A Sense of Community

[puppetmaker]

Passing through the kitchen getting Caroline some water, I heard the beginning of an NPR article. It was Dick Meyer, who works for NPR, talking about his new book Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium. Now remember that I only heard the beginning of the article where he was talking about how personal choice in the 1960s over traditional or family choice in combination with the technological revolution of the rest of the century had destroyed our sense of community.

I have to politely disagree. I think that what community was in 1950 and what community is in 2008 are very different but I don't think it is destroyed. If anything it has gotten broader.

In the 1950s the community to which you belonged was rather limited as communication was rather limited. In the 1960 the options for people started opening up. You didn't have to go into your parent's profession. You could get an education and do what interested you. Not that a lot of people didn't go into their parent's profession and were perfectly happy with that choice but they knew it was not their only choice.

We now talk about the global community, which I can't find much reference to before 1960. Our "us vs. them" became more of a "we" as it was realized that this big ball we live on is rather interconnected. This has become even more evident as we continue to learn about the planet that we live on.

Then there are the communities that we can now form because of the Internet. I belong to groups that span the globe. We have members in all different time zones but we have common interests that we enjoy discussing with each other. Then there is my web log community. And I do think of it as a form of community that I belong to.

There are my convention communities. These are conventions that I go to and catch up with people maybe one or twice a year but we have a strong community going at those conventions. We support each other in the good times and bad over the internet when we don't see each other. (Waves at my convention buddies).

Has small town US virtually disappeared? Probably. There are still versions of it out there but now with the various forms of information that can be gotten, these towns no longer live in the isolation that they did in the 1950s. Nor can any country live in isolation anymore really. Some have tried but eventually find themselves turning to the global stage to help them.

I don't think we have lost our sense of community more changed what we consider to be our community.

I am grateful for the various communities that I belong to.

Comments

[rosepurr.livejournal.com]

Interesting perspective. I agree with you.

I am from small town America, and yes, there was tight knit "community." But if you didn't fit in to the strict hierarchy established by it then you were ostracized. 50 years ago, that often meant that you had no other options. Now, people leave or find communities online or, at the least, have access to communications that let them recognize that they are not alone. It's amaziningly empowering.

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

I have to agree. I think when I hear people being nostalgic for "the way things where", they forget about how ridged the system was. If you were not just like everyone else, they wanted very little to do with you.

I live in a village on a street that pretty much I have met everyone who lived in within a two block radius. So I know who my neighbors are. I also know that they find what Peter does for a living rather strange (it is a lot of ex military and blue collar folk) but I think they are more understanding now than they would have been 60 years ago.

[rosepurr.livejournal.com]

As a child, I had the misfortune of moving into small, insular towns. As an outsider, I have a rather skewed opinion of the "good old days." It was a relief to move to a larger city where I was just one of several newcomers in my classes, church, and neighborhood, as opposed to my experiences being "the new girl" even after several years in the same small town.

[baxaphobia.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with you. I live in a small town and without the ability to extend my need for communities similar to myself I think I would suffocate. I like my town. People know me and it gives me comfort. But there is so much more opportunity to find other interests, others like oneself and to expand.

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

Exactly. We are no longer stuck with just the people within our towns. I like the people in my town. I know a bunch of them especially the business owners which is more than I did (except a couple of businesses that I frequented) in Atlanta.

[flutterbychild.livejournal.com]

I love the fact that I can be dating a girl that lives across the country...although I really want to go visit, and soon!

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

Without the Internet I would not be with Peter. The Internet gave us a chance to get to know each other before we got together. We met in Real Life before we started talking on the computer but the Internet allowed us to fall in love with each other.

[rosepurr.livejournal.com]

Jim and I had a LDR for most of our dating life and some of our married life. The internet and cell phones made it possible. We couldn't have afforded our relationship back when long distance phone calls were so expensive!

[flutterbychild.livejournal.com]

Yay for teh internets!

[welfy.livejournal.com]

Without the internet, I wouldn't have my husband either! We initially found each other online and then met in real life by chance about a week after that. The internet was good for nurturing our relationship since we were both a bit shy at the time.

[jenny_evergreen]

I agree with you.

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

How are you doing? I have been thinking about you and the boys.

[jenny_evergreen]

We're hangin' in there. :)

[amarafox.livejournal.com]

One of my aunts laments that society is falling to shambles because people leave small towns and so on.

Even though sometimes I feel it is a curse (I've never lived anywhere for long periods of time to set down roots), it's is also a blessing and I am glad to have made friends and connections everywhere.

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

I think you have hit on something there.

