Emotional work group living

I'm not the only one who feels that the contemporary affluent nuclear family, one or two parents, one or two kids, sucks. It's a staggering burden on parents and it starves kids. It's a burden and starvation for all involved. But there's nothing else: if you want to raise a family, there's nowhere else to go.

I believe that emotional work will allow people to live together in larger groups where, for example, the responsibilities of child rearing can flow among more people, people who--like me--want to be involved with kids. Clean out all those feelings that make living with other people hell, clean them out as they come up--and they will come up--negotiate out of the practical problems that fulminate non-stop in close quarters. Do that and I think you'll experience the radically increased safety, economy, fun and fulfillment that living with a reasonable number of people--25? 75? I don't know--offers.

I want two things when I live with other people. I want a sense of belonging, being important, needed, a vital contributor, a vital part of a human fabric involving optimal intimacy with every other human I'm living with.

I also want to be alone--or alone with someone--when I want and when relief from family responsibilities allow. The freedom to be alone, or alone with, more or less when you want, is vital to any workable group living arrangement.

If emotional work group living is as good an idea as I'm convinced it is, the whole world will gravitate to it, not because it's the good or noble way to go, not because it's better for the continued vitality of the planet, but because it's safer, cheaper and way more fun and fulfilling than any living arrangement has been so far.

And incidentally, emotional work group living willbe better for the planet. We'll consume less, give more, our population and impact on the planet will drop radically to very longterm sustainable levels, and we'll have hugely better lives. That's my conviction.

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Shrubs at the Woods Place, winter