{"id":43136,"date":"2011-08-20T15:00:45","date_gmt":"2011-08-20T19:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=43136"},"modified":"2011-08-12T13:10:36","modified_gmt":"2011-08-12T17:10:36","slug":"dow-heading-down-poly-heading-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/polyamory\/dow-heading-down-poly-heading-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Dow Heading Down, Poly Heading Up?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

As the economy imploded, thanks to the big teabagger foot-stomping tantrum (worse than any I\u2019ve witnessed from a self-respecting 2-year-old), Isaac and our daughter and I were staying with his relatives. There were lots of jokes about who was going to move in with whom when it all tanked and none of us could pay our mortgages anymore. His family is very close anyway; they try to live close geographically, and it\u2019s unheard of to stay in a hotel or with anyone but family if you\u2019re within a 60-mile radius. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Poly Paradise at Burning Man. Photo by Eric.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I don\u2019t think I could live with his family — I don\u2019t think they\u2019d get our setup, to put it mildly — but it did get me thinking of my dream for a big poly family house. It would seem to make good sense for more people to give it some thought, as the numbers on the charts keep free-falling. I\u2019d love to hear in the comments if you\u2019ve got an economically viable alternative in your poly life, and how it works.<\/p>\n

One afternoon that week, I got a chance to interview Robyn Trask, editor of Loving More<\/em> magazine, a leading polyamory information source, and executive director of the Loving More nonprofit<\/a>. I had called her to ask about the Kody Brown\/Sister Wives<\/em> case<\/a>, and I\u2019ll be using that info in a future piece. But because I was curious and I had the chance, I switched gears to try to thrash out thoughts on poly and the economy. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn this culture, families can be so isolated,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019ve been programmed to think of the strong, independent family who doesn\u2019t need anybody as the ideal.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that approach doesn\u2019t always work — or works less and less often. She tells the story of inviting a family with whom hers had become friends to live with them when the other family hit hard times. This is the kind of thing people used to do routinely and are now doing (often to great unhappiness) for their relatives. It can only work better if the people involved love each other out of choice. I think about how getting over some jealousy and having a little less space is a small price to pay for knowing you\u2019re with a group strongly bonded and ready to help each other. I think about how many people are facing foreclosure and feel terribly alone. And that maybe they — or I — could have made another choice than to have my family live in a single-family home, if I knew such choices existed and could work.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

During my visit with relatives, there was also a lot of talk about older relatives who won\u2019t leave their homes, even though how they\u2019re living has become unsafe and uncomfortable. I\u2019m not one to impose choices on others, but when I hear about older people living in isolation, I know this is not something I want for myself. They are sticking to their guns because they want their children to be able to inherit the house (or its worth). But nothing is worth much nowadays, so why not sell it and spend it on something where a group could live together? Another big issue: The man shortage among older people. The older women complain and fight and accuse each other of man-stealing like the women on a Real Housewives<\/em> show. It just makes me glad that I\u2019m getting over the whole owning-another-person dynamic now. One less thing to tie me down.<\/p>\n

\u201cPoly can bring in multiple close bonds \u2026 and sharing resources,\u201d Trask says. She tells of working to establish several households on some farmland currently, and how it\u2019s helpful that the families there don\u2019t need to get three tractors, but can share one. As for her own stint in suburbia, well, she had a beautiful house, but there were aspects of isolation and competition there that lead her to prefer her current rural life.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis economy may drive us into looking at things differently and sharing more — whether that\u2019s tractors, or lovers,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She talks about a conference event about a year ago. She was in discussion with a group of largely older polyamorists — \u201cthere was a lot of wisdom in that room\u201d — and someone asked the question: \u201cIs the nuclear family set up to support the consumer economy?\u201d<\/p>\n

