Something We Can't Do Alone

My city of London, Ontario has been through enough in these last few years, I believe, to qualify as a kind of “sampling” of the threats and opportunities to communities in general. While in politics, I dialogued with numerous researchers, economists and sociologists who had become convinced that communities – at least as we know them – are in decline. Globalization, mass culture, the transcendence of money over meaning – these have hollowed out our vibrant collective life in favour of a kind of status quo mentality that just goes along to get along.But is this new collective life any better? It certainly doesn’t seem so, when in order to survive we wilfully suspend action on the rapid onset of climate change that will eventually destroy the planet. We are all aware of it but refuse to talk or deal with it because, well, we can’t – our political, economic and cultural leaders refuse to place it on the agenda, so we don’t either. To this vital issue can be added the collective moral depravity we display in refusing to deal with decline in our aboriginal communities, the rapidly mounting statistics in regard to local and national poverty, the substitution in our educational higher levels institutions of employment training over learning, and our begrudging willingness to accept an economic formula that continues to permit the fabulously rich to siphon away the hard-earned resources of average citizens.London’s experience has now taught me that communities are ill-equipped to take on the overpowering machinations of both global forces and our collective moral failure. On the other hand, I see no other solution to our dilemma than revitalized communities evidencing a new kind of moral or ethical urgency to forge themselves into an active citizenship capable of developing where we actually live in ways that are healthy and productive.This past week I tweeted a quote by Plato that was meant to help define a better way in which we might function. The great philosopher simply said, “The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.” Many retweeted it, but some individuals with a kind of manufactured bravado immediately responded by castigating the “nanny state” or reminding me that such a state of collective being would strip away all incentive. In their own backhanded way such respondents were defending the status quo – a condition in which good and hard-working people are falling farther and farther behind. They not only revealed a remarkable insensitivity to the jobless in places like ElectroMotive but also an inflated view of their own ability. They are like us – vulnerable to the present condition. All it would take would be for one of them to develop a serious medical condition or suffer some major downfall and quickly and they couldn’t function without the broader effectiveness of their community.But that’s really the problem isn’t it: we continue to confuse the “state” with “community.” We may remain angry at the state, especially when political representatives behave in the deplorable ways they sometimes do, but we inwardly feel there’s nothing we can really do about it. Politics, institutions, the financial order – all these appear impervious to reform. We eventually arrive at the place Mark Kingwell so pointedly describes:“Defences of globalism or cultural evolutionism slide quickly into determinism, and determinism, as always, facilitates passivity. We begin to think we can do nothing to make this a world we want because the “inexorable” flow of capital or technology, or memes, is larger than any of us. Larger than any of us they may be; larger than all of us, no. Citizenship, if it means anything, means making our desire for justice active. It is not something we can do alone.”That’s it in the proverbial nutshell, isn’t it? We are feeling increasingly helpless. In truth, Plato’s ideal community mentioned above is far more attractive than a world of growing fabulous wealth and disempowering poverty. Those presuming this means the nanny state have mistaken the state for community – a place whereby we can blunt the edges of the extremes. It doesn’t mean that citizens can’t gain wealth or fall into destitution, but it does create those conditions in a community where the acquisition of riches doesn’t come at the expense of those who from no fault of their own fall into the clutches poverty. That is the fair balance to which Plato was referring and, in truth, it is the kind of community most of us desire – not because we’re namby-pamby dependents but are, in fact, citizens seeking true justice and equity.London is your average community attempting to adapt to a restive world around it (and increasingly from within). We live and grow in our communities, but they stand at the receiving end of complex policies and global turbulence. It is time to discuss our Right to the Commons, or To the City, and how we might better build those places where we live, work, play, cooperate, and bring up the next generation. It is time we began speaking up for ourselves and demanding our proper seat at the table. If our communities don’t have the rights they require, then the process must begin of citizens fighting to get them. Let’s explore the possibilities.