Discuss: Where Have All the Joiners Gone?

Part of the journey from here to there will be the revitalization of our existing communities, gradually evolving them to something more worthy of the name.  This is going on right now, as books like Bowling Alone, Going Local, and Smart Communities attest.  In Los Angeles, I’m part of the Neighborhood Council system, in which I’ve encountered a wide network of people learning how to reconnect and create participative democracy.

I’ve also started a project to examine the “inner nature” of community—the aspects that distinguish thriving, energized communities from dysfunctional ones.  I invite all to visit http://dwigki.wikispaces.com.  I welcome comments and contributors.

I think Mike makes a good point that the comment thread has lost.  I do not believe the article is trying to make a statement about individuals needing to become more dependent on each other per say, but rather shifting the dependence we share to local places.  Biological systems at any level are co-dependent, but the society we have built has made it such that we are dependent on people (and items) so far away that we are vulnerable to a lack of sustainability if the networks we use to communicate collapse.  The article therefore focuses on keeping the dependence we already exhibit in impersonal, distant ways, and relocating it so that any small “pocket” society can function independently.  Individual people do not need to be independent, but “small” (defined as local, or at least not globalized) communities should be independent so that any one community is not crucial to the survival of another.  The sacrifices that will supposedly come from this (a loss of certain goods and services that are rare or extoic to a locale) should be more than made up when we realize the benefits of human interaction most of the thread posters here have mentioned.

This is a great, yet brief, article because of how much focus it puts on the importance of cohesive communities. For a more extensive look at the myriad of benefits that comes from a close knit community Eric Brende’s Better Off is a poignant piece of inspiration. It is a leap from MIT to Machine Free that he does a great job of describing.

Bill, I see this disease of individualism in the organizations I work with. We have no idea of how to work together. Most people think that working together means that everyone does what they are told. What it really means is using everyone skills and experience to there best purpose and highest good. We have no idea how to do that.

When I tell leaders that I can help them get their people together to happily make decisions and plan projects that they will then happily implement, they look at me like I’m selling snake oil. They simply can’t envision how it could happen.

We simply do not understand how to live or work together and what’s even sadder, we don’t even believe that it’s possible.

I grew up in south central Idaho.  During my early school years we got out for what was called “harvest vacation”.  School kids worked picking potatoes.  It was about learning how to work, getting the crop in and earning a little money for school clothes.  We learned a lot about honor as well.  We were on the honor system, reporting how many sacks we had picked.  The next morning if the numbers reported and the numbers in the cellar didn’t match we got a lecture from Annie Mackey, the farmer wife that ran the pickers.  Technology took away a valuable cultural event.

yay, bill McKibben!!!  yes, the line,"your neighbors should be your insurance policy,” came to me a couple of years ago, and people like mr. M.are helping to reinstate Community! i’ll shortly be moving, and i’ve decided to make an effort to get to know the people on my street - going door-to-door if i have to; risking some slamming doors…

While I agree with McKibben on his essential points, I have to point out that this isn’t a city vs. rural dichotomy, as it seems to be implied by many of those who have posted. Some of the most neighborly communities can be found in our vibrant cities.  Many neighborhoods of NYC, for example, have high levels of community cohesion, and I challenge anyone to disregard the closeness of Latino neighborhoods across this nation.  We are likely describing mainstream suburban and exurban communities but positing them and their past rural counterparts as the only “us” of the U.S.  We may be out of touch but “we” is not everyone.

It’s not just the fossil fuels - it’s the structure of the economy.  The “global marketplace” has replaced the local marketplace.  Cheap energy is a big part of the reason, but advancing technology has been essential also.  And advancing technology may permit us to continue creating sources of cheap energy.  Greater than the problem of loss of opportunities for bonding is the loss of decentralized control of resources.  Back before the global marketplace supplanted self-reliant communities, we had a clear economic stake in local sustainability.  No more.  And since everything is local somewhere, it’s essential that we deliberately restructure our global economy to return power to genuine local marketplaces.  One way to do this is to create a new kind of money that is both strictly local and more valuable than national/global currencies.  To read more about this visit the link below.

http://homepage.mac.com/forever.net