As a “community development professional “, I am running into some interesting situations. I will spend some time trying to understand them. Today’s post will be a survey of general ideas, and will hopefully lead to some more depth over time. 
My motivation is twofold: I am building a career in micro-enterprise development and entrepreneurship, and I live in this community with my wife and three children. When asked “what I do”, I have been responding recently by saying that I would like to have a better neighborhood for my kids to grow and play in. This makes my motivation happily and un-apologetically self interested. It is personal. This has also brought more questions and other general confusion.
More fundamentally, why community? What’s the big deal?
In response, I quote Malcolm Webber quoting a Zulu proverb: “A person is not a person without other people”.
The general consensus is that most of our communities are unhealthy. This is not surprising. We are living through massive social, technological, and economic shifts. At the very least, a healthy community should include men and women who can provide for themselves and their families without starvation or assuming large amounts of debt. When you logically follow this assumption into the future, you will arrive at the definition of sustainability offered by the Brundtland Commission of the United Nations: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” I am pretty sure that many or most of our communities are not living up to this definition.
Beyond food and shelter, there is an assumption that community means relationships. I particularly like the picture of community painted by The Beatles in Penny Lane.
Some of us may not even be aware of whether our community is unhealthy. How do we recognize when we are living in an unhealthy community? For many of us, we have no comparison. All communities are unhealthy a little. Having a healthy family to compare with is now the exception and not the rule. More marriages end in divorce than those that endure until “death do us part”. Well…”Its not my job to fix everybody”, we might say. I will work on my own romance, my own family, and forget about the neighborhood. To quote Jerry Garcia, “I may be going to hell in a bucket, but at least I am enjoying the ride”. To each his own. Live and let live. This is the rugged American individualism rearing its head. We will spend some time looking at that.
And then we might actually try to work on our own relationships. For myself, I have found that I am pretty dysfunctional. For a while there I wasn’t sure I was capable of participating in any healthy relationship. I found myself wondering how on earth I ever expect anyone to get it right when I can’t even go through a single conversation without insulting someone or veering wildly off into false hopes and expectations. The ideal becomes the enemy of the real. To quote Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “He who loves community destroys community. He who loves the brothers builds community”. I do love community. It is the people that I am not very fond of.
I might be content to simply work on one or two important relationships, and let the rest figure it out on their own. But this doesn’t last. I have neighbors that I see regularly that I would like to have over for BBQ. I would like to have a few friends around, wing-men for those hot Missourah nights. To quote Malcolm Webber again, “If Jesus and Paul both needed friends, who am I that I don’t?”
Beyond friendship, we seem to recognize that, as a society, we need each other. Here I have to quote in direct contrast to the American Individualism mentioned earlier. Eastern traditions, as well as African ones, will clearly and strongly support our mutual responsibilities to each other.
The African worldview is about living as one family, belonging to God”. The Malawi philosophy of uMunthu states: “we say ‘I am because we are’, or in Chichewa kali kokha nkanyama, tili awiri ntiwanthu (when you are on your own you are as good as an animal of the wild; when there are two of you, you form a community).
So we are all working to understand these things. At a very direct level, this is the question for the adults around me…those of us in our 20s, 30s, and 40s. We are now running the world. We are the grown ups in the room. We will soon or have already inherited many of the institutions and the responsibility for educating the youth. What are we doing about the challenges in our own communities?
To be honest, myself (and many others I am sure) will respond basically, “hit the cruise control and just let it ride, baby. I vote, I pay my taxes, I try to raise healthy and respectful children. What more do you need?”
For others, there is a recognition that the community is lacking something. There are abandoned homes, crime, youth adrift, dysfunctional systems, etc etc ad nauseum. What is a healthy community, exactly? And how does one build a healthy community when our systems of finance, government and development are so ineffective? (corrupt?) I am sure if each one of us could travel right now into the barrios of central Mexico, we would thank our Lord in heaven for the communities we are living in. So everything is good in the hood, right?
Wrong. As Matthew Watts says very convincingly, the young people will tear down the house faster than we can put it back together again. I would love to hear someone defend the state of our youth, and will willingly read all reports statistics, and otherwise that show that our young people are becoming more educated, well adjusted, respectful, and constructive with their lives. Please, someone help me. The news is just too depressing these days.
I will continue to post on several of the larger themes. First, it seems that to truly understand a fundamental shift towards healthy community, we should try to understand the roots of the problem. This is in keeping with Albert Einstein’s classic adage: “If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”
Second, we should try to recognize and identify how I avoid being a part of the problem. I have unwittingly brought unhealthy expectations to my community, and so I may spend some time understanding how this happened. This is in keeping with Gandhi’s classic adage: “be the change you want to see in the world.”
Third might be: where do we look for right knowledge and an example of healthy community? We need clear and helpful learning for our communities. I am working at this moment on the 2nd annual Community Capital Fund workshop to be hosted at the Kauffman Foundation Conference Center. If you have helpful suggestions or know where to look, please let me know how others have done it.
postscript: My great great great grandfather founded an intentional community based on Biblical values in 1920 in his native Germany. The Bruderhof communities are still living today with over 2,000 members on three continents. http://www.eberhardarnold.com/
Urban Leadership Letters 