Highly recommend both the newsletter & the piece on baugruppen linked below it. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to who express a yearning for more communal life -- it just seems so daunting to get there from the position of the average suburbanite.
https://twitter.com/ggreeneva/status/1371187424420843521
For years I have been thinking about the central point @annehelen makes in the newsletter: individualist capitalism tells us that success = freedom from constraints. Total mobility. Total autonomy. All the choices open, no paths cut off. But actual lived experience tells us ...
... that happiness comes from embeddedness, from obligations & entanglements. We draw sustenance from community, which we cannot get without restrictions & trade-offs. Fulfillment is one side of a coin, the other side of which is commitment & constraint.
Rich people these days work to free themselves from any possible constraint -- they can go anywhere, live anywhere, own anything. They don't have to wait in lines. They don't have to suppress any urges or desires. They have no obligations or duties to others. Consequently ...
... they're fucking miserable. You don't get happiness without the constraints & obligations of community. The good parts of life come with hassles; lose all the hassles & you lose the good parts. Capitalism's central promise is a lie.
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