When Community is Lost
An analysis on the collapse of community in America
Community may be considered a vital part of living a healthy life. Within communities there is trust, security, and a sense of belonging. These are just a few of the benefits that communities offer to their members. So what happens to a society as community begins to dissolve and disassociate from the people and sub-communities within?
It can be said that a nation is a large community. It is the political entity that encompasses a society for the purpose of maintaining order and unity. Within that nation, there can be many localized communities. These localized communities can be considered specialized to manage the social order as best needed for the people living directly within them. National governments, when looked at from a societal perspective, can be considered to represent the broadest and most generalized principles of each of the communities within the nation. In other words, while local communities may differ, they are able to act under one nation so long as their broadest and most basic of principles can be united under one flag.
From this perspective, the minarchist approach to a national or federal government, that being a small government with minimal necessary authority over the people, makes sense from a social perspective. It would leave the majority of control up to the local communities, wherein the local constituents are most likely to share a single culture with more uniform values. With scale comes greater deviation from the mean, meaning more outlier individuals will appear and be able to create their own, unique communities within the spectrum of the entire society. I believe that the US was founded upon such a system, but the centralized authority of our Constitution has slowly enabled the federal scope to encroach upon more subjects that, perhaps, should fall under local scrutiny.
It has been to my dismay that I have noticed fewer and fewer people seem to be aware of their local representatives, and, when asked about them, tend to refer to their congressmen, who are meant to represent their local ideals to the federal government. From a social standpoint, I have found this trend worrisome. I believe this represents a shift in ideology where local systems of cultural institutions have been foregone for national cultural systems. In a country with a perfectly harmonized culture across all territories, this would not be much of a problem. However, the US is anything but culturally harmonized. Under the ideals of being a melting pot, allowing multi-culturalism to flourish, and even the promotion of cultural independence, create a system of various idiosyncrasies across different sub-cultures within the nation. I would even argue that the promotion of this system of tolerance has allowed cultures that wholly disvalue the principles that are meant to guide the federal culture of the nation to flourish.
What do I mean by all of this? The most encompassing way to put it is this: America follows a cultural order that allows and promotes localized systems of culture to flourish, and our local cultures are now attempting to redefine the culture of the nation under their localized cultural systems. Because our people, at a local level, are promoting their attention towards federal matters, and because the federal government has imposed itself upon local matters, all of the idiosyncrasies that separate our localized communities from one another has become a source of decohesion for the country on a national scale. Rather than have a national system designed on unified principles, our national system is being transformed into a system designed on values.
Now, people may ask, what is the difference between principles and values. Principles, by my own definition, are a collection of broad ideas that outline the ideal state of living. Values, by my definition, are a set of specific ideas to achieve principled goals. By my definition, values are derived from principles, but they are subjective interpretations of how to achieve the ideals outlined by principles. Being thus defined, values and principles may vary from overarching cultures, and values alone vary from within cultures. Given the federalization of values, tensions between regions and groups within the US are bound to rise as they are now competing for control over one another’s values. This is increasingly problematic due to the ability for completely alternative cultures to flourish within the US, which magnifies the tension beyond values and into principled disagreement. This conflict brings the entire culture and community that is the United States of America into question.
As an unfortunate addendum to the federal encroachment of values and cultural conflict, localized cultures are being divided specifically through the partisan nature of this federal dispute in how to approach covid care. The values placed onto all sides of the covid situation has left individuals within communities feeling that any who disagree with the system of beliefs that they hold to be in the moral wrong. The mass adoption of masks has created a level of barrier between individuals in a way that negatively harms self-esteem and peoples ability to connect emotionally with one another, a key aspect of community. Many will argue against it, but the fact is that most human communication is physical, not verbal, and cutting off viewing of such a large portion of peoples face, by default, handicaps peoples ability to communicate physically. Other effects of masks that can affect communication and self-esteem would include people noticing their own bad breath as germs build-up within the mask, as well as the formation of acne under the mask from said germ build-up. These are just some issues that, even when all participants are following the same culture under the covid leadership, can affect localized cultural cohesion.
Beyond this, social media and internet communications, while a wonderful development for communication, can lead to the dissolution of localized communities. As more members of a community form their own virtual communities, they grow distant from their local communities. It is not a matter of “at fault” developments, but it is a consideration that is necessary to address when considering how to approach local leadership and the unification of a local culture. There is a natural desire for humans to form communities. This is why communities form wherever people are able to communicate.
The harm done to localized communities and the federalization of community values has created a situation wherein many people are in need of experiencing the feeling of having a physical community, and are now taking that need to the federal authorities. This sense may be what draws people to communism. Communism, of course, stemming from the term community. I do not say this in a pejorative way, but see it as a subconscious association that people make in the attempt to find and create a community that suits them and truly comes from a desire to unify all of the people within the scope of their nation’s many collectives. The possibility of which is near zero, so long as there is a lack of hegemony among value systems.
On a personal note, I do not see an answer for America’s community problem. The various sub-cultures and alternative cultures within the United States has created a situation where cohesion is impossible on a national level. However, I believe that localized cultures and a retunement of authorities to a local level, giving individuals a greater sense of control over their own environment and more of a say in the culture in which they live, is necessary for the longevity of our society. This may be impossible under our current federal system, yet a restructuring of our system, re-establishing the principles by which we wish to guide our union and throwing matters that extend beyond the scope of principle back to the local states and communities, can act as a way to reforge our empire for generations to come. I do not see this as a likely outcome, but it is the conclusion that I have come to. However, if there is anything to take away from this paper, it is this: Spend more time with your community, engage with your community, and promote the local action of your community within itself. This is what keeps communities strong and prospering.
-James Derian, December 11th, 2020
