The Need for Community

Quest for Community was the book. I read it while getting my Masters in Government. I don’t remember the author but I do remember the premise.

The premise was that all political motivations come from a quest for community; at least, until the last thirty years anyway.

The backbone of the liberal democratic tradition that spawned the great social democracies of western civilization is community.

Human beings are by nature social beings. In fact, all primates share that trait. In fact, most animals also are social creatures.

The social community networks and structures are how human beings survive.

Communities exist for everything, from work relationships to economic ones.

These inter-relationships are what we call the social sciences.

Nihilism develops when human beings deny their social being. Individualism as an end itself negates social communities. The hermit is the most obvious example.

Today, politically, the libertarian and extreme right wing are adopting many anti-community, nihilistic attitudes and positions. These are coming from fear. Fear of different groups. Fear of the future. Fear.

Government is depicted as inherently bad. The individual is touted as the be all and end all of human endeavor. Anything that encourages social relationships is attacked as somehow socialistic or communistic.

These nihilistic trends run counter to the community desires of all people.

Americans are one of the loneliest people on earth. This is especially true of affluent Americans.

To be successful in America is to isolate yourself. If you have money you can own several cars, buy a house in a gated community, afford endless air conditioning, a private pool, a private yard, a private farm; everything is private. You also can afford a small family, 1.2 children at last census.

The digital revolution means private computers, high definition T.V.s and all sorts of electronic gadgets that people use ALONE. A digital T.V. means you can watch sports as if you were there. In fact, that is the point; you are “virtually” there. No crowds, you can watch it and be by yourself!!! Alone!

The rich find private schools for their few children. They have Nannies so they don’t even have to see or raise their children. They work all the time on their blackberries and laptops, or I-Pads, and don’t even have to see anyone. Email takes care of even talking to everyone.

Want to see this madness in action? Just get trapped in any traffic jam. You will witness one person per call amidst thousands of cars. You will see earplugs, people texting on cell phones, people listening to I-Tunes, and nobody even looking at anyone else. No human face to face contact.

Most commuters ignore public transportation. They would rather be in their private auto-box, in their own little world.

Today, the conservatives are pushing hard to maintain this world in spite of the negative and potentially catastophic environmental and economic ramifications. Radical conservatives point to “inefficient and failing” government at all levels as examples of community or collective action failing. They demonize community and deify the private individual.

Taxes are seen as collective manifestations of government failure. Any sharing of resources is attacked as Un-American.

So, America uses almost 30% of the world’s oil supplies with about 2% of the world’s people. The United States produces a fraction of oil, but uses most of it. Oil companies, greedy for profits, attack any attempt to move away from a fatal reliance on a diminishing oil supply. Meanwhile, the carbon footprint of the American citizen is the highest in the world.

This is all to feed the anti-community movement, the private, me first pathetic motivation of the desperately lonely American.

Alcoholism is at an all time high. Drug use is skyrocketing. Divorces are over 50% of marriages. The society is falling apart.

We are lonely, partly affluent (a diminishing number are while the rest THINK they are) and BORED. Americans are some of the unhappiest people on earth.

That’s right, bored and miserable. Have any of you every sat down to watch cable or satellite T.V., with hundreds of program choices and not found anything that isn’t boring. In third world countries, the array of T.V. choices would be a bounty of interest to most. To Americans, it is boring. Nothing excites us anymore.

The boredom and the loneliness are not coming from anything other than the lack of community and social contact in our lives. We get sick of our children and our spouse because they are sometimes the only ones we come in contact with for weeks!

Homeschooled children usually do well academically, but often are social misfits. As they mature, it is not unusual to see these bright children turn to drugs or crime. Certainly they are bored. They also don’t know how to relate to other human beings! But, more parents are pulling their children out of public and even charter schools to home school them. This further isolates the children of the affluent in cacoons of miserable lonliness.

The reason for all this misery? Lack of community.

The ache for community is obvious if any of you have ever taken the train. Trains, at least in the West, are museums on wheels. They are slow, inefficient and definitely not timely. However, they are one thing: interesting and have a community.

But is not the mechanic s of the train that is interesting. It is the community! It doesn’t take long before you are talking to total strangers, at first about why you are on a museum on wheels, than about family, home, your past, your children; etc. You find yourself talking to perfect strangers for hours on end.

This is different from air travel. Each seat is divided into threes (usually) and you can’t talk to the person behind or in front of you. So, you visit , between bouts of terror, but now very much. Usually everyone is alone with their blackberry or I-Pod, watching a movie or listening to music, or working; ALONE.

A train is way different. You can walk around on a train. You can move from car to car. They have a dining car, even a bar! You talk, you drink, and…..you live, you are part of a community!

No matter what the nihilistic crowd says, no matter how many billions they spend to keep us isolated from each other and line their pockets, people are still people. People need and yearn for community.

My wife grew up in a planned community in the mid-West. The community was organized around common meeting areas with no back yard fences. Everyone was encouraged to go outside in good and bad weather and visit with the neighbors. She talks about it all the time as a great way to grow up.

In my neighborhood, at least at first because the houses were mostly new, nobody had a fence. We had block parties, and all the kids played with each other. Housewives (there were such things because many moms stayed at home) visited with each other in the front or back yard, sitting at tables and sipping coffee for hours. They shared recipes, stories and lived each other troubles and triumphs.

Remember “I Love Lucy”? Two or three families were always together. The “Honeymooners”, same thing, Jackie Gleason was constantly with various neighbors. In fact, I cannot remember a plot when only the main character’s family was involved.

The difference from today? There were ommunites everywhere. People grew up together, matured together, and grew old together.

Nothing is more sad than the tragic isolation of seniors in American today. My father, for example is living in our home, my mother is gone, and his greatest “fear” is going to a rest home. So, he sits, with his dog, incredibly lonely. He doesn’t go to the Senior Citizens Hall, he does go to church once a week, with us, but that is it. Otherwise, unless we call or go by, he has his dog, his T.V., and his house; isolated and alone. And, the loneliness is killing him.

America is on the wrong track in many ways today. The most profound social error that exists is our rejection of community for isolation. The conservative movement is pushing this hard, in the mistaken belief that community is bad, that individualism is good.

Human beings are primates. Primates left alone, will simply wither and die.

We need community to thrive. We need it for happiness, for variety, for life itself.

That is why we need to rid ourselves of the automobile culture. That is why we need to get back on trains, buses or other public ways of getting around. That is why we need to build our communities with common areas, no fences, encouraging us to communicate with others. That is why we need to encourage public education, public parks, public not private everything.
Otherwise, we will have everything, except happiness.