Making Community, Part B

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Dec 17, 2023,
updated Dec 17, 2023

Back to Part A ☞ Article by Thomas Grzybowski

“The Quality which creates the world emerges as a relationship between man and his experience. He is a participant in the creation of all things.”

--Robert M. Pirsig

Part A:

In the previous essay, “Making Community, Part A”, we saw how existing socioeconomic mechanisms divert us immediately from any concept of sustainable practices. There I present an idea as to how our socioeconomic processes can be rebuilt from the bottom-up so as to found a better, more sustainable way of living. In that previous essay we looked at the psychosocial “microeconomics” underlying our lives and here in “Part B” we attempt to encompass a wider arena.

Money Illusion/Property Illusion

In the study of economics the term “money illusion” - or “price illusion” - is understood as the internal mental operations wherein the value of something is constructed in terms of nominal money spent, as opposed to being derived from more concrete terms. Economists, however, do not explore the mental operations which differentiate the “real value” of things from incidental nominal values, though the mechanism for determination of nominal value is generally held to be that as calculated in the marketplace. Little work has been done to connect personal daily life in the community with economic notions of “real value”, even though it is generally well understood that the pursuit of personal validation and improved status within the community is a basic human motivation . This is why the important point of our focus is the “transaction”: the transaction is where individuals’ mental determinations of values meet together in the marketplace.

It should be recognized that with each transaction something born-of and composed of human life itself is transferred. Instead of product value being defined in terms of "money spent", we can see products, property and services as directly related to "human investment" – the values which working people and community express in a product, service, or property.

Human Investment and the Community Transaction

Earlier we found (in Part A) that the intentional application of each individuals’ understanding of the entirety of individual and community-derived value judgments during each transaction may be the best way to bring about definition and realization of the actual value of goods and services within community. However (and this is most important), we also need to understand that the “actual” value of goods and services cannot be determined completely and immediately by the participants “in-the-act” of any particular transaction. Rather, authentic assessments of value can only come about through community-life experience while engaged in the ongoing living/transacting-process. Transactions performed as rooted in an internal understanding of a “common good” and guided by transparent knowledge of the circumstances and consequences of the transaction provide a synthesis which will empirically verify the value-nature of transactional relationships in the evolution of the sustainable community culture. “Community-transactions” give rise to the “real” value of things through extension of individuals’ community-transactions into the ongoing evolving experience of the community which then informs the value-determinative nature of the community-transactions themselves.

In this way the social nature of every transaction gives rise to a sustainable social dynamic: knowledge of the values resolved during Community-transactions will derive actual validity through the positive and negative life-experience of the community while related to the ongoing exchanges over time.

So we see how a community engaged in community-transactions will bring economic activity into alignment with a sustainable way of living. People who undertake this mode of living in trust with each other can properly be termed “Friends”, and the transactions themselves resemble a form of “sharing”. Members of this form of community will be able to realize their true being by engaging in the creation and sharing of the material, artistic, and spiritual “things” of the community as the things of living life.

Craftspeople and Teams

Craftspeople inherently understand something of what we have been saying – they identify themselves directly with their work and with the products. In the very same way larger enterprises in our community-transaction communities must identify themselves with their own concrete goals and activities as their contribution to the life of the community. Larger enterprises will be constructed of lone artists and teams - and enterprises will resemble long-term projects conducted in direct connection with the authentic dimensions of the endeavor. Note that this can well proceed without the accumulation of money and material power in the business itself! Such an arrangement provides contributing individuals and their teams direct and immediate influence in the community, gaining honor and status in their own names - not indirectly under some abstract brand-name or through use of material power.

In such a community there will likely be no separation between what is art and what is a material consumable thing – and our notions of individuals’ life-fulfillment through “bucket-list experiences” will vanish. Members of the new communities will be able to realize their true being by engaging in the creation and sharing of the material, artistic, and spiritual “things” of the community - the things of living life. Since the transaction itself is not motivated by greed or the accumulation of profit, it is open and free to a far larger domain of concern. Things such as “copyright” and “patent” will be seen as nonsensical when honor and status are found directly with a common good as the operational goal. In such a community, without the accumulation of wealth as a measure of social status, we will see hierarchical organizations come to be disfavored and “partner” relationships prevail. This alone will defuse much of the current tensions inherent in the social order.

Where the welfare of the community is held highly there is little room for the gaining of advantage – and hence little possibility of being cheated. Much freedom is preserved, even enhanced, where any “thing” can be exchanged for any other, at the discretion of those involved. Here we see the emergence of a sense of the “moral” arise from a simple act conducted with responsibility centered upon the ritual of fellowship in the exchange of goods and services. Within community-transactions, our desires seeking the shimmering mirage of “things” becomes re-visualized into moral/artistic performances coincident with living life. Through such conduct all members of the community will be elevated, survive, and prosper.

Community Transactions Building Sustainable Communities

Products are the product of humans in community. Here, now our perspective changes from the abstract and faulty focus on nominal values with its dependence upon regulations, laws, and such into a mode of maintaining the dynamics of sustainable community. In a community of community-transaction, something born-of and composed of human life and community life is engaged immediately and authentically. Here in our sustainable community the ritual of the hand-shake will mean more than anything written on paper, and each community-transaction can be seen as a kind of communion. If this can be realized, we see then that the transaction has something sacred to it and thereby will be instrumental in the sustainability and prosperity of the community. The processes and customs lived-out by individuals and teams in this environment will inherently involve active participation in the day-to-day functioning, decision-making, and operation of the community as it moves forward.

As sustainable communities prosper, with Friends finding authentic joy in living, naturally this will attract new members. Evangelical efforts should not be necessary as such, but information-sharing with the wider world community would spread the news of a new way of living, where here we find the same sort of joy people find in the pot-luck supper, in the pleasurable act of faith where each of us brings something different to the common table. Joyful celebration of life together should be more than enough for all.