Continuing on from the last day . . .

The difference between community, in the traditional sense in which I have described it, and what passes nowadays for community—the accident of people happening to live in a particular location—is that if confronted with a threat the traditional community might be expected to react together in the face of it.  As opposed to the probable reaction of its modern ersatz equivalent, which would be to shatter under impact, like a glass vase dropped on a concrete floor, and scatter in its shards into the mythical security of self-sufficiency.

I have known of instances where a handful of people have come together within a community, of their own volition, to help look after a sick or elderly individual, not for reward or praise, but simply because it was the right, and to them natural, thing to do.  In the instances I am talking off, it would have been animated by a sense of organic connection with the individual concerned, whom they would have known as part of their community from earliest childhood.

Yet such a thing, such a sense of ongoing connection, is becoming so much rarer in our days, as signalled in the onward march of the ‘home help’.

Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto of how the rise of capitalism ‘left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”’.  One might equally say the same of modern social development, and the way it has undermined the traditional bonds and affections of community.

The people I mentioned earlier would have carried out much of the duties of ‘home helps’, and had they been of necessity pressed to it, probably of ‘carers’, too.  They would have seen it as their responsibility, a responsibility alloyed with a certain sense of affection too.

Now I’m not being critical of ‘home helps’.  Their existence is simply a reflection of the way society has gone.  Most of them, no doubt, do a very good job; and most of them would have some degree of feeling for those they deal with.  Yet the fact is that when you need to replace something that in previous times would have been the natural and unforced expression of communal solidarity with something that needs instead the incentive of cash payment, then a significant and ongoing social change has to be involved.

Now I have to hold my hands up here and say that, whatever about kin, I certainly have no skin in the game.  Personally, I would be most reluctant to being looked after in my dotage by anyone, volunteer or otherwise.  Nor would I be necessarily in the forefront of the rush to help, should such a thing be required.  But that’s the way I am.  Rather, as I said in a much earlier context, I am casting myself in the role of observer, rather like the guy in the stands who may have a much clearer idea of what’s going on down on the pitch, than those actually playing.  But then, again, maybe not.

What engages me is the belief that we need urgently to rescue whatever can be rescued from the old structures of community.  And not just in terms of looking after the elderly or the sick either, which is something I will come to in the third and final part of this mailing, whenever I get to it.

In the meantime, I was pleasantly surprised to see an article in last week’s Sunday Times about a charity—despite my innate suspicion of anything bearing the term ‘charity’—in Britain called HelpForce, that would have certain similarities to what I am in the process of outlining.  Though there would be differences, too, especially in relation as to how it would fit in with the optimum size of communities, as discussed in my previous mailing.

In any event, I will try to bring the strings together in my next and final mailing in the topic—as I say, whenever I get around to it.