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Generally, this is a great topic -- though I don't know how a single hour could do it any justice at all. It might be beyond the scope of TOL. Yet, it is very important for us to grapple with, and answer in some meaningful way, your questions.

We've enjoyed a century of nearly free, relatively safe, and abundant energy -- oil and its derivatives. There is hardly anything that packs as much energy in as small a volume or as little weight, and yet rather safely all things considered. Because we've enjoyed such abundance, our society (and I'm speaking provincially about the US) has also moved from one of mutual interdependences to a place where our very zoning itself forces us into the smallest viable unit... the single family. In the process, we've gained a measure of additional control over what we do each day and when we do it... but we've also lost a great deal, too, in terms of community. And there are few of us alive anymore to remember when it was different.

We really do need to learn how to return to community living and the point you bring up about knowing our neighbors better and community gardens is only one important aspect of myriad facets.

What it means to be a community varies depending on the circumstances. On the west side of the Cascades, where almost any of the land can grow food with very little effort, a different community form may arise than what would in eastern Oregon, where wider cooperation on some issues (water) might be needed.

You mention "barter." In the Depression years in Oregon, for example, barter was widely used in the Portland area. A dentist might perform a tooth extraction for someone, who would then make the dentist a pair of shoes in return. I spoke with some of those living in the Portland area as adults during this time period about what it was like here in Oregon when money was scarce and often heard that it was barely noticed, except for the programs that the gov't set up for work. Money had always been pretty scarce in Oregon (being a "capillary" system really and nothing like the huge arterial flows one sees in Chicago, Miami, New York City, Los Angeles, etc.) and people here had often bartered as a natural way of doing business. I think tax laws made it far more difficult and it may be almost a violation of law to do much barter business, now. Not sure, though, and would love to hear from someone who knows, for certain, on this topic. But what profit is made when one person trades a pig for a few dozen chickens, for example? How is it taxed?

As energy becomes an increasingly difficult issue (as it will), we are going to have to learn how to do more with less of it. And that really does mean returning much more to local independence. When we buy something from a large distributor in the midwest, because it seems cheaper in the moment for example, we do several things with that purchase. One is to move local knowledge out of our area. We do that because in failing to support a local business, we fail to support the maintenance of local talent as well. And in doing so, we also concentrate the knowledge into just a few hands, instead of many. In addition, whatever we buy must be transported and all that takes energy. We may not see the cost of that, so clearly. But it is there, all the same. It's far, far better to keep local knowledge alive and well by buying locally when reasonable. Of course, there are some products that can only be handled on a large scale... but your example of local, community gardens is an excellent example of something that obviously can be, and should be, done locally. We should learn to eat what can be locally grown and develop our tastes, appropriately. We can't grow coconuts here, so we should learn to not eat them. We can grow apples and filberts here. So those are fine. Etc.

We need to also learn how to do a much better job sharing our equipment. Often, especially in cities, each neighbor will own their very own lawn mower. Yet they only use it once every so often. Making, maintaining, and otherwise keeping so many lawn mowers is an unnecessary burden upon raw resources, maintenance services, parts and associated shipping (fuel and still more resources, itself), and so on. We need to learn to do much, much better. Community tool resources, like gardens themselves, might be a possible approach here.

Moving towards community also gives us a sense of "place," too. And that is not a bad thing, at all.

posted 4 years, 7 months ago
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