A Garden and a Library.

Everything You Need.

Ancient Roman orator (the YouTuber of the ancient times), Marcus Tullius Cicero said, “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” Profound statement. Interesting philosophical idea. Let’s analyze that claim and see how it holds up in our modern day context.

First of all, let’s use a common definition of what a garden and a library is. According to Wikipedia, “a garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature” and a library is “a collection of books, a possibly other materials and media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions.” Sounds good.

Now, what are we up against in the modern day? The mid-2020s. Broadly, we are experiencing late-stage capitalism, which is fairly well explained in an article by Joe Brewer. The material production is pretty much extracted and sucked up by the psychopathic billionaire class, at this point. BlackRock asset firm, alone, is the largest asset manager on the planet with trillions of dollars in assets. The situation was pretty well summed up by George Carlin, saying, “Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They've long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear.”

Well, they are the few and they know it. That’s why they are so desperate for control, for encouraging misery and war among the people. It’s like 3,000 - 6,000 ruling class elites just trying to make everybody miserable and give up hope so they can implement their Hunger Games-like dystopian future. But the people are waking up, around the world to see who their common enemy is and who their majority-class commoner’s are, pretty fast. Not as fast as you or I might like, but still, faster in the last 10 years than the previous 20 years before that. As someone who grew up in the 90s and early 2000s, I did not see or encounter much resistance to the established capitalist world order. Billionaires were more or less still seen as ‘successful businessmen’ and Bill Gates was seen as sort of a nerdy innovative genius and Donald Trump was nothing but a silly footnote cameo appearance in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, who had stupid, fake-looking hair. Yes, there was Rage Against The Machine and NWA, but they were pretty niche so not a lot of people heard about them. Not until the early 2000s and P2P filesharing became a pretty big thing.

But I digress. Aren’t I getting a little off topic here? Maybe a little. But I was trying to set the scene for where we are at in society today and how the mood and awareness of the problems are much more readily apparent for the average person today and there is a great desire for change. Something better to look forward to. For crying out loud. The younger generation is looking around at the world they were born into, seeing nothing but absolute war-mongering, billionaire boot-licking goons running major institutions, providing absolutely no structural or visionary plan for a viable future and the ecological and environmental issues are truly unavoidable to ignore - something’s gotta give.

Which brings me back to the library and garden quote. I believe, increasingly so, that the secret to change is to focus your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new - to paraphrase Socrates. I think people are very willing to try something different if that something different is accessible and helpful to them in their current life and community. Because, let’s face it, most of us have to work paycheck to paycheck and we hate it, we want more time and freedom, but because of the little time we have we can’t do a lot of activism on the side.

But what if we didn’t need to do a lot of activism all at once but a lot of little acts, collectively and consistently? That’s where the garden and library society really comes into play.

What we can do, fairly easily, is start at the home. What does you personal library and garden look like? Your book collection, you other physical media collection like DVDs, CDs, newspapers, etc. Your video game, board game, card game, “is it still okay to eat from the back of your fridge?” game collection. And, generally, the stuff you have in your house, for use, is like a library of things (LoTs) - appliances, furniture, clothing, linens, electronics and that junk drawer, those count as LoTs. First step, assess the home inventory: Do I need it? Do I want to give it away, but know that it is going to a better place (the landfill does not count)? Do I want to continue to store it for another year, just in case, and then re-assess again later? Keep in mind, we know we all need a certain amount of personal property, our computer, our phone, our bed, certain clothes, appliances and furniture - but - the more stuff you own, the greater the burden. And you can’t take it with you when you go. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a neighbourhood or community tool library to put items in common that you would rather share (because it hardly gets used by a single person throughout its lifetime sitting in a garage or closet) than keep privately to yourself, collecting dust? That leads me to the next step.

