Repackaging Community

On my Whiteboard, at my line of sight when I gaze left, is a column of core values listed on the right third in multiple colors.  It includes Kehillah, or Community, something that has challenged me, as my experiences when there have often prompted me to seek community someplace else.  I have my loyalties, though.  Banding together was probably an evolutionary residual to enhance the likelihood of personal and species survival, which it still might.  But as threats to defend become less, the willingness to trade off some personal autonomy wanes in proportion.  Defections from previously established communities have accelerated over about fifty years, quantitated in a compelling way by such works as Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, now thirty years post-publication.  Moment Magazine recently examined the changing nature of community with comments from about twenty or so distinguished and accomplished minds.

https://momentmag.com/community/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=getresponse&utm_content=Why+Debates+Don%E2%80%99t+Solve+Problems&utm_campaign=Moment+Minute

Many of the swamis, as agency heads, focused upon and promoted their agencies.  Others took a more abstract approach to communities, including a co-author with Professor Putnam of a recently released book that offers contemporary solutions to the challenges that Bowling Alone exposed. Affiliations exist for the evolutionary purpose they always have, attaining security or compete amid perceived scarcity beyond what individuals could do for themselves. The process of assembly seems to me ethically neutral  though the social results are not, nor are the affiliations entirely voluntary.  Military drafts existed in the USA and still do elsewhere.  Most of us have a nationality or a religion into which we were born and for which some type of permanent imprint was offered.  Groups can be small like nuclear families or large like a national political party.  Most people seem to find more meaning, though, from being with identifiable people who can be recognized though the senses of appearance, voice, handshake.  Moreover, the second half of the twentieth century with its mobility and communication enhancements have redefined groups.  Geographic and employment mobility, less permanence to marriage, our fickle nature as consumers, transience of our ideologies, and the option of electronic friends whose interest overlap ours but we will never meet personally have all redefined our voluntary affiliations.

Of the various comments, the theme that captured my attention most categorized allegiance to a group either as a consumer of what that organization offers or as a contributor to the offerings.  As we recover from Covid-19 restrictions and my synagogue plans to reopen, I'm not ready to return.  They are not evil people, they just excluded me from development of anything meaningful.  Instead, the weekly email announcement comes as a menu of activities for me to select from their buffet.  I feel as a pure consumer, which gives me about as much loyalty as I have to which loaf of bread I prefer.  At my doctor's she needs to be in charge, but she cannot function professionally if I fail to provide the information she needs and volunteer myself for exam and lab work.  It's a partnership, though of necessity not an equal one.  She has my interest paramount but needs me to provide the information she needs to function on my behalf.  The shul has me more as an interchangeable customer, part of an attendance figure if they care to take attendance at all.

At the other extreme has been my favorable experience with the Delaware Community Foundation, a community resource that distributes funds for current benefit.  Ironically, I latched on when I attended a public presentation by Professor Putnam himself a few years ago.  After the speech, they solicited volunteers at tables in the foyer.  I thought it would be interesting to review scholarship applications of high schoolers.  They seemed appreciative of my interest, invited me aboard, and this spring I completed my third year of application review.  I take nothing in return other than a parking voucher.  My purpose for being there is entirely contributory.  The psychic dollars of what I do there far exceed anything I could possibly derive as a passive attendee of any event from the synagogue buffet, worship included.  People know when they do something important and they know when they are more convenient or inconvenient in lieu of important.  Not to mention the Kavod that comes with being invited to do something.

From a Jewish perspective, which is what the Moment Magazine forum focused upon, I had an interesting encounter with a venerable agency that does important work well.  They have an Executive Director of world prominence whose work I greatly admire.  Not being a great Twitter enthusiast, but finding it selectively useful, I put his comments as my premier Go To tweet, as they generally come by in the morning.  He generated a few comments, occasionally mine, never the hundreds that a famous author or entertainer or elected official would get.  Then one day I found the response option blocked.  Well, not really blocked but blocked to me and any other peasant he thought too much of a Nobody to be worthy of expressing a polite, though sometimes challenging remark.  He was very effective.  His feedback went down to zero.  I Unfollowed him, but opted to follow some of his younger subordinates who would often retweet the boss's message without the feedback exclusion.  But I very much resented being excluded that way.  I was no longer a contributor, other than financial, but a consumer of what he had to express on behalf of his agency.  He must have gotten some feedback similar to my thoughts, since when reconsidering a couple of weeks later, the restriction on having to be a Somebody to express a thought to his agency on his behalf had been lifted.

At present I am nearing the end of a respite from Facebook and Twitter.  I thought they would be communities, particularly FB where I knew all the Friends personally, nearly all from my high school, but over about ten years of subscription, people either established themselves as sloganeers, got fed up, perhaps resented the many successes that some of us have had.  High School comprised real people. While my close group was smaller than many, I knew everyone else well enough to carry an impression from forty years back.  Some reinforced what I thought, some enhanced my impression, some detracted, but a virtual community, even with a fundamentally fond common link, falls short of the real thing.  On Twitter I don't know the people.  Mostly I find them interesting but the exchanges of ideas have been minimal, mostly perfunctory.  I doubt if I will return there in any meaningful way.  The people on my FB list really were part of a viable community, some valuing me at the time, all at least tolerating me.  I always had my own niche, never a pure consumer.  And even on FB now, it's always an exchange of ideas, valued greetings for notable events, admiration for their achievements with no resentment on my part, and a little pleasant banter or electronic small talk.  It's community repackaged in a decent though far from ideal way.  I'll be back if I can manage my own presence more wisely.