The Death of Community

This one all came to me, fully-formed, in the middle of the night, but I was so enthralled with the glow from the bathroom light beyond, softly and beautifully outlining the  breathing form next to me.  Someone who belongs who a small nation with a very live sense of community.  One that I am considering trying to join.

I've probably largely lost its thread by now, but it started with the silent images -- volume turned off -- from the CNN station.  People on rooftops waving to helicopters that might never come for them.

We are watching the death of a community, of a region.  But it only reminds us --  pushes forward a stark physical image -- of the communities of America that we lost long ago.

I won't catalog the list of changes you probably already know, and can recall for yourself.  It probably peaks most recently in the WalMart-ization of retail America.

It began long before: on Wall Street, Madison Avenue, McDonald's.  Probably with WWII, FDR's national programs -- sorry, Liberals -- and the entire age of the automobile.

Small communities can be cruel, and most of us approved the intrusions into Southern communities that were divided for continued racial advantage.  But they have their own stubborn strength and independence.

But -- all politics being local -- a nation of small, maybe even isolated, communities is harder to whip into an Imperialist frenzy, harder to rally for bogus invasions of oil countries.

I guess I'm beating that old Rousseauian horse, that Jeffersonian vision of America.  Even Lincoln  comes under indictment here.

Oops, I'm overhearing a conversation at the bar -- almost in parallel with my thoughts here, about community and national characters -- think I'll join in before it disappears, rather than try to squeeze out my last couple details -- I think you know where I was going with this.

Let's examine this disaster as a metaphor for a larger destruction we have ALL suffered, and need to heal from.

•  Ecologies, not communities...

  Imgagine a Russian Nesting Doll... you know the type that fit one inside another... ad infinitum...

  That's the model for "community."

  Scale is relative. There are communities within communities all the way up and down the spectrum from families to nations to the global community.

  There is no secret answer. You can't just focus on small communities. Because there are inevitably larger "non-standard" communities (like the Christian community) that are quite easy to whip up into frenzies. We need logic and wisdom at all scales of community.

  Communities must be healthy at all scales if our ecology (meaning the connected communities that all fit together and work together) is to function.

  by Lode Runner on Thu Sep 01, 2005 at 03:15:15 PM PDT

  •  problems of scale

    You have hit on something I think about a lot.

    I don't believe we are anywhere close to understanding how different levels of social organization work (or don't).  We just stumble along as best we can, using wildly inappropriate metaphors and role descriptions at disparate levels, mainly drawing from individual scales of experience.

    "Nation as family." (Lakoff)  Nope.  Sorry George, the nation doesn't function as a family, and no one should think it does, or mistake any of our leaders for familial familiars.

    "Nation as city." (Reagan's Shining City On The Hill). Nope.  The nation thinks about more than pot holes.

    "Nation as body." (The prewar German Social Democrats liked this one).  Nope.  Nations are not subject to "disease" that can be "cured" by drastic "surgery".  Godwin's law doesn't apply if I don't use the word, right?

    "Nation as tribe."  Not this nation: we are at the very least many tribes.

    Is our problem one of reliance on individual executives?  Is the presidency as outmoded a relic of the past as the monarchy?  Bush is simply making the point obvious.

    If we are as a nation a nested set of communities, the executive function should not reside in an individual, but in one among many of the next level down communities/organizations/superorganizations.  

    Our political process should more resemble iterated assembly of supracommunities from subcommunities than elevation of individuals to high office.

    by jotter on Thu Sep 01, 2005 at 03:54:27 PM PDT

    •  Yes... Very good discussion!

      The problem of animalism amongst humans is at the core. Humanism even is at fault per the narcissism here.

      Why would a "body" or a "city" or a "family" be appropriate for a way of envisioning our Nation?

      Why would Darwin's "survival of the fittest" be the right economic model? Why not "cooperation" as a model, since that's really how Nature thrives?

      I tend to be very sceptical of metaphors... icons in general. I very much like Malevich's artwork for this reason. I can understand "forces"... but objects just seem so... "contrived."

      In the end, we're all limited to our own human bodies and limited ways of "seeing" and understanding. We've got eyes and ears. No x-ray vision.

      Anyway, if we're going to use metaphors (and seemingly amongst most folks, it's just inevitable)... I think we should just default on "Nature as the metaphor for everything."

      That way I think we normally just "fit" with our ecology. It's kind of limiting, not too "brave" or pioneering. But I think we Americans would really all benefit from a little "down time" under the lotus tree.

      by Lode Runner on Thu Sep 01, 2005 at 09:50:15 PM PDT

  •  Yes, true

    a very good reminder to me, and yes, for example, several Internet communities have been very important to me personally over the past decade.

    I guess I was thinking lately about the phenomenon of neighbors on the same street not knowing each other, not speaking, and not greeting new arrivals.  Aggravated by a freaky-situation fight in July which alienated the one neighbor I was most connected to, nearly a joint families situation in summertimes.

    Anyway, I just got a little salsa lesson over coffee, while writing this, and it's gonna be real hard going back north to the Land of Ice.

    by HenryDavid on Fri Sep 02, 2005 at 07:12:46 AM PDT

•  Community in New Orleans has not died.

  Not among the poorest of the poor, anyway.

  

  by NYCO on Thu Sep 01, 2005 at 03:27:23 PM PDT

  •  I'm seeing Africa

    in the images from New Orleans -- amazing the strength of persistence of African culture, even centuries later, in USA.  If they are dispersed, I hope those African cultural threads survive or transform into something even stronger.

    You're right -- that type of community is organic and its roots spring up fresh almost anywhere.  I guess I'm referring to the massive dislocation we have yet to see the extent of.

    And yes, we know how the white USA looks at Africa, and at any idea of helping it.  Nada.  But maybe neglect will prove a minor salvation (???) in both cases?  Interference from the Great White Father in Washington has, well, a spotty record of beneficial outcomes, no?  Better some places remain free of cultural invasion, because they are simply off the resource-exploitation maps of Cheney & Co.?

    by HenryDavid on Fri Sep 02, 2005 at 07:19:33 AM PDT