A GENUINE COMMUNITY COMPRISES PEOPLE WITH SHARED SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL VALUES
“For any society to be successful it needs cohesion, a shared sense of identity to bind it together. The more people have in common the better they tend to get along.” Liberty GB
A nation can only function successfully when its people have shared values, a mutual sense of belonging and a universal moral code. But multi-culturalism and open borders promote division, segregation, and hierarchies of victimhood based on ethnic identities.
As the familiar examples of Japan and the Scandinavian countries makes clear, when everyone is more or less alike tension goes down and contentment goes up.
“City life is a paradox. We live in more private seclusion than the residents of a small village, but are regularly in much closer contact with many more people. Though we may be but vaguely aware of who lives next door, we mingle shoulder-to-shoulder with complete strangers on the tube and in the super-market. We know these people only insofar as their activities co-incide with ours at that moment and have no idea what they do with the rest of their time.” From “Cities” by John Reader, 2004
Before mass car ownership facilitated virtual segregation from the other people living in their localities – the community if you like – people had a much greater sense of community because they knew many, even most, people in their immediate neighborhood, and not just those on either side of the proverbial boundary fence as tends to be the case now. In the Britain of the 1950’s relatively few families owned a car, and if they did it was just that – A CAR (singular) – unlike today’s almost obligatory HIS and HER cars.
(I could not resist a wry smile when, during a TV program about the”credit crunch”, a young couple – teachers – being interviewed in their homes complained “we both need new cars, but we’ve had to put that off..” Ok, I get it now, times must be tough when a young couple cant afford 2 new cars, right?)
Nowadays it is not at all uncommon for a single and very ordinary family house to have 3 or 4 cars parked outside. The London suburban streetscape below is a fairly typical daytime scene – the same street photographed in the early morning would be crowded with many more cars lined up bumper-to-bumper on both sides. Notice how most of the houses have sacrificed one of the quintessential features of the British urban scene – their flower-bedded front gardens – in order to appease the omnipotent Car Deity.
HAVEN’T WE LOST SOMETHING IMPORTANT..?
In the relatively few car-owning families of the 50’s “THE CAR” belonged to the master of the house – there was no question of the “missus” using it to pop down to the shops as very few women drove back then. The 80% of people who couldn’t afford a car would walk or cycle to work or take the bus, which meant waiting patiently in all weathers in a draughty bus shelter (assuming there was a shelter) with many others from the same area. Whatever your transportation mode – walking, cycling, or busing – you could hardly avoid meeting the other people from your area, and inevitably you would chat to them and get to know them. Similarly, when a housewife walked to the local shops – back when ALL shops were “local” – she would meet many of her friends and neighbours enroute and it was customary to stop and chat, or at the very least exchange a few pleasantries. Everyone followed these conventions, it would have been considered rude not to.
Today many rules of civility have been diluted or even discarded and we seem to have exchanged ‘old-fashioned’ conventions like courtesy, respect, honesty, and integrity, for loutishness, disrespect, greed, selfishness, and, it is quite absurd to pretend that most city dwellers live in a community. They are un-communities.
This is all due to private car ownership, the great facilitator of segregation and sprawl which, in turn, facilitates a further proliferation of cars, more sprawl, more segregation.
Where once a city had finite boundaries and a sense of community, sprawl has created an urban nebulosity with no distinct boundary and no – or, at best very weak – community spirit
And yet politicians like nothing better than pontificating airily and self-righteously about “our community” and “our community values”, as if they are in denial of the reality that most big city dwellers have little or no contact with their neighbours and, even when they do, know virtually nothing about their work, their families etc. The whole idea of a community is to know the other members of that community – maybe not all of them, but a good many – and to have a considerably degree of shared values, like language, culture, and last but not least – religion. Although individuals always had, and always will have, their differences and they might have fought over certain issues – the glue which held communities together was the club of the church.
All this, of course, is the complete opposite of “diversity” which is anathema to the concept of community and shared values.
Diversity comes from “diverse” which means different, dissimilar, or UNLIKE.
But, as with so many other things, the goalposts have been so widened as to become meaningless and “a community” now seems to mean “all those who lives in a particular area”, regardless of whether anyone knows anyone else or share the same values, which in these multi-culti times they almost certainly DO NOT..! Muslims, Jews, Blacks, Indians, Pakis, and Whites of all stripes, if they live in the same locality they are all considered to be part of “the community”. What a load of hogwash..!!
A “community” consists not of people who just happen to live in a particular area, although that is part of the equation, but where they share principles and values and there is a considerable degree of selfless co-operation. But when the “city gates”, so to speak, are held wide open allowing anyone to enter uninvited and un-announced, it is absurd to pretend that the resultant people stew is a community.
Historically, communities developed naturally but this takes time.
Communities can be “fast-tracked” by pre-establishing a specific set of community rules and ensure that only those who thoroughly and wholeheartedly endorse them be encouraged or permitted to join.
However, in conventional obecities, which all manner of incompatible people have infiltrated under lax, lapsed, or dormant societal rules, it would be almost impossible to retrospectively impose a strong set of rules and societal obligations. One simple example – getting everyone to take re-cycling seriously by carefully sorting their waste into 4 or 6 categories.
A few (maybe 15%) might be diligent – another 35% might be half-hearted – the other 50% simply couldn’t care less and would dump all their trash into the same bin thus negating and ruining the efforts of the diligent re-cyclers.
This means the establishment of a committee (in effect, an “immigration” board) whose duty would be to interview and vet applicants. I further propose that any such board only grant successful applicants probationary (conditional) citizenship for (say) one year initially after which their position would be confirmed
I can hear the usual suspects muttering about “big brothers” and so on and so forth, but….
