Community failure: our worsening morass
I thoroughly enjoyed this column, and fully support what Culture Change is trying to do, so I thought I would give you a little weekend reading and pass it along to you. Be sure to check out the other articles Jan Lundberg has written while you’re at it.
Community failure: our worsening morass
by Jan Lundberg
Loss of community cohesion and mutual support is the fatal self-inflicted wound of the dominant culture. To hear most commentators and politicians, we have so good a system and a caring, competitive citizenry, that we must simply agree on how we might extract more energy for continued mass production. Or how to assure that our corporate empire is not compromised by embarrassing torture policies. Neither of these debates addresses the source of the underlying problem we’re immersed in.
The increasingly obvious failure of the U.S. and its global model is on many fronts, but it is not primarily technological or institutional. Rather, it is in human relations on the individual, family and neighborhood levels. If those levels were operating with true community (and not structured to disregard women, blacks and natives), then the greater levels of national and international would be taken care of.
While population growth seems to be the top threat facing the world today — or, at least it exacerbates all threats to humanity and life on Earth — we can go beyond “overpopulation results in destruction of community.” For perhaps overpopulation itself can be addressed by re-evaluating human relations in the community context.
It would be futile to try to solve overpopulation or restore community without dealing with the dominance of commerce and profit. The market has taken over our lives, and it’s not just in the U.S. or the last few decades. Writing in 1933 in his novel Fruits of the Earth, Frederick Philip Grove described the effects of consuming and competitiveness earlier in the century in Canada’s newly farmed western prairie. He traced the trend of lack of community to growing “progress”:
“This orgy of spending had been enormously stimulated by the easy money of the flax boom; and the rate of expenditure was hardly retarded by the subsequent disaster of the slump. A standard of expenditure once arrived at is not so easily abandoned as established.”
There is a creative nonprofit group called Community Solutions, tucked away in the little college town of Yellow Springs, Ohio. One could almost assign them the name Culture Change, and just as reasonably call Culture Change (the group publishing this essay) Community Solutions, because we have a similar analysis and set of “solutions” to society’s ills involving energy and ways of living. The common denominator is that fostering community is essential for changing our culture. I would bet that both organizations strongly hold that top-down governmental “solutions” are in no one’s interest except corporate industrialists’ and bureaucratic technocrats’. After all, these outsiders are not of our respective communities.
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If you keep the $upport coming, we’ll keep publishing and moving ahead with our local self-reliance projects. Our PayPal button for secure online donating is on our website, or send a check via snail mail to the address below. Thank you.
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The founder and publisher of Culture Change is Jan Lundberg, who was a well-known oil-industry analyst when he changed over to nonprofit environmental activism in 1988. His work has since been profiled in The Washington Post, Sun Magazine, Associated Press, and he has broadcast his ideas on CBS Radio Network, NPR, and elsewhere. He is available for presentations and will take public transportation: “Car free for 19 years!”
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Post Feedback
Great article Chris! It seems as though this may be a large part of the “sounds like there’s more to it than just moving everything 100 ft. closer to our front doors.” statement that JCS made in the blog “Schools by, and for, their neighbourhood?” last night.
A change in culture is definitely needed in North America these days. My major worry is similar to what Jan so eloquently stated: “Will it have to reach collapse and also kill the host?” Will we have to face a disaster before things will really change? I hope not and that is what I’m hoping groups like Scaledown and Community Solutions can help influence these issues before it is too late. Then again some people will argue that there is nothing wrong with the current culture, it is just ‘progress’.
This statement he makes about his home town is a very telling own:
“So, where’s community? Arcata is further and further away from accomplishing it, thanks to gentrification and the dominance of the merchant class in the town’s politics.”
While I do agree that we need a return of residents to the core of the city, we need to be very careful what we wish for as gentrification has it negative affects as well.
I agree, RY, it is a great article.
Unfortunately, I also agree that the majority of folks in this day and age will wait until near-societal collapse before they start believing that change is necessary. I believe it is our job to reach as many people as we can prior to when that collapse happens, and then be the prepared ones to help out after it has occured. Which brings me to my next story…
A close friend of mine has always been into alternative energy and gardening. He used to collect rainwater to run his washing machine and flush his toilets. Together, we’d daydream about joining the back-to-the-land movement and living a totaly sustainable, off the grid life. We even went so far as doing field trips to off the grid houses and looking at land in and around Essex county.
This friend of mine, however, is a wee bit paranoid. He always posed the scenario that we could go ahead and do this - do it incredibly well and live sustainably - but when the collapse comes we will lose it all to some thug with a gun.
He has since given up on the dream and went back to sleepwalking through life with the rest of the west. I don’t give up that easily, but his worry will always be present. Yet, I feel that we would be doing a disservice if we took the knowledge we’ve accumulated and ignored it.
We must move forward. See what happens when you take Morphius’ red pill?
To look at things from a different perspective, it is my belief that even the economy is bleak in and around Windsor-Essex this presents a tremendous opportunity for Windsor to lead the way in planning for/in decline and true scaling down of all aspects of life here. Although it is not ideal that the scaling down has started with the economy, it is interesting that most social actions/reactions are motivated by the bottom line of money (i.e. resources). Things aren’t going to happen overnight in Windsor, but with the great ideas being developed here and passed on to the community and government, the changes will hopefully come. Windsor is in a unique position to be able to lead the way toward sustainable living in Ontario. It is my belief that this is just the beginning of a environmental, social and economic reorganization of everything we know as human beings.
