8. The
Problem
Points to
cover
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The small community holds
the source material for urban expansion, and that human
material would be better served, as would the nation, if
they remained outside the cities.
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Our country as a social
organism is ill. Transmission of our mutual cultural
heritage is fading away in an ocean of uniform Wal-Marts and
McDonald’s.
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World events are so vast
they engender frustration in those who witness them via our
mass media. (“Wallowing in the troubles of five billion
strangers before breakfast.”)
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Well-proportioned life,
complementing basic human nature, is not attainable for a
majority of Americans.
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As the lack of community is
felt more strongly, identification is made with other types
of social groups, leading to a kind of cultural Balkanism,
the larger community fragmenting into special interest
groups.
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Neglect of Small
Communities As a continuing source
of population, and as the social organization which, next to the
family, has been the chief agency for perpetuating and transmitting
human culture, the small community has been of vast import in human
affairs. In the long run the culture of human society could maintain
itself on no higher level than the culture of the small
community.
Yet the small community
has been neglected, robbed, exploited and despised, while society
has paid a very high price for that neglect. Very often even
the neglected thread of community culture has been eliminated by
conquest and destruction. This neglect of a basic cultural unit may
be one of the primary reasons for the failure of human society to
advance with greater surety.
Loss of Community Identity.
Serious as has been this
neglect, a process is under way today perhaps more fundamental and
more serious than anything which has preceded it. The seriousness of
that process may be illustrated from the biologic world. The higher
plants and animals are made up of cells and of tissues and organs,
which co-operate to the common good of the organism. Yet each cell
has its own individual life and carries on its own individual
functions in a little world of its own. To protect that
individuality each cell is surrounded by a cell membrane which
separates it from all others, and tissues and organs are similarly
protected. If the cell walls or tissue walls of the human body
should be dissolved, the body would quickly die.
Similarly, a social
organism, such as a state or a people, is composed of cells,
tissues, and organs; such as individuals, families, communities, and
functional societies. Each of these in its way has its own cell or
tissue wall, its own individual life. Only by maintaining its
separateness and identity can its indigenous culture be kept alive
and transmitted with dependableness from generation to
generation.
Today, as seldom if ever
before, society is dissolving its cell and tissue walls. And as a
result it is losing power to preserve and to transmit its basic
culture. Old social outlooks and convictions and habits that gave
men a sense of validity are fading away, because the social units
through which those values were preserved and transmitted are
disappearing, leaving little but immediate self-expression to give
meaning and a sense of validity to life, and leaving the way open
for the development of crude expressions of group
loyalty.
Frustrations of Building
Communities Where community life is
dissolved and the only remaining sense of social identity is with
vast societies, such as great nations, serious-minded young people
who wish to be socially effective often measure their small powers
against national or world movements, and develop a feeling of
frustration and futility. Where they are members of small
communities they have opportunities to deal with problems within
their grasp. They can be realists and can be effective within the
community, and so can have a feeling of validity which is denied
them when their primary relations are to vast social
aggregations. It is doubtful whether there can be social health
until this process of preservation and transmission of basic culture
is renewed. In the great world disturbances of today, stable seed
beds of fundamental culture are especially necessary.
To what extent is the
integrated community possible and desirable in our present day
society of rapidly shifting populations and multitudinous contacts,
influences, and associations? (Few populations shift faster or have
more contacts than those of colleges, yet integration of college
life is possible, partly because the concept of integration exists
there.)
Our problem is to
recover the essence of the integrated community, and for it to
achieve a set of mores, a code and a temper of inquiry, of
critical-mindedness, of intellectual freedom and of intellectual
interests that will, so far as possible, leave it without inhibiting
barriers.
Today the conditions of
life have changed so that the small community can be culturally
abreast of any other. Is not this a significant fact in social
evolution?
Dogmatism How can there be
community of standards, aims, and purposes, without
regimentation and dogmatism? This is one of the oldest and most
universal issues of community life. Can unity without regimentation
be achieved by eliminating arbitrary and capricious standards
and by seeking universal and fundamental standards?
