The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard [162]
When I got really sick (in the last weeks before the manuscript for this book was due) with a 102 degree fever, one person drove me to the doctor while another one stepped in to watch my kid and a third brought me flowers. And you can be sure that I’ll return those favors the next time someone else in the community gets sick. Not out of obligation, but out of the pleasure of sharing.
Because we share and borrow many of the things we need, we are able to consume less Stuff. Because we provide one another with services like baby-sitting, repairing, and listening, we pay less for services than others do. We turn to each other first, before relying on the commercial marketplace. My point is we’re living the same lifestyle as someone who’s paying for those goods and services. In all these ways, we’re not sacrificing; we’re sharing.
And while there are material benefits to our sharing (saving money and creating less waste, because we consume less), the real benefit goes far beyond these. Rather than keep strict tabs on how many hours or how much Stuff we give one another, we cultivate a culture of reciprocity. In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam explains that “networks of community engagement foster sturdy norms of reciprocity: I’ll do this for you now, in the expectation that you (or perhaps someone else) will return the favor.”1
Putnam talks about two kinds of reciprocity: specific, in which you actually measure and negotiate individual trades (“I’ll pick up both kids from school on Monday, you do it on Tuesday”) and the more valuable norm of generalized reciprocity (“I’ll do this for you without expecting anything specific back, confident that someone else will do something for me down the road”). A society based on generalized reciprocity is more efficient than one that negotiates every interaction. It provides greater security and is more fun. “Trustworthiness lubricates social life,” Putnam says.2 We’ve got one another’s backs. I know that I always have someone to call if I get a flat tire, if I need emergency childcare, if I’m hungry and too tired to cook. Sometimes I visualize this social fabric as an actual fabric that surrounds me and would catch me if I fall, as it has done metaphorically over the years.
Individual Response
So that’s my community-rich lifestyle. Without feeling any deprivation, we save money and resources and have more fun. However, let me be crystal clear: our community is not perfect and even if it were, living with a more community-focused life alone will not solve the world’s pressing environmental and social problems. If we want all six and a half billion humans on this earth plus future generations to have enough food in their bellies, fresh water to drink, and medicine when they’re sick, individual lifestyle shifts like mine won’t cut it. In fact, here in the United States we live inside a system so thoroughly based on fossil fuels, carbon emissions, toxic chemicals and wasted resources that no matter how much we scale back our consumption, we still can’t achieve a truly sustainable lifestyle—one within the earth’s capacity. That’s what Colin Beavan, aka No Impact Man, found when he spent one year with his family in Manhattan living as low-impact as possible: no trash, no elevators, no subway, no products in packaging, no plastics, no air-conditioning, no TV, and no food from farther than 250 miles away. While he achieved the lowest impact of anyone I’ve heard of in an industrialized country, Beavan learned that in a metropolitan U.S. city today, it’s just