It seems that lots of ideas here are put forth with the expectation that the Local/Provincial/Federal governments should be the parties responsible for implementing them. How many truly grassroots movements have been coordinated and carried out within the City? I’m not aware of very many. Just for clarification I’m speaking of the type of asset-based community organizing, development and action that Jim Diers has completed and promoted in Seattle and cities across North America. Just curious if anyone knows of any community organizers that are working on a multi-community scale in Windsor.
Alas, our whole system, economic and political, is based on the concept of constant growth. To admit that we have reached a zenith and that going forward we will have to downsize and reduce would be damaging to the careers of those that adhere to growth as progress.
There really isn’t much point in looking to the government to help because as I just said they cannot admit that the current system is flawed. They will subsidise gasoline and a dozen other wasteful products/industries before they subsidise the development of truely sustainable ways and means of living and working.
So the economic collapse continues south of the border…with these financial GIANTS succumbing to their greed, it seems that the American people are going to be forced to become more locally sustainable. When will the current social anxiety being felt across the US turn into social unrest? No one knows for sure, but it will happen if things aren’t soon turned around completely. All empires fall.
If Canadians think that we are completed insulated from what is happening to our south, we better wake up and learn from other’s mistakes before it is too late for us as well. Current events are going to affect the world on a scale larger than anyone can anticipate. This may be just the beginning. How scary of a thought is that?
Sadly Chris, your friend isn’t that paranoid. From the first oil crisis in the 70’s when OPEC raised the price of oil through to now, a group of us have had these self sufficient conversations about living off the grid, growing our own food and being independently sustainable. The “what if.” question over the years always came up, what if society collapses how will you protect and defend yourself from a hungry mob, when they find out that you have all the good stuff. It comes down to the gun!
When societies start to collapse, there appears to be more call for law and order but when there is to much demand and the police can’t be everywhere, vigilantism starts, from vigilantism we move to out and out anarchy. Gangs have already started moving into the abandon and scarcely populated U.S. suburbs, along with squatters and the poor, setting up their own rule and social networks of scavenging and theft, those suburbanites remaining have armed themselves because those cities are facing massive increases in fuel prices, police are limiting their patrol areas via police car.
I agree with Jan and RY above, I think we will almost have to face total collapse before we change our ways of living. How many in Windsor abruptly changed their driving habits and car use when oil almost reached $160 a barrel, some but not the majority. I was in Food Basics yesterday and when in the checkout line, I always observe what people have in their shopping carts. Here is one family that I observed, the first cart was filled to the brim with bottled water flats, I counted 12, the second cart was nothing but soda pop, to many to count, the third cart was mostly junk food and snacks and finally the fourth cart was nothing more than processed foods and frozen foods!
I followed them out to the parking lot, just curious to what they were driving, it was a Ford Navigator!
No, we won’t change until we absolutely have to, then only begrudgingly, that’s if everyone is doing it!
People have always responded to sudden changes, events or jolts. Plagues. Wars. Famines. Etc. Yet, here we still are.
Unlike Kunstler, I don’t just believe that humans are capable of amazing change. I know that they are capable of amazing change.
So it begins!
Armed Robbers, Carjackers Gain in Portugal as Economy Weakens
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=aGVzvRT3fxjo&refer=economy
Attorney-General Fernando Pinto Monteiro said Aug. 26 police will create new units to fight the crime spree, which some law enforcement officials say reflects the deteriorating economy.
“The economic crisis, with the increase in poverty, greater difficulty in making ends meet, leads many people to engage in crime who wouldn’t otherwise,” said Pedro do Carmo, assistant director of the Judicial Police, Portugal’s equivalent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the U.S.
Per-capita income is about 27 percent below the European Union average, making Portugal the poorest of the 15 EU members before former communist countries joined. The Bank of Portugal in July cut its forecast for economic growth this year to 1.2 percent, less than the January forecast of 2 percent. Unemployment stands at 7.3 percent…”
`Organized, Growing’
Crimes in August included jewelry-store raids, one leading to the killing of a shop owner, and a gang blasting open an armored car carrying cash.
“Violent crime is organized and growing,” said Angelo Correia, a former interior minister and a member of the Social Democrats, the biggest opposition party. The image of a safe country is outdated, he said. “It was safe. Not anymore.”
I’m not sure what the point of posting that article was? That fear sells newspapers? That the Portuguese government is unwilling to change polices that are holding the Portugal economy back?
When my father purchased his land up north he joked that all that land could be used for fresh water and agriculture to sustain the family should the need ever arise.
Last year he began constructing a security perimeter around the land complete with video surveillance and controlled access.
He then joked he needed a herd of guard dogs.
While I laughed out loud at the time; after reading the articles above, perhaps my father is on to something.
While living life in fear is not something I wish to do; his actions speak volumes as to the insecurity that people have for the future and the seeminginability to effect change at all levels of government.
I think we’ll see more of this in the future. Gated communities were only the beginning I think.
I just want to know where you found that picture…I’ve been looking for it for ages to buy a print!
Victoria - I just did a Google image search. I can’t even tell you what keywords I put into the search engine. Sorry!