Ok, I am back and wonderfully caffeinated. Having spent some time staring at the endless rain here in the jungle, a few thoughts have come to my mind regarding the endless stream of questions posed in the last entry.
Here are some things that have become apparent to me as truths:
1) I am not part of a community in Boone. Though I do have some shallow roots there, which may be deeper by comparison to most other students, they are not sufficient enough to be able to say that I am part of a community.
2) There is not a community in Boone in the first place. At least not a community of people dedicated to environmental and social sustainability.
3) This is a dangerous position to be in due to the number of impending economic, environmental and social crises that are headed our way if not currently unfolding.
4) If we, as citizens of Boone, want to be able to create a new, better, sustainable and just world, and to withstand the afore-mentioned crises, we must create a community of people dedicated to these tasks.
5) This community in and of itself could be a powerful threat to the evil forces of neoliberal capitalism and the state which supports it.
6) It is useful, as a humbling exercise, to compare Boone, NC to the communities of indigenous Mayans in the Zapatista movement. They, after all, are doing what we are not: creating a new world that negates neoliberal capitalism and fosters liberation and humanity.
7) In order to create such a community in Boone, students such as myself must stay in Boone. We must dedicate our lives to the task of creating and sustaining a community there. We must remember that the fact that we have the option to go somewhere else is a product of our privileged status, and that most other people in the world do not have such privileges. Capitalism, with its need to be ever expanding, has planted the idea in our head that there are always greener pastures, that there is always somewhere better we could be. We must get rid of this illusion and see Boone for what it is: a beautiful, abundant place teeming with life and resources, a place perfectly ripe for the building of a dignified, (dare I say) autonomous community.
8) I hope that we can have the humility and clarity to figure out what must be done to sow the seeds of such a community, for right now the road ahead looks quite long and treacherous.
your comments and critiques are strongly encouraged as always.
Much more later. Need more coffee.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
On Community: Part One
In one of the first classes of this program, our professor asked us, “Are you part of a community?”. I immediately nodded my head in response, lovingly recalling my life back in Boone, NC. I though of all of my wonderful friends and relationships with community leaders, of my close relationships with professors, local business owners and long-time locals. I remembered all the wonderful organizations in Boone working diligently to make Boone and the rest of the world a different, better place. Most of all I recalled how on some occasions we all came together and shared resources and connections to make wonderful things happen, such as the International Day of Peace celebrations.
My professor, seeing my face light up, asked me to defend my assertion that I was part of a community in Boone. I described to him and the rest of the class all of the wonderful people I knew and how we are all working towards making Boone and the world beyond a better, more just and sustainable place. He allowed me to go on about how wonderful it was to feel part of something, to feel integrated into a community. Then, with a blank stare, he asked, “Would you die for them?”.
I was speechless. Why was he asking me that? This question had never crossed my mind, and probably would never have if he hadn’t asked me.
My heart sank and the light left my eyes as I realized what my answer was. “Well… no, I guess not. Maybe some of them…?”, I quietly replied, more in question than in answer.
He then asked me, “How long have you lived there? Do you all have a common history? Do you know the history of Boone?”. I explained that I had only been there three years… and no, we didn’t have a common history and no I didn’t know much of the history of the place. My heart sank even further. “Do you all have a common vision of the future and a common understanding of how to make that vision come about?”. No and No.
I started to realize the hole I was falling into. Am I really part of a community in Boone, or do I just know people there? Do we really depend upon each other and trust each other, or just know how to get what we need from each other? How much could I really depend on the supposed “community” of Boone? Did I see myself settling down in Boone? Will I still have the same relationships with the people I know there five, ten, twenty years form now? What about when I return from this trip?
I did not like where this was going one bit. But, I served as an excellent example with which to start a discussion on the true meaning of community.
I started to remember all of the failed projects we have started in Boone, all of the beautifully promising radical ideas that got jump-started and then dumped within weeks. It always seems as if the ideas and the intention are there, but when it comes to action and implementation everything just crumbles. Why?
There is no community to back it up. The community that I described in the beginning of the class doesn’t actually exist. Sure there are tons of people in tons of organizations, groups and clubs working on social and environmental justice and sustainability, but they do not work together nearly as much as they could. Events are scheduled on top of each other, resources are hoarded, stereotypes abound and people tend to only know what they are doing in their group, and not much of the activities of others. The town and the University are at odds, in competition with each other instead of cooperating for their mutual benefit.
