'll be combing though his autobiography for interesting nuggets.

One of the characteristics of Franklin's era of the Enlightenment in Europe and what would become the United States was the growth of civil society, which can be understood as voluntary associations outside the realm of government and commerce. It's an important example of social capital (search the Goat Rope archives for an earlier series on that).

People, usually men of at least middling means, would gather in clubs, coffee houses, and other locations for fellowship, conversation, self-improvement and social betterment. Such gatherings helped create the public sphere, as the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas has noted. They also paved the way for greater democratization.

Franklin was a social capitalist extraordinaire, founding and participating in all kinds of groups. One of these he called the Junto. As he put it,

...I had form'd most of my ingenious acquaintance into a club of mutual improvement, which we called the JUNTO; we met on Friday evenings. The rules that I drew up required that every member, in his turn, should produce one or more queries on any point of Morals, Politics, or Natural Philosophy, to be discuss'd by the company; and once in three months produce and read an essay of his own writing, on any subject he pleased. Our debates were to be under the direction of a president, and to be conducted in the sincere spirit of inquiry after truth, without fondness for dispute, or desire of victory; and, to prevent warmth, all expressions of positiveness in opinions, or direct contradiction, were after some time made contraband, and prohibited under small pecuniary penalties.

The club endured for several decades and span off several similar groups, including the American Philosophical Society. Franklin and others found that such gatherings polished their thinking and communication skills and were directly or indirectly useful in their business and public affairs.

It was an early illustration of Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam's idea that social capital is the building block of other kinds of success. It's a sad fact that many indicators show that social capital has declined in the US beginning in the second half of the 20th century. And we're paying the price for that.

DEPRESSING NEWS. Here's Dean Baker's latest on the economy.

RETHINKING NATIONAL SECURITY. It's way more than terrorism.

MORE SUPREME FUN. Here's an AP article and something from the Gazette summarizing debate at the US Supreme Court in the Massey/Blankenship/Benjamin saga. I missed this NY Times editorial on the subject that ran Monday. It could be months before the court reaches a decision.

DREAM ON. Messing with sleep patterns messes with your metabolism.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

DANTE IN A NUTSHELL

If you've ever had one of those moments in life where you realized you're not where you wanted to be and don't know how you got there, you will be able to relate to Dante's Divine Comedy, which is the theme at Goat Rope these days. If this is your fist visit, please click on last week's entries. You'll also find links and comments about current events.

Here's the opening line:

In the middle of our life's journey, I awoke to find myself in a dark wood, having lost the true path.

Roger that. I've been there quite a few times.

Here's a ridiculously brief summary of all three volumes (there will be more to come this week).

Dante in the dark wood is threatened by three wild beasts, which probably symbolize his own sinful tendencies. He meets a stranger who offers to guide him to a better place. The guide is none other than Virgil, ancient Roman author of the Aeneid and the most venerated poet in the late classic and medieval periods. All this has come about by the intercession of three people in Heaven, the Virgin Mary, Saint Lucia (aka "holy light") and Beatrice, a woman that Dante adored from afar.

The reason for all this special attention is that Dante's soul is so far gone this is his only chance for salvation. And he needs a boost. He will find out on his journey that he is destined for a life of exile from his beloved city of Florence.

Virgil takes Dante on a tour of hell. At first, Dante is totally dependent on him, although he begins to mature as the journey continues. Virgil, by the way, as a pagan, didn't make it to Heaven but resides in Limbo on the outskirts of Hell with other good pagans who never had the chance to hear the Gospel. There's no punishment there, other than "desire without hope of attainment"--i.e. wanting to see God but not being able to.

After going all the way through hell, they come up on the far side of the world at the seven storey mountain of Purgatory. End of Inferno.

Purgatory is a place where people who are going to be saved but still have sins to atone for work off their time. It's pretty bad, but you know you're getting out. Unlike Hell, people are nice to each other here. At a certain point, Virgil goes as far as he can and disappears and Dante has other guides. He drinks from two rivers to purify his mind and is ready to see the vision of Heaven. End of Purgatorio.

