Imagine just the hull though, made water ready by a strong skin that holds it all together. Now consider the interior, the propulsion, the means to steer our boat. All these moving parts, these descions to make together, consensually.
We are building that steering document that is a business plan, one that is specifically for worker cooperatives that has the member value in the centre of the conversation, not just a core intent to make the most profit margin one can achieve.
This is the first of series of documents that are at the core of our first product that I will whisper to here… as it’s still mine to nut out before it becomes the foundation work of Alchemical Worx. Coop BootCamp is emerging as a leading project, which is apt really, as it’s what we know right now, how to build a worker cooperative. More on this in further posts.
As we find that movement forward I am reminded last Friday night of what it may look like in ten years.
You see, I attended the 10th Birthday Celebrations for Market Forces. Witnessing the founder share his journey, and his core belief. That we didn’t need to do all this damage to the planet, there was no need for it, just greed for it. Greed is what made the whole thing. The levelling of mountains, the clear felling of whole forests, the digging so deep for the coal.
We could and still can have, all that we need, the food, the shelter, even the technology, without all this wholesale extractive behaviour. Without all this greed.
That is what we, Alchemical Worx, are reaching for.
The cure for greed.
The opportunity to have enough, be enough, share enough for us all. Collective wealth, village making, humans on task, doing their work. Co-creating our Hearths, building our Sanctuaries. Making the reality we are living actively engaged in our return to earth, as part of earth, custodian, not consumer. WITH each other.
When we think about how much time we use each day to pay for the homes we live in, and the needs we have, it is often described as 40-80% of our time and energy used just for basic needs.
What if we built our lives from our work, found in our sense of purpose, that funded our co-housing, secured together by what we have built together. This then fuelling those large chunks of land we can all feel is where we are meant to be. With earth, growing together, raising our kids, caring for our elders in person, not paying someone else to do that.
Can we imagine a Hearth that has 20-30 odd adults from our worker cooperative, with their children and elders held together. With the labour of our homes considered in our budgets, valued and honoured with either outside money or an inner currency even. So many opportunities to explore. Yet in essence, this is what we choose to do, value the work done in a Hearth, the caring, the cooking, the cleaning, the growing.
What would living in this village feel like? Do you feel like we could find what enough felt like? As we turn on the taps of our products, the work of many hands becoming the cashflow of many different sources. Digital being a favoured place, built once, sold forever, but also much in the way of face to face events and education.
As we nurture the creative souls of us all, build what She needs us to build next, listen deeply to what it is that we can hear now. So much to share, so much to build.
Can you imagine with me?
Please feel free to ask any questions that arise, or to make kind comment. (Cruel comment will be deleted, there is no need.)