I called this piece ‘Back to the Cave’ because I and no doubt many of you believe in some ways that after thousands of years of human, scientific, and cultural development that we had finally left the caves with our spines upright and the faculty of reason ticking away in our brains. Indeed we have come a long way since we lived in caves and eked out a precarious and dangerous existence in a dog eat dog world, but where money and economics are concerned we have been tricked into buying into the idea of individualism and self, this to me represents a regression of our collective development and is pushing us back towards the caves that we came from in our earlier development. 
The solitary individual
Make no mistake all of our science, culture, and everything else we do as human beings on a daily basis has come about because of mutual collective efforts, even ideas that have turned into inventions created by individuals have a history of collective knowledge that have evolved the idea into a workable model that the inventor molds into existence. The solitary individual as I will call him is a product of Neoliberalism and free market capitalism. He believes that the world is full of individuals and that there are no such things as communities and societies, the solitary individual is only out for what he can get in terms of material gain and its associated status. He believes that it is morally OK to live in this way because greed and the self have been promoted through our Political system and its associated media coverage for the last three decades which has made this way of living socially acceptable. Ironically the solitary individual is also a victim; he has been cajoled into his way of thinking and acting so that he will be a good consumer, and if anything goes economically wrong in his life he will blame himself as opposed to the external structural mechanisms of inequality.
The return of community
We presently face a very uncertain future in terms of natural resources, climate change and the inevitable economic collapse of the Fiat Monetary system. In short this is the end of the individualism myth that Neoliberal thinkers have been developing for decades, it is the selfish consumption of the individual that is causing ecological degradation and economic inequality, and it is also the selfishness of individualism that bought about the Global credit crunch in 2009. The protests that have come about as a result of Neoliberal political dominance and their protection of the Banking system that caused the credit crunch has been huge, and interestingly many new alliances have been forged and communities born. In the UK there are anti-cuts groups rubbing shoulders with Unemployed peoples support groups and solidarity federations, in the US the Occupy movement is still gathering momentum and has branched out into other areas of protest such as the Occupy food movement. In Iceland we have seen activists pull together the Icelandic community to get rid of their banker friendly Government and many of the Banks that operated in Iceland, within the ecological movement there is a widespread development of intentional communities that are springing up here there and everywhere because they have realised that communities are people organisms with diverse skills set that are able to support each others mutual well being.
Communities of the Future
In a future world of fewer resources we need communities and collective action more than ever, as groups of individuals we all have different skills to offer to put into the collective pot. The future can only happen if we get together with others and make it happen, there will never again be able live the individual life where we only think about ourselves and out own selfish ends, a world of fewer resources and a dying monetary system demands that we work with each other to create a better world.
Steve – Permanent Culture Now