Paul, I think “what’s in it for ME” is a cause of the craziness, not the other way around. If “me” is not included in an inclusive “us,” and if only the us who look like me are incuded in MY “us” … That’s the crux of a large dollop of our problem.
{On the family and fatherless issue — yes, the loss of a father from a nuclear family is a huge loss. But we shouldn’t be so damned nuclear in the first place. My father died when I was seven, and my brothers had no father for years after. They’re fine. They had FAMILY [a close Italian family, mostly].}
YES, I think the break-up of families matters, but even more-so the break-up of “the village” that it takes to raise a family. Nuclear families are NOT the be-all and end-all of a society that wants to encourage caring and sharing of a limited world.
You mention issues that I agree exist. I wonder if we really know whats going on in them, or are we projecting our preconceptions onto them?
Someone on here mentioned the loss of religion and teaching values in schools — I see a loss of cohesiveness with those changes, but I am an atheist. I do not appreciate teaching “religion”in our schools. But I DID edit a book by a group of diligent educators who talked about teaching values and building community in schools without resorting to the specificity if “god” and religion. It was a good book. I want the cohesiveness back, for sure. How to get it without making ME supposedly talk to God in school, when I don’t believe there is one? And our founders knew that trying to make one idea of God predominate over all the ideas that exist about gods was NOT a good thing for governments to do.
I believe I am a very caring and I-hope-thoughful person without a god, and I believe we need to make our world better, even if we can only do that where we live {my mother told me I could not save the world, and I should make where I live a better place}.
Finding ways to cement our communities {yes, they call it part of social engineering}, we could design communities better to enable interaction and sharing of the activities of life to promote recognition of each other and a sense of “community” — shops, schools, libraries, cafes, front porches, walking on the street, even Post Offices where we meet each other …
People think we lost that sense of belonging to something, and to respecting each other, when we “took religion out of schools.”
Well, I think we designed those things right out of our culture in the way our communities changed. I see it not as “losing religion,” but coinciding with the creation of huge residential tracts of houses with little incentive for people who live in them to share little bits of their lives during their day. Along with other changes that made us more isolated.
People didn’t walk to a local corner store. They had backyard decks and not front-yard porches. They had to travel longer distances for goods and services where they shopped among strangers. They drove long distances to work, and didn’t ride there on buses together. They consolidated neighborhood schools and lost touch with neighborhoods. Our work life became far distant from our home life. And people began moving out of their childhood communities to seek “better opportunities,” or to live in tract houses, bringing children into places where they felt no agency and ownership and connection {and didn’t see people they knew all day long, like I did in my close Italian-family neighborhood, as a kid}.
A National group identity, a commitment to national group well-being, a respect for the whole country as a group — we don’t encourage it in America. We encourage cultism and fragmentation. We encourage Diversity WITHOUT the Equality and Inclusion and TOGETHERNESS that we also need. And THEN we commit to small groups, rather than the society as a whole. We don’t encourage being a COMMUNITY of diverse members {even when we talk about it, we don’t encourage it}.
Is it any surprise we don’t feel societal solidarity in our diverse America, like countries that can claim “Frenchness” or “Dutchness” or “Britishness”? {I could go on an even longer rant about celebrating diversity — which I think is a good thing! — but it needs to be DIVERSITY with INCLUSION and MUTUALITY. That’s the circle we have to square.}
Back to our disconnected society that siloes and competes rather than cooperates — Our economy threw us into the Two-Wage-Earner family mode {and YES, women wanted a chance to work — my own mother NEEDED a decent job in the 1950s, as a widow supporting four kids, and she couldn’t FIND one that paid well, because “women didn’t need” a fair wage —} and with families no longer living their daily lives in their homes, we segued into hyper-nuclear families instead of villages and communities that participate in the lives of our kids {who themselves become less caring about being seen as good people in their community and just wanna have fun … OK, I’m being snarky. But only a little.]
Hell, I could go on, but it wasn’t taking religion out of the schools that damaged our society. It was our lack of cultural know-how that did it. We let dollars dictate all of these changes, and the welfare of our people — We, the People, as one — went to hell in a hand basket.
