To provide community
members with two basic necessities of life, food and shelter, and while
not skimping on quality, beauty or environmental integrity.......
Food would be provided in a
"prepared" fashion. Perhaps like an always open cafeteria,
or on the other hand, could be a formal, all eat at once style. Exactly how, would be up to the
community to decide.
Shelter would be provided for all (a room, probably
shared) in community housing
facilities.
Also, to provide for certain other basic necessities (through
cooperatively shared and maintained facilities) such as for
bathing, laundry, library, storage, workshop-tools, communication connections
and so on.
To provide adequate
resources of "field, forest, and space"
required for beauty, enjoyment, and inspiration. And, as well,
provide those resources as required for the needs of agriculture and business. (both for the community,
and individual use)
And finally, to provide a school
for the children (the
school may require some extra community effort)
A few thoughts or
possibilities regarding diet......and the hugely important issue of
people being able to get the food that they want to eat.
What the community would provide would be a
simple and basic sort of diet. In other words, not particularly high
in animal protein, or as in the case of those attracted to raw food
diets, not promising to deliver huge quantities of fruit and nuts.
What if someone wants a
diet rich in dairy foods, animals protein or say, lots of fruit and
nuts? The solution is really quite simple. Operating
right within the community kitchen, gardens and farm there
could be special cooperatives catering to these other foods. These
foods would be be known by all the community as such. If one wants
those foods, ones joins whatever particular co-op those foods are
associated with. Other examples might be people wanting to drink
wheatgrass juice or people on special fasts. Also, should one only
want some of these "special" foods occasionally a co-op might set a
price for a given quantity of their food; thereby allowing community
members who weren't part of the co-op to occasionally have those
foods.
This seems like a good solution. It allows people
the means and the opportunity to acquire whatever food they want to
eat; and just as importantly, it allows those who not only see a
simpler diet as being healthier, the reward of not having to do the
extra labor involved in securing a richer diet.
Certainly, through experience and experimentation
some sort of "system" should be able to be figured out. But to make
everyone worked equally hard for an extremely rich and varied diet
would seem to offer little incentive to eat "moderately".
And eating moderately is one of the most
important factors concerning longevity; arguably perhaps, but
certainly extensively mentioned in most theories concerning optimum
health and longevity.