Perhaps the most glaring obstacle to community in Boone is the constantly transitory population of students. We come to Boone to get a fine education at ASU and then we leave for “bigger and better” places. Boone for us is a stopping ground, a fake place where we can make superficial relationships and connections that we know will end when we all go our separate ways to make a life for ourselves. But can we really be blamed for this?
What opportunities are there in Boone besides working for the University or waiting tables? The jobs and opportunities we want just aren’t there.
So, with half the population of the town only sticking around an average of 4-5 years, how in the world are we supposed to create a viable, sustainable community of people, who support and depend upon each other?
If we want to create and build a movement of people committed to environmental and social justice, we necessarily must have a community of people working together to support it. Not a community in the sense of 30,000 people who happen to live in the same area, but a community that really depends on each other, that recognizes their mutual well-being, a community of people who would die for each other. A community with a common heritage, vision of the future and plan for how to get there.
In fact, the very idea of community is a death sentence for neoliberal capitalism and the authoritarian states that accompany it. Community breeds common understanding, acceptance and love- not the separation and alienation that capitalism feeds upon. A true community is a fierce weapon against the dividing forces of capitalism, for it is the necessary basis from which any anti-capitalist movement must spring. A true community does not need multinational corporations or government “assistance” programs, for it can provide for itself everything that it needs for the well being of every one of its citizens. A true community cannot be bought or sold.
The Zapatistas here in Chiapas are a true community. They give their lives for each other. They have thousands of years of common history and over 500 years of struggle against a common enemy. They have an ancient culture of intersubjective identity and modes of interaction with each other and the natural world of which they are a part. When the government or paramilitaries threaten to take a Zapatista family’s land, they are met by thousands of masked Zapatistas blocking their vain attempt at robbery. When the PRI took over the autonomous municipal government building in San Andres, they were physically removed the very next day by thousands of community members. Their community is the essence of their strength. How else would a few thousand indigenous Mayans be able to capture the eyes of the entire world?
I am feeling an almost-paranoid time imperative on this issue. We cannot afford to wait until it is too late and people are dying and suffering due to environmental, economic and social crisis. And crisis is surely where we are headed at the moment. Communities must be built which can sustain all matter of crisis, such as economic meltdown, nuclear warfare, global warming, corporate neoliberalism, fascist states, etc. etc. Without a strong and largely independent (autonomous) community infrastructure of resources and relationships Boone (and many others) could easily be swallowed up and destroyed by the global forces currently underway.
But is it even feasible to plant the seeds of community now, in this globalized world filled with placeless yet privileged “new social actors” such as myself? Is there any way to build a community that can pose a credible threat to the neoliberal world order? What about the very real processes of globalization? Where do localized communities fit in to the “global village”?
And where does all this leave me? What if I want to leave the shallow roots I have in Boone for somewhere “bigger and better”? What if there really are better opportunities awaiting me somewhere else? How useful is it to compare the college town of Boone to a Zapatista community of indigenous Mayans?
Right now I think need a strong cup of coffee, so I’ll leave the answering of these impossible questions for another day.
Salud.
P.S.- Wikipedia has an entry for "community", and interestingly links the concept to that of identity (a topic which I will focus on at length in future entries).
My professor, seeing my face light up, asked me to defend my assertion that I was part of a community in Boone. I described to him and the rest of the class all of the wonderful people I knew and how we are all working towards making Boone and the world beyond a better, more just and sustainable place. He allowed me to go on about how wonderful it was to feel part of something, to feel integrated into a community. Then, with a blank stare, he asked, “Would you die for them?”.
I was speechless. Why was he asking me that? This question had never crossed my mind, and probably would never have if he hadn’t asked me.
My heart sank and the light left my eyes as I realized what my answer was. “Well… no, I guess not. Maybe some of them…?”, I quietly replied, more in question than in answer.
He then asked me, “How long have you lived there? Do you all have a common history? Do you know the history of Boone?”. I explained that I had only been there three years… and no, we didn’t have a common history and no I didn’t know much of the history of the place. My heart sank even further. “Do you all have a common vision of the future and a common understanding of how to make that vision come about?”. No and No.
