Is Collaboration the Meaning of Life?

I've been wanting to write a new post for a very long while. I even started to write various posts about different things. I'll try to see if I can merge everything into a single entry coherently.

First of all, some background.

During one month in Catalonia (September 14^th - October 16^th) I re-encountered, met, got to know and —in general— loved a lot of people while living in 4 different places. 1) Mas Franch, 2) S. & H. F.'s place in Barcelona, Mas Franch, Barcelona, 3) Can Masdeu, Barcelona, 4) Kosturica and one last stop in Barcelona. I also visited other 2 projects (J. C.'s place + Can Manent), attended meetings of Permacultura Barcelona, the food forest group, and so on. Coming back to Italy I had the opportunity to meet old friends and to straighten some old scar tissue with L. B. in a very civilized way. The other night while writing this post I've also been listening to the EP of the Collective she's part of. My favourite song is n. 4, Calexico-ey and melancholic.

And now this new adventure: starting from last Monday I'm living for two months with two good friends in a very small, beautiful Italian town working in exchange for food and accommodation.

Very many things happened since I went to Barcelona in September —Permaculture Teachers' Training, European Permaculture Teachers' partnership, various bio constructions, meetings and parties and chats— and I had a lot of material for thought. During this whole period (in Catalonia) there was a lot of people care involved. I thought about our bodies and our “natural” shyness of showing them and how I overcame it. I already talked about how I find the prohibition for women to show their nipples

absolutely pointless and extremely sexist. It's true, maybe girls started to cover their tits to make them accessible only to those who would provide for them, thus having another arrow in their quiver since the control of sex was almost their only weapon, but society  and bigotry took over and even nowadays this prohibition stands. Same thing for the “necessity” women

have to shave or the idea that they should be skinny and Barbie-like. I saw many girls going against these prohibitions lately —at least in "safe" environments— and I couldn't be happier. Going back to myself, I never swam, sun bathed nor took a shower naked before, at least not in broad daylight, but it seemed just natural to do so, due to the relaxed circumstances and to the care everybody would take of everyone else. Care of people.

Thinking about bodies made me realize that our body —like any other organism— works because zillions of cells cooperate to make it work properly.

I also thought a lot about relationships —I've been reading The Ethical Slut, a very interesting book about “Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures”— and I realized that every successful and/or pleasurable activity is the result of a cooperation. Organisms. Relationships. Life. 

It's been happening in my life too. 

Since last April I've been living mostly in communities. Unlike most of the examples I heard about, these communities worked perfectly, especially when a good care of people was involved. The only problem I encountered in the relationships between all the people in these communities —between M. and various other people while I was at CMD— was handled beautifully by the rest of that community (which by the way was made up of two communities).

I feel that cooperation and the lack of competition is crucial towards any successful process. While staying at Valldaura —where I did an internship between last April and July— the first open discussion between us —the interns— and them —the organization— happened when N. D. —chief of the project— suggested that the 13 of us had to make a design for a vegetable garden and she would then decide which one was the best one. But she said that this wasn't a contest. I disagreed firmly and said it clearly and saw that almost all the other interns agreed with me. Why would anyone want to show that they're the best —thus creating frictions and a competitive environment— when they can share ideas with somebody else?

The most complex communities in nature work because there is a great cooperation between

Termite Colony

the various subjects which work together towards a common goal: the well being of the whole community. In bees, ants, termites, wasps colonies every single element is as important as the others and none of them is more important than the others. Not even the queen. Her duty is to be laying eggs tirelessly, but if we talk about bees, if the queen dies the workers feed some of the larvae with royal jelly and create their new queen. These macro-communities work exactly like a single organism where the insects can be compared to cells and every one of them cooperate with the others to make the community work. As a matter of fact these types of colonies are commonly called "superorganisms". Apparently cooperation is the key to success and ants are a clear example. According to scientific studies there are around 10,000,000,000,000,000 individual ants alive on Earth at any given time, weighing together more than the entire human race!

Coming back to us human, the one single activity where people care is involved and a good cooperation of bodies, relationships and —why not?— life is needed for things to work well, is sex. But this would be another very long story. Maybe some other time. :)