Paul, I think “what’s in it for ME” is a cause of the craziness, not the other way around. If “me” is not included in an inclusive “us,” and if only the us who look like me are incuded in MY “us” … That’s the crux of a large dollop of our problem.
{On the family and fatherless issue — yes, the loss of a father from a nuclear family is a huge loss. But we shouldn’t be so damned nuclear in the first place. My father died when I was seven, and my brothers had no father for years after. They’re fine. They had FAMILY [a close Italian family, mostly].}
YES, I think the break-up of families matters, but even more-so the break-up of “the village” that it takes to raise a family. Nuclear families are NOT the be-all and end-all of a society that wants to encourage caring and sharing of a limited world.
You mention issues that I agree exist. I wonder if we really know whats going on in them, or are we projecting our preconceptions onto them?
Someone on here mentioned the loss of religion and teaching values in schools — I see a loss of cohesiveness with those changes, but I am an atheist. I do not appreciate teaching “religion”in our schools. But I DID edit a book by a group of diligent educators who talked about teaching values and building community in schools without resorting to the specificity if “god” and religion. It was a good book. I want the cohesiveness back, for sure. How to get it without making ME supposedly talk to God in school, when I don’t believe there is one? And our founders knew that trying to make one idea of God predominate over all the ideas that exist about gods was NOT a good thing for governments to do.
I believe I am a very caring and I-hope-thoughful person without a god, and I believe we need to make our world better, even if we can only do that where we live {my mother told me I could not save the world, and I should make where I live a better place}.
Finding ways to cement our communities {yes, they call it part of social engineering}, we could design communities better to enable interaction and sharing of the activities of life to promote recognition of each other and a sense of “community” — shops, schools, libraries, cafes, front porches, walking on the street, even Post Offices where we meet each other …
People think we lost that sense of belonging to something, and to respecting each other, when we “took religion out of schools.”
Well, I think we designed those things right out of our culture in the way our communities changed. I see it not as “losing religion,” but coinciding with the creation of huge residential tracts of houses with little incentive for people who live in them to share little bits of their lives during their day. Along with other changes that made us more isolated.
People didn’t walk to a local corner store. They had backyard decks and not front-yard porches. They had to travel longer distances for goods and services where they shopped among strangers. They drove long distances to work, and didn’t ride there on buses together. They consolidated neighborhood schools and lost touch with neighborhoods. Our work life became far distant from our home life. And people began moving out of their childhood communities to seek “better opportunities,” or to live in tract houses, bringing children into places where they felt no agency and ownership and connection {and didn’t see people they knew all day long, like I did in my close Italian-family neighborhood, as a kid}.
A National group identity, a commitment to national group well-being, a respect for the whole country as a group — we don’t encourage it in America. We encourage cultism and fragmentation. We encourage Diversity WITHOUT the Equality and Inclusion and TOGETHERNESS that we also need. And THEN we commit to small groups, rather than the society as a whole. We don’t encourage being a COMMUNITY of diverse members {even when we talk about it, we don’t encourage it}.
Is it any surprise we don’t feel societal solidarity in our diverse America, like countries that can claim “Frenchness” or “Dutchness” or “Britishness”? {I could go on an even longer rant about celebrating diversity — which I think is a good thing! — but it needs to be DIVERSITY with INCLUSION and MUTUALITY. That’s the circle we have to square.}
Back to our disconnected society that siloes and competes rather than cooperates — Our economy threw us into the Two-Wage-Earner family mode {and YES, women wanted a chance to work — my own mother NEEDED a decent job in the 1950s, as a widow supporting four kids, and she couldn’t FIND one that paid well, because “women didn’t need” a fair wage —} and with families no longer living their daily lives in their homes, we segued into hyper-nuclear families instead of villages and communities that participate in the lives of our kids {who themselves become less caring about being seen as good people in their community and just wanna have fun … OK, I’m being snarky. But only a little.]
Hell, I could go on, but it wasn’t taking religion out of the schools that damaged our society. It was our lack of cultural know-how that did it. We let dollars dictate all of these changes, and the welfare of our people — We, the People, as one — went to hell in a hand basket.