Assess your community LoT Network. What’s that? You may ask. Basically, a Library of Things Network is a map of what institutions or initiatives exist in your community where sharing common items is accessible to people, if they want it. The first thing you can do is go to your public library. Activate your card, if you haven’t already. Quick! While they still exist. Amazingly, the public knowledge commons aka a public library has stood the test of time. We should try to preserve and expand their use and service. So get your card, use it, ask you friends or family to get theirs, go get some books for free, request they get some more books (anything that fits in with a world that the likes of Peter Kropotkin, Murray Bookchin, R. Buckminster Fuller, Stafford Beer or David Graeber would approve of) and things (they can add to their LoT, or start one if they don’t have it yet), so the public library in your community can stay alive - and thrive.

The second thing you can do is see if your community has a Tool Library, likely operating as a not-for-profit, maybe a worker cooperative, with sometimes expanded services like the Ottawa Tool Library that has a workshop, repair cafe and tinkering school to offer. If your community does have one, get a membership, support it, help it stay alive and grow. Healthy communities would let certain institutions grow to maturity and then maintain a steady-state. Well, I think all communities should have a tool library that eventually grows to maturity. A ‘mature’ tool library would be a not-for-profit worker cooperative tool library with a storefront and workshop that can host programs and provide simple services, in addition to a growing inventory of tools. This ‘mature’ tool library in your community is important, because it is a living example of a better alternative to capitalist business as usual, and part of a Just Transition where there is democracy at work, sustainability built into the production and distribution of goods and services in what people have called the Social Solidarity Economy. So, if your community does not have a tool library, get some sustainability and social justice activists together, maybe they already exist as part of a non-profit organization, and organize, educate and activate a tool library project. Check out Shareable, they have a boatload of resources to support Sharing Cities.

The third thing you can do is map the rest of the known LoT Network in your area. That means any of those ‘little libraries’ you see around, that look like little mailboxes with a window so you can see in before realizing that most books in there are children’s books or novels from the 1950s, or earlier, that an elderly man who can’t read anymore, decided to put in there for the young generation. So thoughtful. But hey, you can add the books you think people should take a look at, in there. That’s the beauty of a little library, it’s ‘leave a book, take a book’ free choice. You can also check if there are any other community ‘share sheds’ available, like pantries or fridges. Find out if they are for anybody or for just the neighbourhood. Chances are if you can see them from the sidewalk, they will be for anyone who wishes to use them. And if you’d like to see more sharing of things in your neighbourhood, consider putting together a ‘pitch’ to the neighbours. What would you be willing to share, together, at agreed upon commons management laws and when available? You’ll never know until you ask.

There’s your start and how a library can be a lot of things, if we pool common resources. Eventually, a LoT Network could include bikes, cars, boats, housing units and maybe even a cordless drill. Could you imagine that? People might want to share a drill, so someone else can use it, that they only used twice and might never use again, collecting dust in their garage or shed? What a crazy idea. Hope that doesn’t catch on for other, bigger things.

And now, for the garden. What does that mean? A garden can be what most people think, a vegetable growing patch in their yard or it could be a community garden, which is fairly common, too. Both a great, but both a made better the more hands work together to share the fruits of our labour. Voluntarily, if people work together, they can share food, so it doesn’t go to waste. They can put it into a formal agreement, like Community Supported Agriculture (with a local farm or group of farms that grow with regenerative practices), which is a big ticket item, but worth pursuing, or they can be in more informal arrangements like neighbours just sharing their surplus, maybe having a Harvest Potluck Block Party, or something, to celebrate the occasion. But the goal is nothing less than local food sovereignty. Producing enough calories for healthy bodies in the region that you live. It reduces food miles and waste. The food usually tastes better and you know the chain of production from who grew it to how it got to your plate. And you remember how the definition of garden suggested it is is ‘usually outdoors’, well, that means a garden could be indoors. Not just in your home, like house plants or small-scale herb growing operation, but as a greenhouse or vertical farm project, initiated by community activists and other organizations. Now I think it becomes pretty clear how ‘gardens’ can be one of two main things we need.

I would like to conclude this article with an updated version of the Cicero quote, for our modern context and needs for a system change from a privatized, unjust and unsustainable capitalist system to a viable new cooperative commons-based society:

”If we have community gardens and libraries of things, we will have everything we need.” - Raddy