New Orleans, Let's Roll
Cicero wonders whether in America the bonds of community have weakened -- by which he means real communities of people who share the same space. And while Cicero notes some beautiful stories have risen from the disaster, of average people heroically helping neighbors and strangers, he also wonders whether New Orleans didn't unravel as it did in part because America's social fabric has weakened.
That certainly is true in my case. Many of the people I have been closes to, and even most intimate with, are people I know primarily on the Internet. Most of my oldest friends live in far-flung places.
By contrast, I look at the people I work with, and I couldn't tell you where most of them go home to at the end of the night. And where I go home to, I have a less-than-passing acquaintance with my neighbors. I only know one family by name on my block. Most of the rest are renters. Most come and go in less than a year, but some have been there as long as I have. Yet we nod to one another, and know nothing about each other's lives.
If a catastrophe like the New Orleans hurricane befell my community, I can tell you what would happen: People like us, with cars and plastic money, would be able to get away if we chose to. The old, the obese poor, the sick, and the stubborn would be stuck there and suffer. Some others would stay to guard their movable property or their drug dealing business; some would feel opportunistic and loot the houses like mine.
Cicero again:
He seems to be describing a suburban lifestyle. I was raised in a sort of suburb in the 1960s, but I haven't lived in one in a long, long time. Recently Luke and Amy and I visited Amy's co-worker in her new suburban development home -- a classic setting of treeless half-acre lots along loop roads with houses assembled from the same materials in one of four designs. We felt strange and uncomfortable. The place was a paradise for children -- the children were everywhere around us, a gnat-swarm of 8-year-old that swept from yard to yard, pool to kitchen to basement family room. But the adults seemed somehow juvenile, too. They were the same age as us and worked in the same sorts of places, but they seemed to have been trapped in that playpen, too, as though the entire work were built by Fisher Price.
I felt even less sure of their virtues and civility than that of my neighbors. At least among the criminals and the husltlers and the working poor you know the ground rules. They have no illusions about themselves, or about you. But even on a short visit among the suburbs, we felt the tensions tremble under their surface. We felt rifts of the bad decisions people there perhaps had made with their spouses and their neighbor's spouses. I suspect the only "community" there was the common interest of choosing to devote yourself to attaining suburban development living. I wondered, if a New Orleans calamity had befallen the loop road neighborhoods, whether the difference between their disintegration and that of my inner city block would have been no more than the difference between the food capacity in the refrigerators.
Again, I think he's right, and I also think he's right, when seeking where that community spirit drained off to, to look in part to the fragmentation and false intimacy of the vitrual worlds.
But the situation in the American past was complex. We've always been a centrifugal society, overall. William Penn tried the social experiment of settling his Quakers in villages, the better to keep them in association, only to find they as quickly dispersed into their landholdings and got as far away from one another as possible. In 1830, deTocqueville noted a tendency of Americans to form cliques, rather than communities:
And from there, my thought turned down a corridor Cicero did not consider in his essay (perhaps he thought of it, too, but there's only so many ways you can go at once in a piece of writing). I thought about the great outcry for the biggest possible federal power to come and rescue the city and its inhabitants.
So many keystrokes have been expended in bitter disputes over which agency or which political power failed to rescue the city, that it took someone like Cicero to even bring up the matter of community and people's reliance on one another. And even then many people will certainly regard his mention of it suspiciously, as though he were trying to shift blame onto the victims and away from whatever mighty agency is under fire from its political enemies.
Yet the idea that an invocation of community would be strange to us, is itself strange. We praise the people who pull together, but regard the fact that they have to do so as another sign that the government let us down.
De Tocqueville foresaw all this, too. He compared America, where a great many people who were powerless on their own joined forces to accomplish something together -- be it improving their towns or relieving their sufferings. They formed associations for the purpose, and associations grew naturally in the fertile soil of self-conscious communities.
In France, he noted, the same things would have been done by an appeal to a few powerful and wealthy aristocrats. The people would have no thought of accomplishing "great undertakings" on their own. He also noted that the French did not mind this in the least, and did not envy, or even understand, the American way of doing things. Indeed, it took de Tocqueville himself some time and effort to get used to it:
The French were content that "the more enfeebled and incompetent the citizens become, the more able and active the government ought to be rendered in order that society at large may execute what individuals can no longer accomplish."
