To IDEAS CATEGORIES:
What do you think about when you consider the ideal “Community”?
Do you believe you live in one?
/tell me/
How did you know?
Over and over, people in our society (The U.S.) refer to what are called “communities”; how do they define these? At what point did the tribe or village not become the tribe and become “the community”? Is it just the particularities of classical societies, and their subsequent offspring, that create “communities? When would we cease to become “communities”? I see the root word “unity” finds itself inside community, but I’ve never felt any over unity about any of the neighborhoods I’ve been in my time in the U.S. (most of them circa middle-class types). Neighbors rarely say a word to each other, and many times I’ve found myself avoiding eye contact with a neighborhood as I stepped outside for whatever reason, and they would do the same. I’ve walked past so many people I somewhat recognize from neighborhoods at malls, groceries, entertainment venues and other places, but I’ve never felt a “unity” to them. Sure, we’re all human, we pay taxes (presumably), and have issues, but none of these similarities have ever brought to think I live in a community of people, unless of course I mean it in the most barren sense of the word. I should share my bias, though.
Some dumbass down the street gets by a car trying to do a wheelie on his unicycle again, and I know him. The girl at 4567 is bend-over-backwards-and-back-in-shock-type-hot but she’ll never talk to me again, because she knows me. Mr. Keynes and Dr. Nguyen hate each during the day, but know that come night they will settle their differences over a clam-cold-Corona during the night, just to fall back into an argument before the sun rises and hate each other again by 7 AM. But it’s all good, cuz’ this Saturday is Doña Douche down the street is throwing her French-Spanish-mix soiree-thing and everyone’s invited. I would continue with this story, but I’m sure the idea is settling in. This is isn’t restricted to residential areas neither. I pass so many people everyday (at the University or Walmart, for example), and I can’t recall more than two people (in my whole life) just casually saying something to me or someone nearby whenever we happened to be in close quarters or in the occasion when it might seem welcome/unbothersome to anyone. I’m bothered when the University President, or any public official, for example, talks about how “the community” depends on how we handle our day-to-day matters with each other. And when I think about things like this, I’m rather bitterly reminded that, in a sense, there is no overt and “come-alive” community when our day-to-day interactions are restricted to the workplace and yelling at each other on the road trying to get there and leave it. I understand the U.S. is a very larger and diverse place for people, and it’s never always known who’ll be a friend and who won’t, but I think the “community”, which might’ve been true and alive in earlier times, has outgrown itself and now it might be better to label our groups as a “network”, specially in the case of students in college.
Input, disagreements, other comments, anyone? What have a missed? (A lot, I recognize, but what do you think?)