Prefiguring community

I’m preparing to move across the country, and I’m taking this opportunity to think about what to change about my life. Actually practicing my politics and values, I realize now, will require me to spend much more time:

getting together for dinner (and games, and singing, and dancing, and...) with people every single week — maybe even more often than that

watching other families’ children

helping neighbors with their home and garden projects (and, let’s be honest, fixing their computers)

gardening and giving away every piece of produce that would be eaten by somebody else

Even though it will certainly come at the expense of:

canvassing, phone banking, door-knocking, etc.

showing up for protests

organizing reading groups

attending any sort of meetings

I’ve been calling myself an anarchist for all these years, and I feel like a colossal hypocrite for putting so much of my energy into fighting (occasionally viscous fights) to make “leftist” spaces “more prefigurative”¹ while I neglected building more of the kinds of relationships that are going to get me through the coming decades.

My last post was all about feeling isolated as a parent, but I’m trying to express something different here (but not entirely unrelated).

Because, those issues notwithstanding, I have made fantastic friends in this city, and I will miss them dearly. I think I’m recognizing a need to push some of the social bonds that I currently only reserve for friends further out, into “my community” — and I suppose is what a community actually is.

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[1] “Prefigurative politics are the modes of organization and social relationships that strive to reflect the future society being sought by the group.”

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