"They believe this answers the whole difficulty," de Tocqueville wrote, "but I think they are mistaken."
Does this descrption of popular attitudes sound like Europe today -- with "bureaucrats" in place of "aristocrats" -- as well as France in 1830? The question Cicero seems to ask is, is America today more like Europe than like America in 1830?
De Tocqueville foresaw that the United States government's power would necessarily grow as economies grew more complex, and that this was a self-perpetuating development: "The more [government] stands in the place of associations, the more will individuals, losing the notion of combining together, require its assistance." And that, he said, was a great threat.
Also in the news today, and likely to be buried beneath hurricane reports, the winning design was chosen for the Flight 93 memorial. Why do we revere the story of that doomed flight? In part, because it reminds us that the ability to form ourselves into a community is not lost. In a few minutes -- literally in the last few minutes of life -- this random collection of Americans formed itself into a community with one purpose. They set out to do the only right thing that remained to be done, however hard it was. And if they did not save themselves, they saved many, many lives elsewhere.
We live in an era where networked communities are on the rise. But there are logical limits to sharing values with people who you don’t rub elbows with, who are far-flung and offline in the event of catastrophe. Whether we know it or not, we’re reliant on our communities who are there in a pinch, in close proximity. Sometimes it’s to borrow a cup of sugar. Other times it’s to have the neighbor watch your kid so you can deal with an emergency. And sometimes the community is essential for dealing with outright catastrophe.
That certainly is true in my case. Many of the people I have been closes to, and even most intimate with, are people I know primarily on the Internet. Most of my oldest friends live in far-flung places.
By contrast, I look at the people I work with, and I couldn't tell you where most of them go home to at the end of the night. And where I go home to, I have a less-than-passing acquaintance with my neighbors. I only know one family by name on my block. Most of the rest are renters. Most come and go in less than a year, but some have been there as long as I have. Yet we nod to one another, and know nothing about each other's lives.
If a catastrophe like the New Orleans hurricane befell my community, I can tell you what would happen: People like us, with cars and plastic money, would be able to get away if we chose to. The old, the obese poor, the sick, and the stubborn would be stuck there and suffer. Some others would stay to guard their movable property or their drug dealing business; some would feel opportunistic and loot the houses like mine.
Cicero again:
Our modern culture rewards buying houses with tall fences that keep communities disjointed. It rewards big screen TVs and TiVo to be entertained on command. It rewards anonymous shopping at Wal-Mart, checking out foreign merchandise from an anonymous cashier. Our modern culture rewards walking around with an iPod, shutting out the people around us. It uses art, cuisine and historical cultures as backdrops for tourist brochures. Our modern culture rewards spending most of our time alone, even when we’re on the phone, chatting on the Internet, or playing networked video games. It rewards a group of teenage girls I saw the other day at a restaurant booth: four girls, all of them on cell phones talking to someone else, while eating their burgers. Alone together.
He seems to be describing a suburban lifestyle. I was raised in a sort of suburb in the 1960s, but I haven't lived in one in a long, long time. Recently Luke and Amy and I visited Amy's co-worker in her new suburban development home -- a classic setting of treeless half-acre lots along loop roads with houses assembled from the same materials in one of four designs. We felt strange and uncomfortable. The place was a paradise for children -- the children were everywhere around us, a gnat-swarm of 8-year-old that swept from yard to yard, pool to kitchen to basement family room. But the adults seemed somehow juvenile, too. They were the same age as us and worked in the same sorts of places, but they seemed to have been trapped in that playpen, too, as though the entire work were built by Fisher Price.
I felt even less sure of their virtues and civility than that of my neighbors. At least among the criminals and the husltlers and the working poor you know the ground rules. They have no illusions about themselves, or about you. But even on a short visit among the suburbs, we felt the tensions tremble under their surface. We felt rifts of the bad decisions people there perhaps had made with their spouses and their neighbor's spouses. I suspect the only "community" there was the common interest of choosing to devote yourself to attaining suburban development living. I wondered, if a New Orleans calamity had befallen the loop road neighborhoods, whether the difference between their disintegration and that of my inner city block would have been no more than the difference between the food capacity in the refrigerators.
