love, schmove – just tell me how to build community with the guy who mows his lawn in his speedo!
Posted by admin on 06 Sep 2008 at 05:12 am | Tagged as: cooperation
Sharon Astyk talks about the reality of community for most.
How do you get started, if you don’t know your neighbors? Well, one way is to enter into existing community structures. Your community has them – Churches, synagogues, mosques, the PTA, the library board, the garden club, the local political parties, action groups for various issues, etc….
I think there’s a tendency to underestimate existing community structures, and to decide “oh, those couldn’t possibly be made to serve our goals” – but that is what happened, for example, during World War II – existing neighborhood associations, church groups and other community structures were brought together to work on one project. Often, there’s more interest than most of us would expect – for example, for years, I mostly kept my work and my synagogue life seperate, because I wasn’t sure how well they would overlap, and because I didn’t want to seem too pushy. Finally, I pushed a little harder to get some green stuff going, and what I’ve found is that there’s more enthusiasm than I would ever have expected, and I’m the one telling people to slow down
. The moral of the story is that sometimes it is easier than you think it is to harness the power of institutions.
Or perhaps you do need to start something – there is no group that you can join. How do you get your neighbors together? Well, how about some food? Some music? Beer? Nothing builds community like inviting the neighbors over for some food. Start talking – and listening – to what people are thinking about.
Once you know what they care about, that’s the key to finding a big tent way to get to working together – instead of bulk purchasing quinoa, you need to think about finding something everyone uses – or someone else who eats sugar frosted loopies to share a bulk order with.
Remember, you don’t have to tell everyone everything. You can bring up peak oil and climate change, and when the neighbors say “well, Newt Gingerich says we have all the oil we’d ever want and that we’re approaching an ice age” – let it slide. It doesn’t really matter whether your neighbor is buying in bulk to save the planet or to save up for their Disney vacation – you are working together.
Sharing stuff is new to a lot of people – new things are hard. So make sure you keep trying. It might take five times to get an elderly neighbor to agree to let you pick up a carton of milk for her on your way home – the first few times, she might think it was polite to say no, or that you were judging her, or assuming something about her. It might take five times – or even ten – before she realizes you are serious.
Community can be hard work, and will inevitably involve a lot of compromise and tolerance. But, when the going gets tough it will certainly make life easier if you have common-ground and relationships with your neighbours, however different from you they initially appear.
We have been raised to live as seperate small household units – this way, corporations get to sell the same things to everyone, and communities can be a threat to established power structures. It ain’t gonna be easy to overcome your own prejudices, or those of the people you are trying to connect with, but it may well be very useful to do so. And sharing can be fun!
