> We are our own little islands for a lot of our days, yet those of us
> who have or have had children in school, and live in the suburbs know
> that parents band together for their children so that they can have
> little league, by building and cleaning parks, or come together so
> their children can put on plays by gathering together to make costumes
> or scenery.
I've lived in big cities and in the suburbs, and I've experienced the suburban activities you mention.
A personal story: After we started a family in the big city, my wife and I and the 2 kids moved to the suburbs some years ago. One of the first things we got from the school the younger son would attend was an invitation to a picnic dinner on the school grounds to meet the teachers and the other new parents. "Great," we thought; "a nice pot-luck get-together," having done lots of pot-lucks in the city. We brought a dish to the picnic, but discovered that it wasn't a pot-luck -- every family was expected to bring its own complete dinner (most families seemed to have picked up a pizza on the way). We would have been forced to eat just our own dish if we hadn't run into one of the staff members from the day-care center our boy had gone to back in the city and who coincidentally had moved to the same suburb at the same time, so we were able to share with her family. Ever since that day, that episode typified suburban society for me: selfish to the core.
Now I'm back in the city and am I really glad!
> Also, I think during disasters we have great opportunities to become
> close to our neighbors, like when we were snowed in and everyone
> shoveled the street, because the plows never came, or during a tornado
> warning when all the neighbors in our building met together under the
> stairs on the first floor. The kids brought their sleeping bags and we
> just visited like it was a regular party, all the while listening for
> the sound of the wind to change. Also during floods, neighbors help
> bail out each others flooded basements.
That's the problem. People suspend their everyday selfish habits when their usual comforts are taken away, but they pick them up again immediately as soon as the emergency is over. What is needed for a new society is cooperation and sharing not just in emergencies, but 24/7, just as the existing society runs 24/7 on selfishness. That is, an entirely new way of life.
> The idea of rent parties is perhaps passé because much of that work has
> been taken up by numerous agencies, non government and government,
> which supply emergency help for those in need. Also, for a true
> solidarity experience, almost everyone must be in the same boat, and I
> don't think, at least yet, we have reached the point where people are
> in as much need as they were during the depression. We have so much of
> everything.
I think there is a spectrum of possibilities related to a problem like unemployment: 1) Pure laissez faire -- no unemployment insurance; every individual and family sinks or swims. 2) Some unemployment insurance -- not completely replacing the worker's previous income, because then few people would choose to work at lousy jobs. The situation we have now. 3) Complete replacement unemployment benefits -- impossible under capitalism for a number of reasons, including the problem of how to make the workers work. 4) A system in which employment vs. unemployment becomes an irrelevant issue -- the most radical solution, but no society (after Marx/Engels' "primitive communism") has been able to achieve it yet, as far as I know.
As for our "having so much of everything," I would wager that there are plenty of people who have very little, and are even homeless, right in your own suburb, unless it is a very wealthy one. But they are mostly invisible (or they are driven into the core city). Yes, the rich capitalist countries have a lot, perhaps even too much, in aggregate, but it's very badly distributed -- that's the rub.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org ___________________________________ "Cry for the eye that has cried for you and feel merciful for the heart that has felt for you." "A poor man shames us all." -- Sayings of the nomadic Gabra people of Kenya