Over the years I have become suspicious of what we are building in place of traditional communities. We hear the word ‘community’ a lot, especially in buzz-terms of social networking. But I think a simple definition of a community is that it is a collection of trusted people you can rely on in whatever life throws at you, no matter how bad. And they rely upon you too, regardless of your ‘culture.’ It’s an old concept that is fraying in the face of modernity’s demand that we socialize virtually, even though so many essential bonds are severed in the process.
Again, I think he's right, and I also think he's right, when seeking where that community spirit drained off to, to look in part to the fragmentation and false intimacy of the vitrual worlds.
But the situation in the American past was complex. We've always been a centrifugal society, overall. William Penn tried the social experiment of settling his Quakers in villages, the better to keep them in association, only to find they as quickly dispersed into their landholdings and got as far away from one another as possible. In 1830, deTocqueville noted a tendency of Americans to form cliques, rather than communities:
The Americans, who mingle so readily in their political assemblies and courts of justice, are wont carefully to separate into small distinct circles in order to indulge by themselves in the enjoyments of private life. Each of them willingly acknowledges all his fellow citizens as his equals, but will only receive a very limited number of them as his friends or his guests. This appears to me to be very natural. In proportion as the circle of public society is extended, it may be anticipated that the sphere of private intercourse will be contracted; far from supposing that the members of modern society will ultimately live in common, I am afraid they will end by forming only small coteries.
And from there, my thought turned down a corridor Cicero did not consider in his essay (perhaps he thought of it, too, but there's only so many ways you can go at once in a piece of writing). I thought about the great outcry for the biggest possible federal power to come and rescue the city and its inhabitants.
So many keystrokes have been expended in bitter disputes over which agency or which political power failed to rescue the city, that it took someone like Cicero to even bring up the matter of community and people's reliance on one another. And even then many people will certainly regard his mention of it suspiciously, as though he were trying to shift blame onto the victims and away from whatever mighty agency is under fire from its political enemies.
Yet the idea that an invocation of community would be strange to us, is itself strange. We praise the people who pull together, but regard the fact that they have to do so as another sign that the government let us down.
De Tocqueville foresaw all this, too. He compared America, where a great many people who were powerless on their own joined forces to accomplish something together -- be it improving their towns or relieving their sufferings. They formed associations for the purpose, and associations grew naturally in the fertile soil of self-conscious communities.
In France, he noted, the same things would have been done by an appeal to a few powerful and wealthy aristocrats. The people would have no thought of accomplishing "great undertakings" on their own. He also noted that the French did not mind this in the least, and did not envy, or even understand, the American way of doing things. Indeed, it took de Tocqueville himself some time and effort to get used to it:
The first time I heard in the United States that a hundred thousand men had bound themselves publicly to abstain from spirituous liquors, it appeared to me more like a joke than a serious engagement, and I did not at once perceive why these temperate citizens could not content themselves with drinking water by their own firesides. I at last understood that these hundred thousand Americans, alarmed by the progress of drunkenness around them, had made up their minds to patronize temperance.
The French were content that "the more enfeebled and incompetent the citizens become, the more able and active the government ought to be rendered in order that society at large may execute what individuals can no longer accomplish."
"They believe this answers the whole difficulty," de Tocqueville wrote, "but I think they are mistaken."
Does this descrption of popular attitudes sound like Europe today -- with "bureaucrats" in place of "aristocrats" -- as well as France in 1830? The question Cicero seems to ask is, is America today more like Europe than like America in 1830?
De Tocqueville foresaw that the United States government's power would necessarily grow as economies grew more complex, and that this was a self-perpetuating development: "The more [government] stands in the place of associations, the more will individuals, losing the notion of combining together, require its assistance." And that, he said, was a great threat.
Among the laws that rule human societies there is one which seems to be more precise and clear than all others. If men are to remain civilized or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased.
Also in the news today, and likely to be buried beneath hurricane reports, the winning design was chosen for the Flight 93 memorial. Why do we revere the story of that doomed flight? In part, because it reminds us that the ability to form ourselves into a community is not lost. In a few minutes -- literally in the last few minutes of life -- this random collection of Americans formed itself into a community with one purpose. They set out to do the only right thing that remained to be done, however hard it was. And if they did not save themselves, they saved many, many lives elsewhere.
Labels: America
