Collapsing Communities

But what about the space in between you and the city, state, country? What about your community? What does your community look like? Who is in your community?

Timothy Carney’s Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive and Others Collapse is all about community. It is one of those recent type of political books which are always about twice as long as the point being made really takes, so while interesting, reading it is a bit of a repetitive chore. The general thesis is trying to explain the Trump supporters—the people who voted for Trump in the Republican primaries. Carney is desperately trying to explain to the non-Trump supporters why Trump had resonance. If you like reading about current politics, this book is worth a look.

However, at the core of this book is a really interesting discussion about communities which transcends the politics of the moment. Carney wanders around his central premise, but finally on page 255, he states it crisply:

But what if what the working class—white, black, Hispanic, etc.—needs most isn’t a check from the government but inclusion in community? And what if the most accessible form of community—the church—is under constant assault by both culture and the government? And finally, what if the elites frowning upon the deplorable poor won’t include them in their community, citing their deplorability?

Community is a fascinating entity, much neglected in discussions of the Good Life. It is far more common to hear discussions of the need for individual autonomy, freedom, sense of purpose, and so on or the need for the proper level of government involvement in society than it is to hear about the importance of community. All too often, discussion of community centers on how the government should best provide for support for people. But that is not what community is at all.

Carney points towards geographic areas where community has collapsed. There are still people living there and there is still government, but people are alienated, they have no set of people with whom they regularly meet and share a sense of common purpose. As Carney notes, churches are obvious places of community, but church attendance is down. Things like the Lions Club or the Elks Club or the Masons or the Knights of Columbus collapsed decades ago. Bowling Leagues?—see Putman. Indeed, much of Carney’s argument is really just Bowling Alone 2.0.

What if as the other forms of communities have collapsed, your last remaining community is where you work? You still have a community, at least. You still have people you regularly see and maybe you even go out with some of them after work. But, then what happens when your employer moves out of town and you are left unemployed? Suddenly, you have no community at all.

What happens to people with no community? Not good. They withdraw and become depressed. Want an interesting case study? What happens to people if they are forced to stay home for months on end and they never actually interact in meaningful way with any real people in a real space?

How do you create a community? It is harder than it seems like it should be:

Bad economics can help kill a community, but good economics cannot, alone, rebuild one. And if you’re not building community, you’re not getting close to fixing what ails us. Analogously, even if public policy and international trade helped kill factory jobs in the United States, reversing those policies and choking off international trade won’t restore the factory jobs.

The deep point which Carney is making in this book is troubling, to say the least. If he is right that alienation is becoming a central feature of society, that the collapse of community is doing great harm, what is the solution? Carney gamely tries to write a concluding chapter giving some reason for optimism, but concluding everyone should just go back to church is not going to get very far. After all, if the reason you are going to church is simply to have a community, it will not be long before you notice that churches have this weird tendency to be, you know, religious. If you don’t agree with the theology of the church community, you are going to feel alienated at church. Carney, a Roman Catholic, should have realized this; what would happen if Carney tried to find community in a mosque or synagogue? How long would he last at services routinely asking him to announce that Mohammad is the Prophet?

The problem is: we can’t really just go build a community. Communities arise organically. Once people become alienated, they are, by definition, unlikely to join a community. Not a cheery conclusion, but one well worth considering the next time you think about that person you know who has little community. Maybe a kind word or two is in order; it won’t reverse the problem, but it is a step in the right direction.