One of the standards
most difficult to maintain is that of freedom of thought and
inquiry. Everywhere vested interests and dogmatism strive to
entrench themselves by claims to special sacredness, revelation, or
other authority, demanding that people accept the orthodox position
without inquiry. The small community, because of its relative
isolation, often retains the results of indoctrination and
propaganda of an earlier period.
One of the most
disrupting influences in the American community has been the
competition for loyalty of different religious groups. Each has
tried to create dominant loyalty toward itself, somewhat regardless
of loyalty to general community interests. Community possibilities
never can be fully realized so long as any group or groups claim a
monopoly of truth or wisdom. Unity of the whole community can result
only to the extent that claims to unique authority are given
up.
Feuds One of the problems of
village communities the world over has been that of feuds, sometimes
internal and sometimes inter-community. The flux of population
to and within America has largely eliminated traditional feuds. In
this respect the loss of tradition is fortunate. Can traditions of
unity be maintained without also maintaining traditions of discord?
Can the development of community codes and standards contribute to
this end?
Loss of Energy
Reserves In normal primitive life
people commonly had periods of stimulated living alternating with
periods of quiet vegetating. The nervous and emotional reserves
consumed during periods of stress were renewed during quiet periods.
This was the general condition of primitive village life. Under city
conditions, especially under modern city conditions of constant
over-stimulation, there is small opportunity for renewing nervous
and emotional reserves. There is reason to believe that periods of
intense urban life may consume the reserves of human energies to
such a degree as to bring about general decadence. Can development
of small-community living add to its stimulus and interest and yet
give opportunity for renewing these reserves, and might such an
achievement be a major factor in lengthening the period of vital
life of a people? Can the increased stimulation of small-community
life be selective, and can a normal balance be reached between the
accumulation and the consumption of emotional reserves?
The Basic Need It is necessary to
recover or to achieve a community way of life that will make
possible the full and well-proportioned life of its members, and
that is not in fundamental conflict with the makeup of humanity, and
then to find for it a tolerable environment.
The problem of the
community has commonly been viewed in its superficial aspects. Only
slowly is it being seen as dealing with a way of life, rather than
with economic or social arrangements, For instance, Cecil
North, writing in 1931 in his book The Community and Social
Welfare, said:
"The author frankly
shared the opinion that organization and correlation were the prime
needs in American social work. As the study progressed, however,. .
. it became clear that the lack of organization is not the
fundamental weakness....Underlying organization is personal and
professional technique." (Introduction, p. vi.)
Even here he has not
reached the foundation, for underneath personal and professional
technique there must be the slowly developed spirit of community,
which will give vitality to both organization and
technique.
Recreating Interest in
Community Life There are many
aggregations of families in America the members of which have
cravings for community life that are waiting for leadership to turn
them from aggregations into communities. In the course of time
capacity for community participation becomes atrophied from
disuse, and efforts to create community spirit may be met with
initial discouragement. Persistent purpose may be necessary to
re-create an appetite for integrated community life. That
re-development of atrophied community spirit may be one of the
most difficult elements of community undertakings.
That is the work of
community leadership. Every addition to human culture, every
development of good will, courtesy, fair play and dependableness,
originated with pioneers who in their own living demonstrated those
traits. Then gradually other people, seeing and admiring those
traits imitated or deliberately achieved them. By that process
civilization advances. The problem is, how to find or to develop or
to encourage such leadership, and in the leaders, how to turn
disinterest and unconcern into critical but active
interest.
Questions
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Morgan says, “…the small
community has been neglected, beaten, robbed, exploited, and
despised…” Do you agree or disagree? Why or why not?
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Do you think Americans work
more or fewer hours per week than they did five years ago?
Do you work more or fewer hours yourself? What effect does
this have on you? On your family?
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What organizations or
informal groups in your community do you feel loyalty to?
Sports league? Cultural group? Family? Name three more.
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Do you sometimes feel
lonely?
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Would a stronger sense of
community help that feeling?
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