The
tiny house movement
surges on the wave of increasing inequality, as we seek ways to maintain
stability and dignity. It is a laudable and profound assertion of modesty in
the face of a consumerist society which tells us to build bigger, eat more, own
more. But as we build smaller to maintain our personal dignity and autonomy,
and to join with like-minded fellows to reduce our individual impacts on the
planet, let us not forget the inequality to which this modesty responds.
Suppose we were to somehow re-balance the distribution of wealth. Would we
prefer to reclaim it for personal enrichment, or designate it to solve
problems?
Lest we forget, huge fractions of the
American populace are laced with disappointment because the engine of wealth
has left them and their communities behind, and believing that more money
equals more security, for them the answer is: I want it in my bank account.
(Neo-liberal economists enable this response: instead of correcting the flaws
in the economy and devising schemes to distribute wealth, they insist that
growth will provide the wealth and everyone will get a share. Since we are
given no choices, we depend on the truthfulness of this claim. And it is a
lie.) But as participants in the tiny house movement, as participants in the
economy, we can designate our surpluses to solve problems.
Here, I think, is where we need to remember
that material wealth is not the definition of happiness or well-being. Humanity
evolved as peoples with little to no clothing, and a few tools to build minimal
shelter and to hunt and gather food, using cooperation as its principle
strategy, and these societies, anthropologists tell us, were in no sense
miserable. "Poor" societies the world over today provide security and
happiness to their members, because the horizon of self-interest includes an
entire community.
These communities persist until
colonialism, war, and the Neo-liberal world order, destabilize them and the
local ecology of sustenance, forcing people to turn to more narrowly
self-seeking behavior.
As Americans, more even than Europeans, our
ecologies of sustenance are so unstable and siloed that our horizons barely
escape the outer walls of our dwellings. Do we know our neighbors? Do we rely
on them to maintain a share of labor needed to keep the community safe and fed?
Do we assist each other with childcare? Do we teach our children to love the
place in which they live, to build relationships and build their community, or
do we teach them to follow a dream and start a life far away? Do we teach them
about responsibility to the greater good, and about community service? Do we
teach them it's okay to let someone else win? Do we teach our children to take
care of each other, humanity and the planet?
As human beings, we are creatures in search
of reciprocity, where we find safety and prosperity. And reciprocity requires
long term relationships, economic stability, housing stability, provision of
education and health-care services, and systems to assure safety. These are the
services naturally provided by community. Provide equal access to these facets
of community, and you have the beginnings of meaningful, and sustainable,
lives. To provide those services, the wealth, the energy, the material and
spiritual products, of that community, must be captured and directed at those
services.
But let us also remember this: Wealth is
not produced by individuals alone. Wealth (the sum value of products that
support life) is produced by individuals working in and supported by
communities. Communities, therefore, are entitled to a portion of that wealth
sufficient to build infrastructure, provide services, and maintain the
integrity of the social fabric.
The profound misunderstanding of the modern
world is that stuff matters, that technology matters, that innovation matters,
that economic growth and money in the bank are sufficient in the search for
well-being. They do not, they are not. Deeper thinkers than myself have noted
how much of material consumption, substance abuse, and mental illness, is
driven by the loneliness and emptiness we feel, from the absence of a greater
good, of reciprocity, friendship and community. What matters is the fabric of
relationships we have, the quality of that fabric, and the balance of
responsibility and freedom provided by that fabric, and whether by
participating in it we can privately experience our unity with it. Innovation
and new institutions will be necessary to create this world, but innovation,
wealth, and stuff, by themselves, are not sufficient to provide human
well-being. It must be directed at doing the work of healing and sustaining the
people, the families, the communities, and the planet. This is the opportunity
that the Tiny House movement creates.