My answer\u2019s yes. As Trask puts it, three nuclear families have three toasters, three blenders, three cars. A poly household might only need one of each. (The same is true for a co-house or communal household — but that might not be as much fun. And I don\u2019t want to overlook other ways neighborhoods are sharing resources, without any connection to poly or communal living at all, and these are great: from tool banks to child-care co-ops.) <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t believe in black-helicopter conspiracies. Or maybe I could, but so many of the people who do are unreliable sources to me, and I don’t have the time to check them out for myself. But I believe fully in unconscious conspiracies, in people who, being human and afraid and silly, cut corners here and there, maybe reach for a little more than they know they earned, maybe see it sitting there and no one\u2019s watching, so then they have to scramble to cover it up or justify it. That\u2019s what the American economy today looks like to me. <\/p>\n

There are a lot of people sitting at lovely granite countertops or on oversize down-filled cushions watching big screens, with several cars in the oversize garage right now, who tell themselves daily that they have these things and this somewhat more secure life because of their hard work and smart financial strategic planning. They say anyone can get this life if they\u2019re willing to work, really work! But somewhere inside they know that they mostly got them because of sheer luck — born on third base and thought they hit it home, right? The right color, the right parents, the right dodges and compromises, straight teeth, happened to be alive when America was peaking and rode that wave, the right blinders in the right places — the ability to shut out the fact that we walk on the bodies of the poor to have the lives we live. I believe in this kind of conspiracy — that groups of people deliberately indulge in self-delusion to keep something they mutually believe they want.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a little too heavy for this topic, but here\u2019s how it applies here: In order to keep ourselves in granite countertops, we know we have to sell lots of things to each other (and to the new suckers down the line). One way to do that is to split us into as small units as possible, and keep us isolated.<\/p>\n

In the 1990s and 2000s, one of my jobs involved dealing with home builders. Farmland was getting turned into giant housing communities full of hulking McMansions, most designed with several suite arrangements — everyone would have a bathroom and mini-kitchen off their bedroom-suite setup, so everyone would need extra glasses, extra towels, extra freaking ice makers. \u201cThey\u201d — that is, we — even managed to make it so that people would be isolated from one another within their own homes. Children from parents, parents from grandparents. <\/p>\n

At the same time, multiple zoning laws were passed against unrelated families living together in these huge houses; neighbors were encouraged to watch for \u201ctoo many\u201d different (i.e., beater or not expensive) cars or trucks or vans parked outside as a signifier of, well, let\u2019s be blunt — they didn\u2019t want groups of people recently arrived from other countries to be living together, sharing expenses and sharing stuff. Also at the same time, I was being encouraged to market these homes (we don\u2019t call them houses; one always calls them homes) to certain other people recently arrived from other countries, because it was known that these other recent arrivals, who had more ready money, liked to have in-laws living with them. And that was OK. But a group of guys from certain countries (who built your house and fix your house and make everything around you look a hell of a lot better than it ever did before they got here) living in a home together could be busted. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not too conspiratorial of me to say that zoning regulations could be used selectively against poly households that don\u2019t fit the norm, just as anti-polygamy laws are apparently being used against some households for one reason or another. The conclusion here: Not buying enough stuff is a crime. And I could get thrown out of my theoretical poly dream house for committing that crime. <\/p>\n

And if the only way presented to get out of our present difficulties is to buy more stuff, then the penalties for preserving, conserving and sharing will get more harsh.<\/p>\n

My dream: A Victory-Garden approach to sharing, where my poly dream house would be the epitome of good global citizenship and economic progress. My nightmare: Teabaggers forcing me to live alone, eat more trans fat, and use more lightbulbs, because the country needs me to consume, and incandescent was good enough for Paul Revere, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila As the economy imploded, thanks to the big teabagger foot-stomping tantrum (worse than any I\u2019ve witnessed from a self-respecting 2-year-old), Isaac and our daughter and I were staying with his relatives. There were lots of jokes about who was going to move in with whom when it all tanked and none of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":191,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43136"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/191"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}