Of course, assuming that D ever comes to pass, they might not choose to organize their societies in the way that I have proposed or would have preferred.
Its all speculation and ultimately you have a choice – well, actually you have at least 3 choices –
1) nobody will ever force anyone to live in such a community
2) many such communities might be “organised” just like our existing cities, which is not to have any controls at all.
3) Arcologies present an opportunity for any individual or group to found their own community with their own tailored rules, a societal option which hasn’t existed since the early American colonies.
Δ COMMUNITY SPIRIT
- Genuine communities of like minded people
- Community get-togethers encouraged with “party rooms” available.
- Communal laundry with comfortable seating and (volunteer-run) coffee shop
- Kibbutz-style community farming (see topic)
COMMUNITY CITY
Perhaps the great sadness of OBECITIES is their anonymity and unfriendliness.
Due to fear of being perceived as “over-familiar”, “strange” or “weird”, people do not communicate easily or spontaneously with strangers. This is due to several factors (there may be more) –
- POPULATION DENSITY – “can’t greet everyone, so better to greet none..!”
- CONFORMITY – fear of being thought of as a ‘weirdo’
- CULTURE – the risk that a friendly greeting could be mis-construed – for example, would you greet a veiled Muslim woman?
- STRESS and time constraints
- FEAR – “open borders” invites distrust of strangers – who is he? where is he from? what does he want?
- Country walks offer a revealing insight into social interaction. On a quiet trail it would be considered almost weirdly anti-social not to greet every other walker who passed (the exact opposite to obecity behaviour). However, the social “obligation” to greet passing strangers becomes progressively less as the density of walkers increases. The population density of the trail determines whether you will greet everybody, somebody, or nobody at all. The obligation to greet strangers is therefore inversely-correlated to their number. Each individual has a personal “tipping point” on this matter, but even the most garrulous or extrovert will stop greeting strangers beyond a certain density.
- Cruise-ship passengers usually feel comfortable about striking up conversations with complete strangers, partly because there is a feeling that, as a fellow shipboard “citizen”, the stranger can be trusted. This is especially the case on smaller cruise ships. Such easy familiarity becomes more diluted on some of the modern ‘superliners’ which carry thousands of passengers, because cruise ships also have their density ‘tipping point’ beyond which it is acceptable to ignore strangers. Besides, many cruises are only of 7 or 10 days duration so (on these big ships) it is more likely that you may never meet the same person again. However, on longer cruises of 3 weeks plus, it becomes much more likely that you will bump into that person again – so it makes sense to be more outgoing than you would on a shorter cruise.
- Deltapolis will function almost totally independently of the outside world – like a cruise ship it will have finite physical boundaries and a finite population, both of which augur well for community spirit and friendliness. But D will have other factors in its favour – that cruise ships don’t have – that will further enhance its strong sense of community and co-operation. The first is that, unlike cruise-ships, D citizens will be in the “same boat” for a long time and are therefore much more likely to bump into each other again. The second is that unlike cruise ships, where anyone who can pay for a ticket can come aboard, prospective D citizens will be selected – possibly by a revolving citizens committee (rather like jury service), possibly by a quorum of elder or well-established citizens.
- For any community to be strong and united, membership must be a privilege and not a right bestowed to all comers. Like a good club, a strong community must retain the right to exclude those who they consider do not fit their profile. If countries have this right, then why not cities too? Needless to say, so-called “liberals” – whose Marxist agenda is to impose “multi-culturalism” and diversity against our will – are bound to fight this tooth and nail.
SC’s would not be “smart” if they did not have any admission standards, for example…
- a) shared socio-political values (each D will set its own unique set of values, responsibilities, and guidelines)
- b) numerical and geographical limits (unlike obecities with their ‘policy’ of uncontrolled admissions and unlimited physical growth)
- c) qualified admission policy (vetting of newcomers)
- d) visitor registration (visitors must wear lapel badges)
- (additionally newcomers should be subject to a probationary period of 6/12 months)
Citizens of D will therefore communicate more easily and spontaneously
(as people do in the cruise-ship environment).
EGALICITY
The main opportunities by which people display their wealth and power is with FANCY CARS and BIG HOUSES, neither of which will exist in SC’s. All apartments will be outwardly similar-looking, and only SIZE, POSITION, and INTERNALS (fittings and finishes) will vary. I also believe that these factors will encourage people to take more pride in their appearance (clothing & grooming).
WINNERS & LOSERS
WINNERS –
Environmentalists – for obvious reasons
Socialists – egalitarianism, community housing, social crucibles, end to property speculation
Capitalists – Pyramid selling building boom, lower wage costs,
Libertarians – Intentional communities each with its own mini-consitution/charter
Religions – will have their own exclusive Δ communities where their rules and morals are the law.
Multi-culturalists – Voluntary Multiculturalism
3rd World – see Pyramids in Paradise
(If they remain true to their claimed ideologies, all these disparate groups should approve of 3-D ecocities)
- Socialists – (qv “Egalicity”, “Mad Cars Disease”, “Carcinogenic Cities”, Environment, Re-cycling, Social testbed/crucible, etc)
- Capitalists – (qv “Pyramid Building Boom”, Lower Salaries, Tourist potential, Admission fees, City States, ”
BIG LOSERS
Politicians
Criminals
Lawyers
Real estate agents
Property “developers”
Insurance salesmen
Car salesmen
Home extension salespeople
Bodgy builders and tradesmen
many more redundancies that won’t be missed…..