“Oh no, here she goes again!”
My friends automatically cringe at the word.
It doesn’t matter the context or the subject at hand. As soon as I say it:
*COMMUNITY*
Eyes start to roll, people look out the window, and shift around uncomfortably in their chairs. What is so threatening about this word?
Sadly it seems in today’s culture of suburban materialism, people have every reason to be suspicious. Especially young people. To our parents, “community” was a tangible thing. Folks grew up knowing their neighbors, etc. Today however, the social fabric of authentic community has all but been ripped to shreds. An average of four hours of television a day, the necessity of two-income households, decreased suburban density and increased total population mean we hardly know the meaning of the word.
To certain young people the “C” word represents an obligation they never agreed to fulfill. It is a hollow promise, a loaded word often manipulated by public figures to sell folks on an agenda that may not match up with their own. To some “community” = cloying and claustrophobic. Someone even accused me recently of being in the “Community Cult”. It’s a concept that a lot of people just don’t relate to. Who are the members of this so-called “community” and why is it supposedly so special?
When young adults hear the “C” word we tend to place ourselves outside of it. We don’t fit the target audience for the majority of civic dialog as few of us have children, we aren’t in terminal career track jobs, and we’re typically not making mortgage payments or contributing significantly to the tax base. 
This doesn’t mean that young people are anti-social and lack desire for community of their own. We simply use a different word for the same thing and call it the “scene”. A pet peeve of the Spovangelist is that the concept of “scene” in Spokane is rarely extended beyond the realm of local music. That is a great place for a scene to start, but in more culturally dynamic cities the scene is far more multifaceted than that.
What is an ideal scene? Its a large network of people who relate to each others perspectives on jobs, relationships and station in life. They can offer relevant advice on connecting to opportunities that support their shared lifestyle. People in the scene should appreciate the creative work of other people in the scene should it be worthy of such attention. The scene should be able to help its members get hooked up with good roommates, and even share costs on things like throwing parties or transportation to Seattle. The scene should be diverse and interesting. It should provide companionship and expose the people in it to new ideas and ways to recreate. A healthy scene is strong enough to develop its own micro-economy, and this in turn provides meaningful, socially significant jobs to its members.
Cheers to the future of the “C” word in Spokane!
Tags: 8 Comments
8 responses so far ↓
Great post Mariah. Are there any local sites that you know of that are helping to create/grow the Spokane “scene”?
By sites I assume you mean websites? At this point I’d have to generally recommend the Spovangelist blogroll. Each of us comes at a variety of issues with our own angle, and for being such a small blogoshpere I believe we have a relatively solid one here in Spokane.
Rushkoff: What is it they hate? Guiliani and Palin both made it pretty clear: community organizing.
who are you? I love your website….
–Sarah
Mariah, I like the post. You’ve got some great insights and thoughts on this community confusion Spokane is going through.
joe
Community as a state of mind is a second- or third-stage impulse. It can’t happen until I feel fairly secure physically, emotionally, and financially. Young people and all other disenfranchised people sometimes never get there. “Community” can offer a lot, but involvement is a personal choice and practice.
Maslow didn’t include this on his A list.
My small town childhood in Iowa had all the rose-colored glasses characteristics. But looking back, I now notice suspicion of minorities, newcomers, too well educated, too uppity. It was a geographic community, but perhaps not spiritual.
I believe that the community I help create will provide me something valuable in return, and I expect to be asked to give something to the group that has value to others. My own practice of introducing my neighbors to each other is simple, powerful, and natural. Many of them have lived close to each other for years, but never made the links.
Government has not been very successful at building community. It has no customers, only subjects.
It’s interesting that the Republicans talk about valuing community, but they’ve revealed how threatening it would be to them were that community to be organized.
I understand the objection to the c word. In the YSC we keep talking about the word ‘youth’. Young people don’t like the word because it is how adults/societies define and disempower them. They are considering creating a new word to define themselves on their own terms. Maybe they will create posters to put around the city, with the new word on it and get people wondering what it means.
Yet a new word has problems too. Like the word ’scene’. To many it is a groupie word that comes with a sense that the scene can change at any moment to another scene, a haphazard, random fluctuation to something new, fun, careless.
I like that you start the discussion. I imagine that if we keep the discussion going, that objections, new definitions, new word suggestions, philosophies that are generated will help us to see where we truly want to go. I hope your questions and considerations create a lot of controversy, irritation, delight, passionate response. I guess I feel that non-violent disruption goes a long way in overriding the stagnation of an entrenched perspective.
I guess I feel that bringing drama, color, and surprise to the way we go about dealing with the perception issue is a useful approach. In the YSC we try to ask provocative questions. We posted those questions on our unity in community booth, and the shock value drew people to us. Maybe this dilemma can be fun process to work through if we take it on with delight rather than frustration, even though it is frustrating.
[…] call it community… whatever: “ It’s growing. I guess it was inevitable. Maybe Mariah is onto something. Two interesting bikey things happening. Well, if you count Jeff’s […]