I started to realize the hole I was falling into. Am I really part of a community in Boone, or do I just know people there? Do we really depend upon each other and trust each other, or just know how to get what we need from each other? How much could I really depend on the supposed “community” of Boone? Did I see myself settling down in Boone? Will I still have the same relationships with the people I know there five, ten, twenty years form now? What about when I return from this trip?
I did not like where this was going one bit. But, I served as an excellent example with which to start a discussion on the true meaning of community.
I started to remember all of the failed projects we have started in Boone, all of the beautifully promising radical ideas that got jump-started and then dumped within weeks. It always seems as if the ideas and the intention are there, but when it comes to action and implementation everything just crumbles. Why?
There is no community to back it up. The community that I described in the beginning of the class doesn’t actually exist. Sure there are tons of people in tons of organizations, groups and clubs working on social and environmental justice and sustainability, but they do not work together nearly as much as they could. Events are scheduled on top of each other, resources are hoarded, stereotypes abound and people tend to only know what they are doing in their group, and not much of the activities of others. The town and the University are at odds, in competition with each other instead of cooperating for their mutual benefit.
Perhaps the most glaring obstacle to community in Boone is the constantly transitory population of students. We come to Boone to get a fine education at ASU and then we leave for “bigger and better” places. Boone for us is a stopping ground, a fake place where we can make superficial relationships and connections that we know will end when we all go our separate ways to make a life for ourselves. But can we really be blamed for this?
What opportunities are there in Boone besides working for the University or waiting tables? The jobs and opportunities we want just aren’t there.
So, with half the population of the town only sticking around an average of 4-5 years, how in the world are we supposed to create a viable, sustainable community of people, who support and depend upon each other?
If we want to create and build a movement of people committed to environmental and social justice, we necessarily must have a community of people working together to support it. Not a community in the sense of 30,000 people who happen to live in the same area, but a community that really depends on each other, that recognizes their mutual well-being, a community of people who would die for each other. A community with a common heritage, vision of the future and plan for how to get there.
In fact, the very idea of community is a death sentence for neoliberal capitalism and the authoritarian states that accompany it. Community breeds common understanding, acceptance and love- not the separation and alienation that capitalism feeds upon. A true community is a fierce weapon against the dividing forces of capitalism, for it is the necessary basis from which any anti-capitalist movement must spring. A true community does not need multinational corporations or government “assistance” programs, for it can provide for itself everything that it needs for the well being of every one of its citizens. A true community cannot be bought or sold.
The Zapatistas here in Chiapas are a true community. They give their lives for each other. They have thousands of years of common history and over 500 years of struggle against a common enemy. They have an ancient culture of intersubjective identity and modes of interaction with each other and the natural world of which they are a part. When the government or paramilitaries threaten to take a Zapatista family’s land, they are met by thousands of masked Zapatistas blocking their vain attempt at robbery. When the PRI took over the autonomous municipal government building in San Andres, they were physically removed the very next day by thousands of community members. Their community is the essence of their strength. How else would a few thousand indigenous Mayans be able to capture the eyes of the entire world?
I am feeling an almost-paranoid time imperative on this issue. We cannot afford to wait until it is too late and people are dying and suffering due to environmental, economic and social crisis. And crisis is surely where we are headed at the moment. Communities must be built which can sustain all matter of crisis, such as economic meltdown, nuclear warfare, global warming, corporate neoliberalism, fascist states, etc. etc. Without a strong and largely independent (autonomous) community infrastructure of resources and relationships Boone (and many others) could easily be swallowed up and destroyed by the global forces currently underway.
But is it even feasible to plant the seeds of community now, in this globalized world filled with placeless yet privileged “new social actors” such as myself? Is there any way to build a community that can pose a credible threat to the neoliberal world order? What about the very real processes of globalization? Where do localized communities fit in to the “global village”?
And where does all this leave me? What if I want to leave the shallow roots I have in Boone for somewhere “bigger and better”? What if there really are better opportunities awaiting me somewhere else? How useful is it to compare the college town of Boone to a Zapatista community of indigenous Mayans?
Right now I think need a strong cup of coffee, so I’ll leave the answering of these impossible questions for another day.
Salud.
P.S.- Wikipedia has an entry for "community", and interestingly links the concept to that of identity (a topic which I will focus on at length in future entries).
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