Community. We bemoan its loss – but what is it, was it, made it, kept it? Myth – or mythtake?
Community means many living as one. Members are bound to one another – sometimes by vows, as in a religious community, sometimes by contiguity, as in a village, sometimes by convenience, history, custom, creed. Community differs from consanguinity: family is a condition, not a choice – like it or not. Community is voluntary. One elects to surrender some portion of one’s individuality to a community’s constraints. A form of bondage, yes; to many, a source of strength.
I grew up in a community. The memory feels quaint as a daguerreotype. Mine was one of the rich families on the hilltop. (This group was even known as “hilltoppers.”) Our core was characterized by race (white, northern European in origin), religion (Protestant), geography, nationality, prejudices. Our local politics eschewed national party labels as divisive, not unlike school teams which label themselves reds and blues. Our borders were somewhat more porous than a monastery’s, more closely resembling overlapping concentric circles, but everybody knew approximately where they fit and what, by virtue of place, they owed their fellows.
Energetic young people like me vowed to flee community at the first opportunity, resenting its obtuseness, intolerance, restraints. On so many matters our neighbors just didn’t get it! Our parents and their pals were stubborn as mules and blind as moles! I intended to be free – “my own man” doing “my own thing” – liberated, original, uncontaminated, and so forth, ad tedium et nauseam, gusted by pubescent grandiloquence. “How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm/ After they’ve seen Paree?”
Having fled community, I returned to it, as a willing cog, for most of my career. I edited the local newspaper, chaired the local hospital, nodded on various boards, sat on daises, attended church (if necessary), played tennis on its courts. Passing houses on familiar roads, I could recite decades of previous owners; in our churchyard introduce you to countless contemporaries – parents, schoolmates, cousins – and how they died. Amidst my community, immersed in it, I knew who I was and where I belonged. Did its shackles chafe? You bet. But did its structure hold me upright, like a cathedral’s buttresses? More than I knew.
Commerce, technology, mobility, communications corroded community. The community of an affinity group or Zoom call or preferred customers club is weak and faux. The easier to exit, the less a community counts. Entangled in community, like Uncle Remus’ briar patch, it hurts to haul yourself out.
Clarity is the unsung beauty of community. You are known – and much of who you are is the person your neighbors know. You don’t have to invent a purpose or assignment. Mayor, milk delivery guy (I’m that old), bookstore owner, parents of an unfortunate child, lawyer, teacher, cop, doctor, editor, each plays their part, supporting, encouraging, scolding one another. Without these guidelines, it may be hard to know why you exist. If you’re reading these lines, you’re part of the community I’ve gathered to console me for the one I lost.
Detached from community, the human animal loses bearings. Herd animals, we need to be heard. The tribal ferocity of the recent election reflected both craving for community and fury at its absence. Howling haters believed they belonged, so what if they made no sense! Well-meaning liberals were caught flat-footed by the depths of this despair. The Republican party needed no platform or policies, they had each other!
Community is a precondition of democracy. Either we learn to live together or … I hate to think.