Contrary to what you may think of us pinko commie types in these particular times, some of us do like the idea of personal independence in that systems of dependency can turn into systems of power. What differentiates us from libertarians, I think, is the belief that the side-effects of such independence must be curtailed or mitigated or compensated.
This brings me to a recent post by lesbian separatist Amy's Brain Today, who is currently exploring the possibility of women's liberation through women's land-ownership:
Feminist Reprise - Leave 'Em Thinkin': I leave you with this arresting bit of food for thought, which jolted my brain when it occurred to me one day when I was enjoying Kya's house and considering the ways in which I might build my own: How would this continent, and our lives, be different if each and every building had been designed and constructed to independently and fully provide for its own energy and waste disposal needs? Think about it.
The answer, alas, is that while this sort of existence may feel more liberated, it almost certainly isn't---at least from the perspective of waste. The energy it would take for everyone to live a healthy existence with this level of self-sufficiency I am suspecting would be far greater than the absolute requirements of the present situation. You'd have to greatly reduce the world's population in order to do this. And even so, I'm really skeptical that it would be better than the economies of scale gained from collective processing of waste.
I guess it's a bummer that capitalism and the Big State and La Patriarchidad controls the means of waste-disposal. The question is whether this is the nature of collective, "alienated" waste-disposal in itself or whether this is a corruption of these systems by the dominant paradigm.
And that is a suspiciously common question in many situations.
Comments