Oil prices reached an all-time high again today ($147 a barrel), before closing a couple bucks lower.  Gas in the United States is now regularly over $4 a gallon (remember when three bucks was shocking?  Doesn't seem all that long ago, does it?).  Leaders from 12 airlines issued an open letter this week, begging the American people to pressure the government to end oil speculation.  With increased fuel costs and the recent layoffs, I am more and more convinced by James Howard Kunstler's assertion that air travel will be reduced to an extreme luxury for the super-rich within a couple years, possibly sooner.

Government employment stats showed the largest decline in two decades, with unemployment surging to 5.5%.  Meanwhile, the cost of living, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, continues to rise, spurred mainly by fuel and food costs.  There seems little doubt that the country has entered a fairly severe recession, if not the beginnings of a depression.  My guess is outright depression, because I am convinced that the Peak Oil situation is here to stay, meaning that physical and social infrastructures predicated on cheap fossil fuels will not be able to hold.  

But to beat a dead horse here, these signs are mainly terrifying because of the one-person/one job and one-family/one- dwelling social form we have built.  As mentioned in an earlier post, when average people stop to think of all of the economic and physical responsibilities that fall on their shoulders alone, the appropriate response is anxious panic.  How is one individual, or one couple, or one family, supposed to handle job insecurity, disappearing home equity, declining wages, doubled food costs, tripled gas costs, record credit card debt, skyrocketing higher education costs, and everything else, all at the same time?  Is it any wonder that the country is awash in escapist entertainment, legal and illegal drug use, political apathy, and bubbling rage and depression?  These are absolutely reasonable responses to the nonhuman conditions we have created.

It will become undeniable in the very near future that multi-family communities are the only way out of our current socioeconomic abyss.  My guess is that a group of about 100-120 will be necessary as the new home base from which people can approach the wider marketplace and culture.  Many functions that are currently provided through the money economy will be brought in-house, of necessity.  And the power of the group will be used to smooth out the rougher edges of the collapsing social contract in the wider society.

It is incredible to me that more attention is not being paid to the simple untenability of the current social form, and the obvious collective solution.  After all, the tactic of collectivity and the division of labor are used all across the economy to leverage the power of scale.  Labor unions use collective bargaining to achieve goals that the constituent individuals could never reach on their own.  Large retailers and wholesalers use the power of bulk buying to bargain for better prices and discounts on their purchases.  Corporations consolidate their redundant facilities and functions all the time, to achieve the efficiency that comes with centralized control.  And unlike the domestic scene, where people are expected to be everything from repairmen to accountants, businesses everywhere have divided responsibilities into specialized jobs parceled out to the appropriately talented, with obviously excellent results. 

So it seems a no-brainer that individuals, couples, and families would use this same logic of collective scale and division of labor to increase the efficiency, ease, and effectiveness of their living situations.  For example, many current groups that describe themselves as Intentional Communities or Co-Housing Communities operate a rotating shared meal process.  That is, the families gather for a group dinner on most nights, and they take turns preparing the meal.  So each family ends up cooking just once every couple weeks or maybe once a month.  The rest of the time, they can just relax and enjoy themselves at dinner.  By simply combining what would be 30 or so separate processes into one large one, the group achieves an amazing savings in both time and money (buying bulk ingredients saves cash).  

These examples could be multiplied ad nauseum.  Instead of 30 lawnmowers, maybe just one or two for the group (or more likely no lawn at all, as that valuable space could be used for the more valuable function of raising veggies and fruits)? Instead of 30 families having to arrange their own day-care, a facility could be provided in-house, with community members doing the care themselves.  Instead of 60 adults all working to buy 60 sets of stuff, with half of them hating their jobs, why not collectivize the acquisition of many goods and free up half of those adults to work more rewarding and socially useful part-time jobs?  Instead of placing the burden of health care on employers and the government, why not enact legislation to give people living in groups the power to negotiate lower group rates directly with insurers?  And perhaps most radical of all, why constantly terrify people with the supposed need to have hundreds of thousands of dollars stashed away for retirement, a situation that most folks will never be able to experience, just because we assume that the elderly will forever be alone and on their own?  Why not recapture the collective power of multi-generational living (a state of affairs that applied for 99% of human history), and have the elderly live side-by-side with their children and grandchildren?  Again, eldercare could be brought in-house, in all but the most serious medical situations, with a substantial savings of money, and a priceless increase in human dignity.  

Utopian?  I view it as profoundly practical and deeply natural.  Community living harnesses the power of scale, the potency of collectivity.  And it actually recaptures a way of life that is encoded in our genes as social primates and tribal humans.  As Paul Shepard, our greatest ecological thinker, called it, we would be "coming home to the Pleistocene."  The hyper-individualistic, nuclear family way of life, while it may feel "normal" to us right now, is actually a stark anomaly, a strange but brief effluence of bizarre behavior made possible only by the extraordinary dovetailing of cheap abundant oil and late-stage consumer capitalism.  As the physical conditions for this unusual social form collapse, an amazing opportunity will emerge to create a slower, less consumptive way of life.  And the engine that will drive this change is community living, not hydrogen cars or green hair-care products.