We don't stay within shouting distance of where we were born. We have the option to move and set up somewhere else more so than every before.

I think that changed in the 1920s in America during the depression where people went where they could find work which was not necessarily where they grew up. Then with the world war and the GI bill, options to change where you lived became something you did because you wanted to rather than something you had to do for the survival of you and your family.

[trinalin.livejournal.com]

Count me as another small town person. My two best friends are from Chicago and Detroit and I met them on the Internet. There really aren't a whole lot of people in town whose interests are in line with mine, so it's nice to have my extended communities from the Internet. I know of some homosexual people in and from my town who are not "out" in town, but are "out" in their other communities. My sister, I'm sure, shocked quite a few locals when she went to her 10th HS reunion and brought her girlfriend (now wife). She no longer lives in town and I think would be stifled if she did.

Things I love about my town are due to its small town nature. Things I hate about my town are due to the same thing. :-) (Do you know how boring the ballot is during primary elections when you're a mugwump or democrat in this town? Heh.)

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with you about that love/hate relationship with small towns. The politics will cause much consternation if you let it. *grin*

[libra-dragon.livejournal.com]

I don't think we have lost our sense of community more changed what we consider to be our community.

I whole heartedly agree with you and a lot of things the others have stated as well.

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

I was just struck on how wrong I thought his statement was. Having read the interview and about the book, I think I am going to read a copy of it but I can't say that I agree with it.

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

I think this guy needs to read more Arthur C. Clarke...

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

I think you may be right. Clarke did have a global POV

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

I read his The View From Serendip recently (essays from the 60s and 70s) and was struck by how close to the 'Net age he got in his descriptions of a more-connected world, thanks to computers and satellites. And he was one of the earliest non-military users of e-mail. Some of that's reprinted in The Odyssey File, his correspondence with Peter Hyams as Hyams prepped the film adaptation of 2010. Even the reprinted silly stuff is worth it: "I'm off to see Clash of the Titans. Not very good and I've seen it before, but I'm a sucker for this kind of nonsense."

[ghilledhu.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, the place I moved into (Hartford's West End) is still a very traditional small-town style community. We're learning that everyone knows everyone else, most people are very involved in community matters, and if they like you the community can be very helpful. We'd discovered this first in our next-door neighbors and are learning it extends to the community as a whole.

It's a big change from the crowded anonymity of the metro-New York area.

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

I have to agree. It is a big change. Living in Atlanta and then moving to a village was a bit of a culture shock. But less so for me because I spent summers in a small town on my grandma's farm. So I grew up in big cities but knew about small town USA.

[ghilledhu.livejournal.com]

The funny thing? I grew up next to a cow farm! But while we were friendly with some of our neighbors I was in general a solitary child so I never got that sense of community. It's an interesting experience to be getting it now.

[jendaby.livejournal.com]

I think that now we can be moe selective about who is in our own community - and that has its own merits and flaws. I have so many people that I consider my real community - my friends whose opinions matter the most. They are excellent, and the internet makes it possible for me to keep in touch with them - in fact, the internet made it possible for me to meet several of them in the first place. The problem is that, because many of them are in the UK, Australia, etc., I rarely see them.

i suppose it is weird how I take my kids to the playground and all of the parents keep to themselves and don't really interact. I have occasionally had other mothers approach me, and upon realizing that I did not subscribe to their religion (they always open with "what church do you attend?") generally don't talk to me. It would be cool to have more of the parents I know be nearer to us.

But, yeah - convention communities? Rock! And I love it when we do get to see our international friends. I guess, though, that there is this sense that one is supposed to be friends with the neighbors and know everyone on the block, and that is just not how I am wired, because the only way I have ever known how to make friends outside of school, work or conventions is online.

And I am grateful to know you and to be able to see you a few times a year while the kids play, and to be able to keep up with you online in-between. :)

[jafinnola.livejournal.com]

OMG! Is that Seth Green??
I LOVE him.

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

"We have members in all different time zones but we have common interests that we enjoy discussing with each other"

But does anyone really care what these people living in "Fake Time" think?*G*

***

I wouldn't have my one of my best friends if it wasn't for the internet, so - right there with you.

[lyonessnyc.livejournal.com]

While I grew up in NYC, our neighborhood in northeast Queens was our own version of the "small town." Also, the SCA is very much its own small town, spread out over baronies and kingdoms. It's gotten big enough where not everybody knows (or knows *of*) everybody anymore, but it certainly was a figure of a small town when I was growing up in it.

[jafinnola.livejournal.com]

Well, as you know, there are people out there who do not want to broaden the meaning of community or family or marriage. These are people who would love to think that it's still 1957.