Commitment

The virtual acquaintanceship which abounds in a Facebook world is an extension of the real community which once existed on every block or in every neighborhood of cities and towns. That actual community is rare in modern America. As Americans have done with fast food over real food, they now settle for this virtual community over real community.

Why? I think the answer is simple. It's easier. Real relationships require work. Being in touch with an elderly neighbor down the street may entail cutting her lawn or getting her groceries. Knowing a quadriplegic next door may entail washing him and helping him out of bed in the morning when his caregiver is unable to do it.

Community, like all relationships of any substance, requires some commitment. Americans are averse to social commitment. This aversion is obvious in America's refusal to address global warming, urban poverty and other social inequalities in society. This aversion is obvious in the popularity of Tea Party rantings about not paying taxes and its attempts to stoke fires of racism in America. This aversion is obvious in America's persistent willingness to toy with the human rights of LGBTQ people and others.

A healthy community is peaceful and inclusive. This requires a strong commitment by all community members to participate in socially responsible speech and behavior at all times. Are responsible speech and behavior the predominant features of current American society? To its credit, the culture of Facebook is generally cordial and inclusive. Perhaps the Facebook experience, combined with a renewed commitment of neighbors and friends to build and maintain real community, will help us repair our society in time. I certainly hope so.

Community

I live in a densely settled neighborhood near a large metropolis. I was born into this type of living. I grew up in a densely populated small city next to Boston. My first memories are set in an apartment in an old, three-unit tenement building. My first playground was the street.

One of the side effects of the increasingly mobile American culture is the loss of bedrock populations in neighborhoods. In my own city, the transition in every neighborhood is visible and palpable. I walk quite a bit around the city and witness the constant changes. My city is mostly populated by people of low-to-middle incomes. The ripples of immigration are touching many neighborhoods as well. This was true of my native city in my childhood. I am familiar with it.

Despite all the benefits of diversity and mobility, the losses are also considerable. Change is never all good or all bad. It simply is.

My particular neighborhood has a scattered, diminishing long-term population, bound to it by socioeconomics largely. The poorer sons and daughters of original homeowners have stayed in their humble family homes, attached English-style townhomes in four-or-five-house rows. Because the houses are at the low end of price for my city, new immigrants have often bought or rented when houses come on the market.

The older residents all know each other. They have had their bonds and their feuds over the decades. There are cliches of old women who know each other for various reasons, such as shared church or club. The general attitude of these older residents towards new ones is cool, reserved observation. It takes some effort to get them to say "hello".

The newer residents, mostly foreign-born, stay to themselves. A few have developed curbside relationships based on shared nationality or ethnicity. Those of us who are American-born and new to the neighborhood manage to connect randomly with a neighbor here or there, but the reserve of old to new never quite melts.

Some may say this is a Bostonian or New England phenomenon. Bostonians have a repuation of being reserved. New Englanders have a reputation of being parochial. However, I feel this is more than that. I think this is genuine culture shock. And, I think this in part accounts for the current extremes of anger at the political process in the United States. After all, who is screaming loudest? Those who are screaming loudest are those who live in cities like mine, which voted overwhelmingly for Tea-Party-sponsored Scott Brown for the U.S. Senate after decades of being centrist Democrat.

The price of change is often discomfort and anxiety. Without a concerted effort, led by government in many cases, building community from isolated populations can take decades. And, how can the government build community when there is an absolute phobia in the U.S. about 'socialism'? This is a symptom of the absolute failure of the government to take control of immigration policy, and its failure to compensate American cities for its effects on public education, infrastructure and civic planning.

The key issue of immigration, in my opinion, is not legality or illegality. The key issue is community. If community is valued and fostered by government policy on local and national levels, the negative side effects of immigration can be minimized.

However, in the current exploitive political climate, dominated by corporate profit motives and tax avoidance, this is impossible. The wealthy interests in this country are obviously willing to sacrifice the community fiber, the social fiber, of the country to maintain their greedy accumulation of wealth. Wealth accumulation is the actual religion of our time. And, the gated community, the refuge of the wealthy, is the proof of it.

Refuge

There is a lot of attention being paid to the subject of immigration in the so-called developed world. Economic refugees, or migrant workers, are claiming a right to cross borders illegally to earn money to support a life based on ignorance and poverty in their home countries. Political refugees in the U.S. are just as likely to be aligned with fascist regimes as with opposition groups seeking social justice. All lines are blurred. Overpopulation makes it impossible for governments to justly consider each case with the compassion it deserves. Borders are porous due to air travel and the sheer numbers of people willing to break immigration laws.

The refuge these people seek is elusive. The lawfulness they subvert by illegally entering a more civilized society is key to maintaining the civility of that society. So, these refugees subvert the quality of the idealized society to which they flee. Rarely do these refugees return to their home countries for the purpose of effecting real social and political change. More often, they attempt to create a microcosm of their root culture within the society which grants them refuge. This too subverts the cultural integrity of the very place which they seek as refuge. After all is said and done, their root culture is what drove them to seek refuge in the first place. The propaganda of corporations which rely on these people for cheap labor would have you believe that this behavior is culturally enhancing by adding to the hyped diversity factor. In reality, alienated, undereducated and impoverished people have very little to give to their environment. They are more focused on getting than giving. They have to be to survive.

The only real refuge from poverty, cruelty and ignorance is education. If developed countries estimated and spent the expense which refugees incur on building and staffing schools in underdeveloped regions of underdeveloped countries, potential refugees could be given the tools to turn their native lands into decent places to live over time. Accepting and enabling refugees to remain ignorant for the purpose of enslaving them for financial gain is not commendable.

For those in developed countries who are in need of refuge, the solution is the same. Education, combined with hard work. I myself was born in a developed country to relatively uneducated and intolerant people. I found refuge in my schooling, though it was extremely difficult for me to overcome learning and cultural disabilities, to which I was born. Running away to become an uneducated and underpaid worker (slave) or a dependent on someone else never occurred to me. I suppose I owe it to my upbringing that I never felt that escape on that level was an option. I stayed in my community, endured violence and derision, worked like a dog, and managed to learn a great deal about life and people, as well as science and literature. But now, at an age when I often need refuge from pain, disease and social discomfort, I can and do rely on my ability to learn, to immerse myself in study and research with a goal of improving my life, despite adversity. That refuge is part of my daily practice.

Society

A society cannot exist functionally as a factionalized collection of diverse cultures, languages and classes. The American liberal ideal of diversity and multiculturalism cannot be achieved when the various groups in the society refuse to acculturate or subscribe to a common culture, which supersedes other cultural prejudices and traditions. I am currently experiencing the negative effects of a neighbor's racism and refusal to acculturate and comply with established American codes of behavior. The neighbor, who is foreign-born, refuses to step out from a very basic alienating defense, based in language and race. He resists friendship. He acts autonomously in the way he behaves on his property, which adjoins the property of others. He does not feel responsible to his neighborhood in any way, and he makes this quite clear. He represents, in my way of thinking, what is wrong with the current American tolerance of dysfunctional immigrant behavior. Our leaders, the rich and powerful, obsess on terrorism from abroad because they do not live among the uncultured immigrants who populate America's working class neighborhoods. They fail to realize that the actual threat to the best of American culture, the commonality of purpose and ideals of social harmony, lies in the factionalism caused when immigrants isolate themselves and cling to the less ideal aspects of the cultures from which they originate. While my own practice entails trying to reach out to individuals from diverse backgrounds, I accept that America's decline may come from its lack to venerate its own unique cultural ideals, based in the the much maligned and secular Protestant Ethic of its founders.