Close? We were like this.

Have you ever heard the expression, we were really close?  I was close to my mother?  My family and I, we're real close?  There's a reason that we use the same word for proximity as we do for physical relationships.  Traditionally, the people you know the best are the people you interact with the most often, or the ones you are close to.

Before the big exodus to the suburbs back in the 40s, 50s and 60s, people used to live in relatively close proximity.  Neighbors were "close".  You didn't need to develop a closeness with neighbors and coworkers.  It was already built-in.  Moving away from other people, was part of what we perceived as the illusion of wealth.  The wealthy lived isolated from everyone else on large estates.  If we move away from the city and get a little bit of land, we can pretend we are wealthy, too.  We're so lame.  We didn't exactly know we were lame, but looking back, we were pretty lame.  In the 80s, Alex Haley taught us how important it was to get back to our roots.  I couldn't agree more.

 Early people gathered into tribes, for companionship, for safety and so that they could rely on the unique skills of different individuals within the tribe.  That way, you see, not every single person needed to know every single thing.  This was a kind of collaborative sharing of knowledge, sort of like a human library, where you could borrow the skills and knowledge of one individual and use them as long as you needed them.  It actually works surprisingly well.  A lot of us call this a society.  And members of the society are said to be social.  People that feel the society works well are called social-ist.  If the guy knew how to build stuff out of wood, you spoke to him, explained to him what you needed and negotiated some sort of payment or compensation.  The carpenter was the businessman and he communicated with you directly.  And you paid him directly.  There was no need to go to some fat cat, some go-between, some broker to do this for you.  Therefore, none of the wealth that you needed to compensate the carpenter went to anyone except the carpenter. 

When this middleman came along, he siphoned off money or goods that should have gone directly to the consumer and to the craftsman.  Part of the honest wealth that the consumer had generated, be it skills, or foodstuffs, or clothing, or some goods that were considered of value, were taken by this parasite.  In addition, some of the skills the carpenter was offering in return for compensation weren't compensated for it’s correct and true value.  The people on both ends of this transaction were made poorer by the introduction of this middleman.  Hence, Co-Poor-Ation. When the Co-Poor-Ation moved in, we started a new group of the tribe who became wealthy by doing nothing.  So everyone got to share the poverty, except the Co-Poor-Ation.

Little by little people are beginning to see the error of their ways.  Some people are doing their own work, stuff they used to hire specialists to do.  People are growing their own food, and raising their own livestock.  And oddly enough, they are doing this in the city.  We're re-learning how to live in communities, and it's a good thing.  It's the only way were going to be able to maintain any sustainability.  I say share.  Barter.  Build things.  Weave and sew textiles.  Grow vegetables.  Raise livestock.  Butcher your own meat.  Do whatever you have to do to your chickens, and pluck the Co-Poor-Ations.