THE NOTION OF COMMUNITY
Part two of a two-part series
About seventy years ago, the United States went through hard economic
times. They were so hard, in fact, that they have come to be known as the
Great Depression, a term that seems to imply that although there have been
other depressions, none were as big as this one. There is some truth to
this. One in four people was out of work, and the photographs of the
impossibly long bread lines make today’s soup kitchens and food pantries
seem almost insignificant in comparison.
Although the Great Depression happened long enough ago so that it has become
part of our history, there are many people who have first-hand knowledge of
what it was like to live through those times. My own father had vivid
memories of walking home from school, glancing into the window of a house,
and seeing the children eat store-bought whoopee pies. Filled with longing,
he stopped and watched them eat. His family could not afford such treats,
and his family was not alone.
Although my father was probably too young to realize it, families not being
able to afford store-bought whoopee pies were the least of Maine’s problems.
Some schools had to shut down, families—my mother’s was one of them—lost
their farms, and three banks closed in Portland. Factories had to let
workers go. Nearly everyone lost some money.
How did Maine communities react to such hard times? According to Dr. C.
Stewart Doty in Acadian Hard Times, many of them did not react very
well. Dr. Doty wrote, “In spite of [the hard] conditions…many Maine people
were not susceptible to outside help, especially from the government.” He
then quoted the journalist Lorena Hickok: “[A] Maine-ite would almost rather
starve than ask for help. In fact it is considered a disgrace in much of
Maine to be ‘on the town.’” Town officials, apparently, felt the same way,
and Dr. Doty concluded, “[They] were unlikely to ask for or administer
government help for relief efforts, even as their own governments were going
under financially.”
At first glance, this independence seems admirable, even exemplary.
Individuals, the thinking goes, should rely on themselves. They should need
no help, want no help, and ask for no help. When bad times come, people
should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. This will make a better
society, a tougher society, and the weak, the unlucky, and the lazy will get
what they deserve.
This sort of attitude certainly promotes a tougher society, but is a tougher
society necessarily a better society? Is starving to death really better
than asking for help? Is contempt for the weak, the unlucky, and the lazy
better than compassion and aid?
And does anyone ever really survive without some kind of help?
Apparently there were a few communities that thought otherwise. Dr. Doty
noted that one was in the “Rockland-St. George area, which Hickok attributed
to the political radicalism of the Swedish-American and Finnish-American
lime and granite workers there.” The other was in Aroostook County in the
St. John Valley, “whose French and Catholic cultural traditions applauded
cooperative and community help for people in need.” In Acadian Hard Times,
Dr. Doty, of course, focused on the Acadian community, and he made it
abundantly clear just how much they benefited from federal aid. It helped
farmers’ wives buy canning equipment so that they could more easily
stockpile food for their big families. It helped farmers pay off loans and
debts. It kept many families “going until better lives could open for them
elsewhere.”
Somehow, the Acadians, the Swedish-Americans, and the Finnish-Americans
seemed to understand something that many other people have a hard time
grasping. That is, the health of a community is inextricably linked to the
health of the individuals who live there. They are bound so tightly that you
can’t have one without the other. When individuals suffer, communities
suffer. And when communities suffer, only the very fortunate few prosper.
Around the world—in Africa, in Central America, in parts of Asia, in the old
Soviet Union—we have seen what happens when communities disregard the
welfare of individuals. We have seen the results—famine, civil war, poverty,
and repression. We have seen it happen in our own country in the days before
civil rights. We have seen it happen so many times that by now we should
know this lesson deep in our bones, but somehow we don’t.
Worse yet, we seem to ignore the examples where countries feel it is their
duty to help communities and individuals. Norway, Sweden, and Canada come to
mind, but there are others as well. Here, too, we can see the
results—excellent health care, affordable housing, services for the mentally
ill. Lars Bevanger, a Norwegian journalist, wrote, “There are good social
security provisions [in Norway] and few people fall outside the system—there
is a safety net for everyone…Some people…argue…that Norway is a “nanny”
state. But the priority for the government has always been to keep the state
sector strong and to ensure that Norway is an equal society—that there is
not too much of a gap between the rich and the poor.”
It seems that they are succeeding. In 2002, the BBC News stated, “Norway is
the most highly developed country according to the UN’s 12th annual Human
Development Report. The report ranks countries by quality of life, based
largely on life expectancy, education and personal incomes.”
In contrast, there’s Sierra Leone, which has been ranked as the least
developed country. Josephine Hazeley, a Sierra Leonean journalist wrote,
“There is massive unemployment in Sierra Leone…Hunger is rife… electricity is
virtually nonexistent…access to water is restricted…there is a gulf between
the rich and poor…life expectancy stands at barely 39 years.” Government
services are almost nonexistent, and the poor are left to their own devices.
In the United States, despite all the contradictory evidence, we still cling
stubbornly to the notion of the rugged individual who needs no help. Not
long ago, on a Public Radio show about giving, I heard a woman gently debunk
the myth of people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. No one ever
does anything alone, she said. Most of the time, we get direct help from
family, friends, and colleagues. The rare individuals (and their numbers are
small) who succeed without some kind of assistance have gotten a fortunate
genetic inheritance of grit, talent, and persistence. They did not come into
this world without any help, indirect though it might have been. To think
otherwise is the worst kind of pride and arrogance and ignorance.
Right now, our country is going through hard times again. Not as hard, of
course, as the Great Depression, but hard nonetheless. And we have a choice.
We can acknowledge the inseparable bond between individuals and communities,
and we can choose to have a country that has a safety net for everyone, a
country where “few people fall outside the system.” Or, we can have a
country that takes a hard attitude toward those who are weak and old, toward
those who lose their jobs, their health insurance, and their homes.
Really, the choice couldn’t be clearer.
