A story from Uganda - of collectivity and different modes of living

Is it really so stupid to think we can live differently? Take an example: can we live collectively cheaper than individually..?

The second world war taught us that we can live very cheaply indeed. Food, clothing and furnishings are all 19th century products which involved moving goods around the world to lower costs. And housing as a collective good is relatively cheap, it only becomes expensive when we choose where we want to live (or more rightly, where we don't want to live). so the cost of living could be fairly low if we organised things differently - right??

So rather than talk about how we get to a low cost life (which might be one of the few options for the millenials building their form of living in the 21st century) this is a story from Uganda where i was for a few months fifteen years ago. I was doing research on musical styles for my degree (sound engineering - and trying to use synthetics to recreate natural sounds).

i arrived in a small town up in the hills in the middle of a power cut. now power cuts are pretty common, but normally you'd be somewhere, and you stay there until the light come back on. with any luck you've got warmth, a candle and a friend to pass the time with. but this was me being dropped off in the middle of pitch darkness on the side of a dusty street. no-one else got off with me, and there was no one around, just me and a bag of my possessions.

Now i can't describe the level of darkness. i waited for me eyes to become adjusted, but they really didn't. the moon must have been obscured, and there wasn't a generator anywhere. it was eerily quite and i became apprehensive about finding a hotel to sleep in, and also about general safety (after a few weeks in Nairobi you'd know why and i was full of the antimalarial laruim anxiety and hallucinations). But i couldn't stay still, so i walked very very slowly up the middle of the street with my arms out in front of me. It sounds strange to say it, but I walked straight into the very first person i met. very slowly, but straight into him.

I was instantly full of paranoia. My first impression was one of malevolence. I thought he was going to attack me, or rob me. 

but of course everything was fine and we laughed and he helped me and i saw him later. and then every day because there are only around 20 people in the village and we play football together etc.

But my first impression was one of malevolenceand i have begun to think how odd that is. what a recent phenomena.

But he took me to someone''s house, and i stayed a few days. I'm not sure if it was a hotel or not. i used taxis that i am not sure are taxis. i hitch-hiked, or i may have just got on buses when i put my arm out.

My point is that there was not much difference between individual and collective. Life is living. And there are not two separate modes of living depenig if we trust people or not. 

Anyone is more interested in a benevolent world should check out Historias Minimas (Intimate Stories in English) and count how many time you expect something bad to happen to the main character. which doesn't. And you start to notice how conditioned we are to think bad things happen. A bit like the Bechdel Test which counts female roles in movies and you start to conclude mainstream films are not normal at all.

So when i think about organising a different way of living i don't think about transition towns, or new involvement methods. I think #digitalbadges and recommendations and verification tools will be useful in changing what we think of as our own, but mainly I think about bumping into strangers in the pitch black- the unplanned opportunities for living, and finding the experience beautiful rather than terrifying..