To the Editor:
It’s clear that last week’s revised Mahida Group proposal created a feeling of appreciation and connection, and reflected a willingness of the various players to collaborate. This is good, positive and inspiring! Thank goodness we aren’t following the example of our many national politicians who are behaving with an immaturity of such embarrassing proportions.
But the core concerns of the proposal still remain: These are the issues of scale, and of the economic and cultural impact this project will have on our community life.
My understanding of The Spirit of the Law in this matter is that we have a local ordinance that aims to restrict large-scale developments within our town in order to keep our growth in scale with the small local community we enjoy, benefit from, and are famous for being. Upholding the spirit of the law would be, as an elder community business owner said recently, making choices that “keep a small town a small town, and not filling it with big city projects.” To have such an over-sized intrusion of transitory visitors right in the heart of our community center will have a significant impact on the pace, pulse, vibe, and smallness of our town. Saying yes to the 88-room hotel is saying yes to becoming a bigger town. I like living in a small town. That’s why I live here.
As well, there are the cultural and economic implications at stake. I am a practicing evolutionary economist. In evolutionary economics we measure wealth not as an amount of money, but as the real things that enhance our experience of life. These wealth values start with the requirements foundational for a healthy, satisfying life: secure fresh food and water sources; sufficient shelter; high quality health care; empowering education for children and adults; communitywide connections of support, collaboration and celebration that enhance sharing and trust between community members; the status of children and mothers; healthy stewardship of ecosystems and biosphere; a personal sense of happiness, well-being, and satisfaction of purpose; and of extreme value – ownership of one’s time.
Pioneering social change agent and evolutionary economist Charles Eisenstein calls this potential for life on earth “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.” I like to also call it “the more beautiful world our hearts long for.” How can we let ourselves long deeply enough for the wonderful potential of our lives, community and world to make it happen? What keeps us from creating and living in this more beautiful world?
The Mahida proposal isn’t happening in a vacuum. And our town isn’t in an isolated bubble. The proposal and the choices we make that shape our future are occurring in a deeply complex world with pressing national and global crises. Two of these alarmingly volatile issues are climate change and the ever-growing economic divide between the classes. The latter is very much at play in the current Mahida Group proposal, and something we haven’t really spoken about openly in our public discourse. This is understandable, as addressing class and wealth disparities usually creates a hotbed of reactions. It’s an intense conversation and tends to make everyone on all sides uncomfortable and distressed. It’s a topic that by its very nature will bring up and reflect divisions amongst us, between “the have and the have not’s” and everyone in-between.
We are living in a community that has deep class divides. There are many groupings of people nestled within our community who are under-represented in these “Town Hall” negotiations. These are the voices of our single mothers, our youth and young adults, our cultural creatives and “Berkshire shufflers,” to name a few; most of these people are financially struggling month-to-month. Regardless of their absence from these political processes, they are very much part of the rich fabric of our remarkable community.
Evolutionary economics cautions us to be aware that all too often we can generate significant dollar returns while creating alarming poverty in the trans-economic wealth-value classes. High-class, private interest ventures focused on serving short-term visitors and their imported wealth is now a time-tested model of economic and neighborhood development that consistently proves to produce quite poor “returns on investment.” Although the dollars might be amassed in trickle-down formation, we should be quite concerned about the impact this will have on our community. A thriving, positive community culture is one of the richest human experiences available on the planet. Let us not squander our wealth, but build on it.
While we can be appreciative of the money our tourist economy brings to our area, future-forward economic thinking informs us that building an economic infrastructure dependent on imported wealth does not actually create a secure and sustainable local economy. It repeats very old patterns of class division, where “poor” folk work for financially wealthy folk. This keeps the energy, creativity and time resources of our locals locked into patterns of productivity that focus on a servant/nobility-based economy vs. a human potential economy, which is one that profits from the full range of gifts, talents, creativity and inventive collaborations of our diverse community members.
To some, these nice ideas can sound like pie-in-the-sky, far-fetched, fruity utopian ideals. As an active participant in our local Generosity Economy I can share from my own personal experience that building the channels to support this kind of renaissance in our community is actually quite a simple process. It comes down to organizing diverse community members into multiple, intersecting circles of information, networking and sharing hubs. In the Generosity Economy we meet bi-weekly to share “Needs, Wants & Gifts.” This simple practice produces all kinds of unexpected, delightful and rich outcomes.
When I ask people for their favorite great ideas for what our town needs, I’m always amazed by the brilliant, playful and intelligent answers. Giving our town an organized forum for sharing these ideas (needs and wants), and then brainstorming ways to make them happen (gifts), would make us one of the richest and most resilient towns in the world.
As it currently stands, the revised Mahida Group proposal is still creating distress and concern in our community. But continuing to work together to create a win-win solution is an opportunity for us to grow stronger. Already there is a handful of excellent win-win ideas out there for the Searle’s school property that could benefit all players, adhere to the intent of our by-laws, and make our town more of an attraction. These alternatives are future-forward and uber-trendy, would have us follow in our own progressive footsteps, and poise us strongly for the future.
To an abundant wholesome prosperity for all!
With great care and regard,
Maia Conty
Great Barrington
