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Making Community, Part A

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 19, 2023,
updated Oct 19, 2023

Article by Thomas Grzybowski

Why this was written:

If we consider that we as a people could soon face a climate-related collapse of our economic infrastructure (a reasonable scenario), how might we then move on and maintain a civil society? I think we can see that the root of our crisis lies in our behavior, our individual and social behavior - a cultural problem. The existing culture which defines our practices within society must be uprooted and re-emerged in favor of a better way of life - perhaps even survival. However, because each of us lives embedded in our culture, we live and think within the restricted boundaries we have inherited. If our current ways of thinking are much of the basis for our crisis, we must make every effort to think again, and differently. To preserve ourselves and build a better way of life, we must refound our culture and rebuild the kind of community where one can lead a better, more positive, more joyful lifestyle.

Social psychology:

It is well known that a basic human motivation is the pursuit of personal validation and improved status in the community. Much of our striving for status will take place unconsciously in our daily lives: in workplace politics, and even among family and friends. In the larger culture, we see our ambitions exploited in companies' marketing efforts (“Buy our big car”), in the development of government policies (“Jobs and Profits”), or even in response to suspected attacks (the “Culture Wars”).

Each of us has developed the patterns of behavior and thought which shape our lives and our ambitions within the socio-economic system we live within. Above all, most people want to avoid having their personal status jeopardized. Understandably, we see that people will align themselves with the mainstream ideas which support their views and ambitions for higher status . Nevertheless, we must look-for and find a way to move forward positively, even as we challenge our own deeply rooted ideas.

Challenging our commonly-held notions:

It's safe to say that our primary economic engines here in the United States are driven by the "profit motive." The pursuit of profit , as conventionally implemented, automatically revolves around numerical “gains” and the associated “costs.” Monetary gains have direct positive impact on wealth status - and it is here that we find the most significant separation of our formal, “rational” economic activities from the actual needs of everyday life. In the pursuit of profit and increasing profits, costs must be reduced - and so costs are shifted into the public space. For instance, production costs are reduced by simply dumping pollutants - and we see now how the climate crisis has been caused by the emission of CO2 into our world’s air.

Property:

In our society today it doesn't matter at all whether profit-making results from the production of pencils or rockets, nor what harmful environmental damage may be done. All of this is achieved by alienating our life’s interests from what our economy determines from simple “profit” and “loss” calculations. Profits and social status are closely related to the ownership of property (assets) - and here too we see a separation of the interests of our daily lives away from the formal structures of the larger community. The legal forms and daily procedures of our community are based on the assumption that material property “belongs to” or is firmly “attached” to a person. In this social structure the individual becomes identified with their property and his or her social status in the community becomes measured by the dollar amount of the properties held. In this way, our status motivation is directed into a motivation to acquire more property.

It is something of an amusing paradox that our “rational economics” arises from our emotional aspirations, And little reflection should reveal that there is not much behind our current ideas about “property.” For instance, we cannot literally swallow our real estate properties and thereby increase our personhood physically - carrying our property around with us were we go. We can try to flaunt our wealth by living in a bigger house, or driving a flashy car, or in what we wear - but most people, at some level, understand that this is just display, and not the actual measure of merit and community status. In fact the value we individually give to such things as in our example are much determined by society: physical status symbols are social symbols, and are not the “thing” itself.

So we see that property “ownership”, and even definition is, in reality, embodied in our social customs, norms, laws, and legal enforcement – nothing more. Note that this is not an argument that formal connections between people and properties are a “bad” thing - we just need to understand that our current concepts of "property" and "property ownership" do not arise from innate human nature, they are a social construct. Our community where we live is the origin and protector of property - and all economic relations should flow from this realization.

Economic Transactions:

We have seen that the profit motive as carried-out by industry is translated numerically into “profits” and “costs”, where monetary gains then contribute to our pursuit of personal wealth and status. Importantly, we also know that any mechanism for generation of profits depends on the accomplishment of market sales (whether for goods or services). This is why the most important thing for our economic focus is the “transaction” – the place where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.

Throughout our lives and even throughout history, many of our social interactions revolve around the exchange of things. This exchange is an extremely critical point because it is precisely here that the motivations of the people participating in the exchange (in the context of their community) are brought together such that the relative values given objects of exchange are expressed.

Social Transactions:

Although transactions take place within the context of their community, economic transactions are conventionally “community-value free” and are simply an money-valued exchange between the parties involved at that point in time. Within this defined box, the results, positive or negative, do not carry any meaning outside of the numeric accounting. But we have also seen that the ownership and value of goods and properties exist, and necessarily must exist within the context of the life of the community. So we see now how we cannot free our own participation away from this drastically limiting economic view of transactions without reforming our motivating beliefs and behaviors surrounding transactions. We are aiming for something contrary to these limits we place upon ourselves - for a better and more sustainable community we must embody our common interests and understanding within our transactions. These basic economic behaviors must be implemented based upon authentic understandings of the “common good” as informed and guided by the circumstances of the transaction for the individual and the community in which the transaction takes place.

As more people engage in “community-comprehensive transactions”, participants will come to concretely experience a desire and tendency to continue to behave in this way. And with a growing preference for mutual-good/common-good exchanges, we will see a large-scale move into a society-wide preference for such exchanges.

In Conclusion:

In this time of crisis we see that we are dealing with a cultural problem at root: therefore we will have to continuously strive to transcend the mechanisms of the dominant culture from within. We can start upon this goal through analysis and redefinition of how economic transactions should be conducted, and then using our new understanding applied to our own behaviors. From there, strong moral leadership and social pressure may lead to a snowball effect, changing practices overall. Our next essay will attempt to describe in more detail how this comprehensive, social type of economic transaction can be brought into popular use and thereby make our living-communities both more enjoyable and sustainable.