Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire

by Adam Greenfield

How to reclaim power in a time of perpetual crisis

We are living through a Long a near-continuous train of pandemics, heatwaves, droughts, resource wars and other climate-driven disasters. In Lifehouse , Adam Greenfield asks what might happen if the tactics and networks of care that spring up in response to these times might be brought together in a single, coherent way of life?

Using examples from the Black Panthers’ “survival programs,” the astonishingly effective Occupy Sandy disaster-relief effort and the neighborhood-based mutual aid groups that sustained many during COVID lockdowns to the large-scale, self-organised polities of municipalist Spain and Kurdish Rojava, Greenfield argues for rethinking local power as a bulwark against despair — a way to discover and develop the individual and collective capacities that have gone underutilized during all the long years of late capitalism, and a means for thriving in the face of impending catastrophe.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Social Justice, Science, Self Help, Sociology, Environment

272 pages, Paperback

Published July 9, 2024

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Reviews

[Laura Linsi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book in solidarity and I enjoyed it for both the hopefulness and the call for deletion of vain hope. The third chapter was my favourite with the real examples from Greece and Rojava, also for loads of references Im curious to read. I’m excited by the argument of the book but then the disaster relief examples and the writing wasn’t so very convincing, I can’t quite figure out why. Maybe because being from a very small Eastern European country, the role of ‘the state’ has to be considered from some other perspectives than in the case of the US or the UK or Turkey. But even in my 70+ flats 1950s apartment block in London which has loads of infighting between two resident organisations, I find it really hard to buy into the concept of the ‘life house’ or at least into the life house as a singular building. I can’t see it as a logical first step for direct action. However, the book did make me think about resilience in my neighbourhood and consider all the groups and organisations that afford that to us, and it makes me want to support and take part in their activities more directly and deliberately.

[An nika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely readable argument for what Greenfield sees as the sensible place to put our energy in the face climate catastrophe: strategic mutual care, in a federation sort of way. Now I'm hungry for real-life reports on how this works. Who do I talk to actually about putting solar generators at the church? Also extremely readable summary of movements for solidarity and mutual care in this way. Good springboard, good grounding: extremely helpful read. I hope you will read it and we can figure it out together....

[Cole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exceptional and necessary reading. I loved so much of it, made so many notes, learned so much, and amassed so much hope. One star substracted for the concept of lifehouses inevitably having to deal with suppression by force being given pretty short shrift compared to the rest of the important concepts and considerations; that definitely felt like a lot more exploration and direction was needed, and a critical aspect to be left hanging on. Nonetheless, a highlight in my year and life of reading. I’ll be reflecting on this one for a long time to come, as I hope many more will over the course of the Long Emergency.

Also: FANTASTIC list of musical artists in the acknowledgments, don’t sleep on this.

[Ma'Belle · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars rounded up

I listened to this one over the course of three days and really loved it. Immediately after finishing it I happened to be in the home of Denver's premiere historian, Phil Goodstein, for a free lecture on the history and meaning of "socialism." I thought this book recommendation was very apropos as the talk came to an abrupt end without enough time to discuss anything from the last 50 years.

"Lifehouse" is a real-world proposal from Adam Greenfield, pointing to a means of hope through community coalition-building and repurposing of resources already in existence. The overall message is that we cannot trust governmental agencies to save us from the increase in major worldwide disasters and extinctions caused by the short-sighted addiction to extractive capitalism.

Most of the book resonated strongly with me while also teaching me some things I wasn't familiar with, such as Murray Bookchin. The thing that irked me in this book is that, out of all the research and personal experience Greenfield draws from for this project, somehow he doesn't mention Mutual Aid Disaster Relief (MADR) until the last hour of the book, and only in passing - a simple mention that they exist. If he had talked to folks from MADR, read any of the zines they've published telling stories from their DIY, anarchistic work with flood disaster relief especially, this book would be much richer. He seems to have instead come to activism in the wave of Occupy Wall Street liberals that had awakenings through immersion in those general assemblies and dedicated, 24/7 protests. MADR has been doing exactly the kind of thing he dreams of for years, based on people who are already leaders in an affected community, just adjacent to the Occupy [Hurricane] Sandy group he was volunteering with. I'm just sad he didn't apparently know enough about them to include them throughout this text as real-world examples of how to distribute resources when the major aid nonprofits keep them hoarded and unused. (Apparently you can get into lots of places if you're holding a clipboard and wearing some kind of self-made badge!)

[Neon Snake · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd conversed with Adam on social media a few times, and didn't realise until a while later that I'd already shortlisted his book until a few weeks later.

This is a great book, very much in the vein of realising that "no-one is coming to save you" - initially touching on some of the disasters like Hurricane Katrina or Sandy, and the ground up efforts made to offer relief to those affected, it then moves into our present Covid times (which is largely when I started paying real attention to and getting involved in ground up mutual aid).

There's a lot of great analysis, and *lot* of great suggestions in here for actually *actionable* actions, not just rhetoric, that people can do, or take the first steps towards, in the here and now, without waiting for permission. In our current world, which has only got worse since 2020 (despite all the Build Back Better bollocks), this is a vital mindset to have, as it's not looking likely that things are going to get better by way of large-scale organisations or governments.

A great compliment to books like Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, the various Graeber books, and some of the stuff that C4SS is publishing, I highly recommend for people who are prone to doomerism (eg. me) as a guide to doing *something, anything* in times like these.

[Eric Farnsworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adam Greenfield is optimistic. Or at least he has written an optimistic book. What else could he do, faced with our looming global Long Emergency? If you're going to be pessimistic, then you just chuck it all and start drinking heavily. That doesn't make much of a book.

So, I could quibble with many of Greenfield's assertions, but he does give some detail about a way forward. It seems to me that he knows this is a long shot.

Mutual Aid. Setting up for community self governance and Mutual Aid for the long term. Don't expect it to work at all until the current regime has mostly collapsed, but try to prepare beforehand. And don't be surprised if some powerful faction comes and crushes your efforts. That's optimistic.

Me: Meet your neighbors. Dance with them. It might not help, but you could do a lot worse.

The book is well enough written and I recommend it, but I skimmed a fair bit.

[Avşar · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The mutual aid slogan has it that 'audacity is our capacity.' The French Jesuit (and philosopher) Michel de Certeau suggests that the powerless must always 'vigilantly make use of the cracks that particular conjunctions open in the surveillance of the proprietary powers,'".

I throughoutly enjoyed this book, as others from Greenfield. His determined and direct style makes his work very exciting and insightful. However, towards the middle and onwards, contextually different examples get mixed up as possible reactions to similar issues. Therefore, it is quite difficult to synthesise a guidance or a set of tactics from all this. There are also, in my opinion, underresearched topics and some misplaced praise, but behind it lies a beautiful mind, a genuine consideration for our future and a pragmatist approach to resources, their re-claiming and re-organisation.

[Judith · Rating 4 out of 5]

My list of topics to research further has definitely grown longer after reading this book. I absolutely loved the real-life examples of mutual aid and shared power plus the theoretical base that was presented. Going from there to the Lifehouses was a weaker point, where I missed this connection, though I appreciate the concept.

[Eleanor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Out of my mini "how to build caring communities" reading series, this is the best one because it is actually forward thinking, albeit more depressing because it is very much of the "yeah we're doomed as a society" outlook.

And so a lifehouse is basically a community centre but more grassroots?

[Rubli Carran · Rating 2 out of 5]

Decent introduction to the topic for those new to it. Some conflicting points. But I liked the use of the black panthers and northern Syrian fighting force examples.