Heaven from one point of view is like what was known of astronomy. There were different levels (the moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, etc.) according to the capacity of the saved soul to see God. But it's all good. Dante gets to talk to all kinds of saints and to his great great grandfather who tells him he's going to have a rough life of exile and gives him some good advice.

After going to the top and passing a quiz administered by the Apostles, he gets a brief vision of God. It kind of ends suddenly there. Presumably Dante goes back to his life and faces the trouble in store for him, but the grace he has gained has given him both a way to deal with it and a mission in life: to tell of what he saw in The Divine Comedy. End of Paradiso.

That's a really crude overlook, so check back this week for some more details.

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT. Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam of social capital and Bowling Alone fame sees hope in the social engagement of younger Americans.

GAME ON for the next health care debate.

MIDDLE CLASS SQUEEZE. Here's a good source with lots of links on the declining state of the economy for most Americans under Bush misrule.

AWESOME OP-ED from today's Sunday Gazette-Mail is here.
It's about the need for WV Supreme Court justice Brent Benjamin to recuse himself from cases involving Massey Energy. Benjamin was elected due to Massey CEO Don Blankenship's decision to spend $3 million of his own money to defeat his opponent. This mini-drama served as the inspiration for John Grisham's latest novel, The Appeal. Both authors are attorneys who have held posts of responsibility regarding legal ethics.

URGENT DINOSAUR UPDATE here. This one is a 50 foot long sea predator.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

I FELT SO SYMBOLIC YESTERDAY

Lately El Cabrero has been thinking about the nature of faith, which is an aspect of life for anyone even if one doesn't profess any religion. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts.

As mentioned before, the great 20th century Protestant theologian Paul Tillich has some interesting things to say about it in his 1957 book The Dynamics of Faith. To recap, here are some things he says faith is not: dogmas subscribed to, intellectual assent, an act of will, something that happens when emotions are manipulated.

Instead, faith is about the things that ultimately concern a person, whatever that may be. It can be positive or destructive. When things like money, power, nation, creed, ideology, etc. are ultimate concerns, the results are idolatrous and demonic.

Even a good religion or worldview can become idolatrous and destructive when it is regarded as the ultimate itself rather than as pointing to the ultimate. Another way of putting that would be to say that when we treat a symbol of a thing as the thing itself, there are problems.

For Tillich, faith is mediated by symbols:

Man's ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate.

Symbols are like and unlike signs. Both point beyond themselves to some kind of meaning. Signs can include anything from traffic lights to letters and numbers which have a conventional meaning. Symbols have several unique characteristics according to Tillich:

*A symbol participates in that to which it points. He uses the example of a nation's flag, which is more than cloth for people who honor it.

*Symbols open up "levels of reality which otherwise are closed for us." For example, pictures or poetry can reveal more about a given subject than any amount of statistics.

*Symbols can open up elements of ourselves that we wouldn't otherwise realize. If we really encounter Dante's Divine Comedy or Hamlet, it can open up aspects of ourselves:

There are within us dimensions of which we cannot become aware except through symbols, as melodies and rhythms in music.

*Symbols can't be manufactured to order. They have to grow out of the conscious and unconscious depths of our being.

*Symbols grow and sometimes die:

They grow when the situation is ripe for them, and they die when the situation changes. The symbol of the "king" grew in a special period of history,and it died in most parts of the world in our period. Symbols do not grow because people are longing for them, and they do not die because of scientific or practical criticism. They die because they can no longer produce response in the group where they originally found expression.

Next time: religious symbols and myths.

A NEW SHORT COST OF WAR VIDEO from AFSC is now at YouTube. Check it out and pass it on.

HEALTH CARE. Here's an interesting item about what's being left out of the health care debate.

IT'S ABOUT JOBS. Here's an interesting item on the need for a job creation policy by historian Frank Stricker, author of Why America Lost the War on Poverty and How to Win It.

MORE ON SOCIAL CAPITAL from Bowling Alone author Robert Putnam is here.

IN LIEU OF SOCIAL CAPITAL, is your pet smart or are you just lonely? According to Nicholas Epley, Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business

When people lack a sense of connection with other people, they are more likely to see their pets, gadgets or gods as human-like.

WV MAKES THE TIMES AGAIN. Click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED