A lot of the things we do on a daily or weekly basis have ways of doing them that can either be private or communal, some of these which we do not think to consider as having that characteristic.
For example, bathing in the Roman Empire used to be communal, but then Rome fell and citizens in the splinter countries began taking baths privately.
Receiving mail is another example. There are countries which don’t have mailboxes and everyone gets their mail at the post office in the PO boxes. It was the United States which pioneered the idea of the modern mail system, which is why we associate it as a private act.
There are activities as well which don’t have any history as jumping between one or the other that might benefit from it, for example I think towns might benefit if internet was free and freely accessible but only at the local library.
What’s a non-communal aspect of life you think should be communal?
But doesn’t this already exist? For most packages I get, I can choose to either have them delivered to my door or to a package station, where I put my delivery number in and it unlocks the compartment my package is in. Same for sending packages.
Here’s an example:
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I’m in Europe though, not sure if it’s a thing in the US.
We’re seeing mixed use of it in the US. Amazon has these in certain places, like at 7-11 locations. Newer apartment complexes also have lockers near the mailboxes but they’re only for tenants.
I got used to using the latter when I did deliveries for Amazon and they’re great when the complex owner has them set up properly with every tenant listed and enough lockers to accommodate how much people are ordering online nowadays.