Affordability and...mutuality?

Here the center points of two individual circles are the center points of an oval, and the circles and oval are linked by an “X”. If a train were to run along this path, it would be free to change directions and go over every inch of path without loosing momentum.

As I work on civic projects and study economics, I find my perspective on affordability shifting. I lose my perspective of ‘old’ ways versus ‘new’ ways and begin to break down what is meaningful from a less biased or acclimated viewpoint. What are our goals? I refer to our nation’s constitution to find something that we can all get behind:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

In seeking to “insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” we necessarily must work and express ourselves individually, in groups, and within a whole. We see this in the layers of our civic structures (laws relating to individuals, cities, states, federation, etc.). Often one level of governance is at odds with another, and there are little arguments about whether individual or federal rights are more important. Must they be at odds?

We band together, because we are a social organism. There is a beautiful efficiency to mutuality. Mass production is one example of this. We humans are pretty brilliant sometimes. It is more efficient for a neighborhood to hire one team to grow a bunch of carrots for them all than it is for each person to grow their own, creating garden beds, watering, weeding, etc. It is also more efficient for a company to have huge warehouses of stuff, a detailed catalogue and ordering platform online, and their own fleet of drivers for speedy deliveries than it is to have a handcraft shop where people have to walk in to order things and wait for them to be made one at a time. With this efficiency of production to meet basic needs, we are able to develop richer cultures and deeper understandings, opening more choices, which leads towards a relative freedom.

What might we lose with efficiency? Perhaps we can get a little more isolated. What if we no longer know the satisfaction of pulling a carrot out of the ground, or think about how much work goes into making and shipping things? Maybe money and work start feeling abstract, and we get frustrated that we don’t have more, sooner, with less effort. Maybe our own work feels less meaningful. Would this be the fault of collectiveness and efficiency? Or simply the result of our perspective? Is there another way to frame the collective versus individual will that does not make one profit at the loss of the other?

What if we could be efficient and connected to our individuality? What if we could feel the impact of our own work on the lives of others? What if we had the pleasure of feeling grateful, truly grateful, for the work others do for us? What if, when we were efficient and able to generate surplus value, that success was transformed to generosity? What if we felt like we were on one team, like fingers and toes and organs, each contributing in their way to the life of the whole? What would that be like globally? Is it easier to envision in a neighborhood? In our own family? In our own lives? How often do we individually and collectively undermine our own wellbeing for isolated “profit”?

What would it look like to understand the true cost of things? How do we reframe economics to better meet the goals of our country? Can the whole be made up the parts, such that the individuality is strengthened by the good of the whole and the good of the whole is strengthened by the good of the individualities?

If I loan money to my neighbor so they can build an ADU to house a nurse for our local hospital, and I see that during construction a storm threatens to ruin it, wouldn’t I have incentive to go over and help secure things? Isn’t my wellbeing tied up with the success of their project? If something happens to their project I won’t get my investment back, and our hospital may be short staffed. Does this knowledge and responsibility (of how connected my wellbeing is with the wellbeing of others) reduce my quality of life?

Is affordability tied more to how resources flow rather than how they amass? I mean, if we use our economic interactions to strengthen social bonds and mutual care, then don’t we generate stability in the most resilient way possible?

How do we design architecture for affordability? Is it more about how we collaborate in the production and maintenance of buildings than it is about the material details? Buying a house via a 30 year mortgage can easily make it cost twice as much as buying it with cash. How can funding systems lend themselves to “domestic Tranquility, common defence, general Welfare, and the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and future generations”?

Can we find efficiencies of construction that also strengthen mutuality? Do we dare to work together? What would happen if we set things up so that we help our neighbors because it clearly is in our best interest, rather than out of a self-defacing idea about “doing the right thing”? If we were more linked, would we lift one another up, or pull each other down? Could we bring out the best in each other? Could we generate a wealth of inner strength to match the outer? Are we ready for the challenge of this added responsibility inherently offering opportunity for greater freedom and prosperity?

What would it feel like to live as an individual indivisibly bound up with a whole that is formed in part by my and other individualities? Would we be able to flow between moments of feeling our individuality and times of living in the whole, like the track pictured above? Would the character of the whole and the parts be free to evolve, automatically staying up to date?