Discuss: Where Have All the Joiners Gone?

I agree we’ll likely need more help from, and enjoy (or tolerate, as each of us is disposed) greater contact with, our neighbors as the century unfolds, though I can imagine a scenario a bit less starkly drawn than Bill McKibben’s, somewhere between everyone having all the fossil-powered machinery they wanted and needing no help, and noboby having any and thus having to rely on massed muscle power. I have a film clip of my grandfather as a 40-something farmer, standing around a steam tractor—a puffbilly—with his neighbors as they threshed his corn, then theirs. The puffbilly would then move on to the next farm. Upping the capital utilization, economists call it, just as in some neighborhoods each block shares a lawnmower. Back to the future?

These kinds of communities where folks pop in to borrow a cup of sugar do exist. I’m quite certain there aren’t many left but I live in one and couldn’t have gotten through the 12 years I have been in VT without my neighbors.

A lot of the connection has to do with the planning of this town. The yards are small—.25 to .5 acre lots, the streets are flanked with sidewalks, the houses have porches, there are barns and not too many garages, there is a farmers market on the green and a bakery where people gather. It’s not uncommon to come home to a pie on your porch or even on your kitchen table. You can call a neighbor and have them feed your dog because your sons hockey game went late. When I found out my sister had brain cancer less than 2 weeks ago we came home to lots of hugs, food and flowers on the porch and dinner invites.
I could go on and on about the value of this kind of community. The shared lawn mowers and snowblowers, the pinch hit babysitting, the carpools, the fire pit gatherings or late night wine and cheese on the porch with baby monitors close by…

I think our future will be more of these communities as we cannot continue to ramp up all of our work and personal responsibilities without a safety net. And with many of us living away from relatives, who provided those things in the past, the need is still there.
I feel really lucky.

Terrific piece.  Add to the topics below the insane addiction to pointless “reality” television, (some, not all) internet surfing, and you get soul-killing isolation through the lost art of visiting with other human beings.  I’m old enough to remember visiting my parent’s friends’ homes just for the heck of it, no big dinner or cocktail party.  We’d just pop by for an hour to visit, maybe even on the front porch or through the car window at the curb.  I have started two neighborhood groups in previous residences. The energy I expended just to get 20 residences to show up with their fruit salads for a neighborhood picnic was tantamount to bringing someone back from the dead, someone who had already been dead for about ten years. Thank you, McKibben for clear and eloquent examination of this collapse in our society.  Keep it up.  We may get a heartbeat yet.

I resisted the computer for years. It has become a love/hate relationship. Yes, connections with many both far and near, but I tell you, I have found how immensely important it is to be with people. Now that I’ve realized, being a widow, and isolating too much on ‘puter, I’ve joined groups. Stretch classes with lots of seniors. They call you ‘dear.’ everyone is ‘dear.’ I did not like it. Suzie Orman, in one of her great presentations, had a woman stand up and say her name. Couldn’t hear her. “Louder” chimed in Suzie. Again the name spoken. “Can’t hear!’ asserted Suzie. “Who are you!’ she declared. She then had everyone get up and proclaim their names to all around them.To declare your name with pride and assertion had an electrifying effect! After that, I realized i needed to stand up to each woman who called me ‘dear.’ and ask to be called by my name.Joyce.  I called them by their names!  I realized how extremely necessary it is to look into eyes, touch a hand, share daily stuff. Are we not dehumanized enough in this society? I could tell psychologically I had become ‘stunted’ by not enough human contact and hearing my name. It is called ‘mirroring’. All the info online, all the chatter cannot give you this. We MUST get back to real interaction.

Well said! Reminds me of my youth on a small farm in S/E Ohio. When my father passed-away and I suddenly became responsible for tillage, planting and harvesting 100 acres of field corn, at age 15.  Neighbors pitched in with tractors to plow, disc, plant and later in the fall, harvest that crop which paid the mortgage for another year.  I doubt that would happen today.

Another place to learn about traditional life and how it was carried out is to visit a “living history museum”. There are many of these across the country, places like Conner Prairie in Indiana, Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, and Howell Farm in New Jersey. These are just a few of the many such outdoor museums that attempt to preserve old ways of meeting humans’ daily needs and living within a traditional community. Not all of us know an Amish farmer, but all of us can patronize one of these great learning institutions designed for ‘everyfamily’ with the intention of preserving old, valuable ways of living. I predict that the coming change will bring an end to the theme park and a new day of respect and importance for the living history museum, the one place where such know-how if being actively preserved!

I’m lucky to spend some time in both rural and city areas each week. I’ve found that folks in the rural areas definitely tend towards more of a community atmosphere. They walk down the gravel roads with their dogs, drop in unannounced to say hello and generally offer a helping hand faster than those in the city. However, there is still a very “independent ego” that permeates through most everyone I know regardless of whether they are in the city or country.

The interesting thing to me is that folks actually think that they are “indepedent” but this I believe is misplaced and illusory. If one stops to consider how absolutely connected and dependent we are on each other we would see that we are less independent now than we were 150 years ago when a family really did know how to survive on their own for the most part. What they couldn’t provide for themselves was provided by a close group of neighbors. Or if you go further back to the Native population they were completely independent as a group with everyone doing “their part” to help the tribe. But now we are dependent on everyone else for almost everything in our life - food, clothes, water, heat, shelter, transportation, etc.

The difference now is that the people we are dependent on are “invisible”. They are the day labor in the fields picking fruit, they are the seamstress in the factory making a coat, they are the engineers that run coal-fired power plants….they are all distant and unknown thanks to our manipulation of natural resources, mass transportation and world economies. We have lost our connection, respect and appreciation for all those people that we are dependent upon…

Our ego masterfully pursuades us into believing that we are independent and that we “dont need our neighbor”. So instead of offering sugar we put up fences for privacy, instead of walking to the farm next door to trade produce for meat we drive by ourself to the grocery store…

Much has been lost now that we no longer see our interconnection with one another. But that can be changed by each of us making a small effort to connect back to the local community…buy local produce at the farmers market, volunteer in the community, start a tool sharing program with neighbors, etc. We dont need to wait until a disaster happens to come together. We need to come together now - in the present moment…

I’m not sure the picture is quite so dismal.  No, I don’t have a close, personal relationship with my neighbors, one of whom informed me that a good neighbor is someone you can run to if your house is on fire.  Not having had a house fire, and working full time, I’ve only had a few conversations with my neighbors.

However, when I have needed a hand around the house when I’m sick, someone to watch my dogs when I travel, a sympathetic ear), I have friends.  They may not be in the same neighborhood, but they serve the purposes many of the postings refer to. 

I also believe churches have grown into places where people find “neighbors.”  They may not need them to harvest food, but people congregate where like-minded people are growing (and sharing) their spirituality.