Community Lifeline

What strikes me about a strong community is its ability to spontaneously organize without a second notice. When a delivery van pulls up, and somebody shouts ‘can anybody come lend a hand’, suddenly ten people will manifest to support. Holding different parcels, handing them to the next person until everything is unloaded. You can sometimes witness this instinct in public, and often it’s an immediate response to a crisis; say something starts to topple off of a bike, several people will instinctively jump to help. It’s one of the few moments where you really feel like you are part of a society because things move from relative chaos to instantaneous order. This is part of what it means to be alive.

In Sheffield, there is a large voluntary economy of unaccounted voluntary work. People aren’t paid for this. A large part of the working world in the north became spontaneously organized initiatives. When there were not enough jobs for people. But there was work to be done. For example, people need to eat who have no money, and there is surplus food going to waste. This creates a culture of collective self organization.  

Something I call ‘non-market need’; namely, the actors with the need do not have money to pay for them because of the automation. And there are too many things produced and not enough people able to buy them because of automation. Not to mention the need for work itself, which creates friends and purpose.

I always felt some of these projects were somewhat of a blueprint for the rest of humanity as automation chips away at more and more jobs. There is more time for voluntary work. The economies that are created are self-manifesting community economies. Operating on a ‘I help you today, knowing someone else some other day will help me.’ Basis. I think together these projects can eventually make a line and work with one another.