we need the commons

Going down a youtube rabbit hole one night, I found myself pricing solar panels. Not to buy, of course. I was only browsing. I didn't add anything to my cart. I don't even have a roof I can use! But without an inverter, I can buy an apartment-sized solar panel for a couple hundred bucks. I have a window that faces west, but I have no idea how much juice I could generate. A personal solar panel might not make a dent in our usage, but it would be something, right? Would that be worthwhile? There are so many ways we could be supporting each other, supporting our communities. But before I got in too deep, I felt like I was crossing a line. Governments have access to much more capital than I do. They own public lands, or at least one more roof, than I myself control. I began to wonder if "I'm doing my part" carried equal weight and meaning that "I'm going it on my own" does.

I can't power a city on my own. Given my solar panel capacity, I can't even cover my own home's usage. Some houses can, and do, of course. Solar panels in Puerto Rico are a more reliable source of power than the corrupt power company that owns their grid. But for the most part, and for most people, we cannot go it alone. Some actions we can only take as a community or larger.

I'm reminded of a speech Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City gave this week. He announced the site of the city's first municipal grocery store to open in 90 years. He pledges to open 5 municipal grocery stores in his first term in office. Mamdani's speech reminds us that a government can be more than a burden on our lives. It can be a force for good. "It's not just that government can help, it's that government must help, and our government will help."

the homestead and the village

As conservative values ascended, women influencers began promoting "simpler" ways of life. Sometimes known as "tradwives," these women lure people into a fantasy of olden times. They sell an image of women who stay home, run a farm, and raise a litter of children. The unseen wealth of their husbands fueled a lie that women can have it all if they do it all. But no one person can take care of the animals and harvest the fields and raise the family or whatever. It isn't realistic that a family, even a large one, can do it all alone forever. Even the origins of homesteading come from the prejudiced u.s. government. They enticed families to steal unceded Native land so long as the family "improved" it by settling on it.

Ganga Devi Braun writes about this and the desire to live in spaces more rustic than modern society. But she rejects the struggle to live in self-sufficient nuclear family units. To her, the ideal unit isn't one family going it alone. Instead, it's a village of people surviving and supporting each other. She writes,

“Unlike homesteading, villaging is not about independence—it’s about interdependence. It’s about weaving networks of care, regenerating the commons, and recognizing that resilience doesn’t come from doing everything alone but from being in deep relationship with land and people.”

These relationships, she argues, are what people are longing for. Sahaj Kaur Kohli builds on these ideas in an essay of her own. "We keep saying we’re lonely," she writes, "but what many of us are really grieving is the absence of a village. Not just people around us, but people who know us, hold us, remember us, and show up when we don’t know how to ask." The Mayor of New York is reviving an old idea of the role a government can play in people's lives. The concept of villaging, too, revives the idea of what community once meant to people. The root of these practices are closer to Native ways of life than colonial ones.

One of my favorite video games is Stardew Valley, where the player moves to a seaside hamlet to start a new life. The quintessential cozy game set in the pacific northwest is a video game example of a true village. But we can have that same feeling in communities where we live now. Kohli argues that we don't need acres of land to build the relationships at the heart of villaging. The practices of reciprocity and shared responsibility can take place anywhere. Any group that sees one person's success as bound with the success of others is creating a commons.

links between

We'll never be self-sufficient, not completely, no matter how much food we grow or cows we milk. Struggling to live in our modern society isn't an individual failure. It's a collective one. Any of us with a wad of cash could buy a solar panel and try to exit the grid. But it takes a village, or more, to invest in a solar power plant. We build communities. We exist in them. We don't need to fight them. We need to deepen our investment. There's no value in being self-sufficient beyond stubborn pride. We need each other. There's no escaping that.