Where Have All The Joiners Gone?
Cheap fossil fuel has made us what we are. Which is to say: rich, powerful-Look at us! We can make the ice caps melt! The oceans rise! But something else too: cheap fossil fuel has made us the first people on Earth with no need of our neighbors. Think, in the course of an ordinary day, how often you rely on the people who live near you for anything of practical value. Perhaps carpooling your kids to school or soccer. If you live in a rural community, there may be a volunteer fire department, which keeps your insurance affordable. But your food, your fuel, your shelter, your clothes, and your entertainment most likely come from a distance and arrive anonymously at that. A meteorite could fall on your cul-de-sac tomorrow, disappearing your neighbors, and the routines of your daily life wouldn’t change.
Now imagine how different things have been for almost all of human history. Two hundred years ago, if an American wanted to eat a hamburger for dinner, he needed to be able to convince his neighbors to, say, help him build a barn in which to store hay to feed his cows all winter. And to help him harvest his wheat crop. Likely they would have come together to thresh it-there wasn’t a surplus of machinery. A neighbor would have slaughtered the cow and another would have baked the bread, unless it was all done in the family. The same went for what was considered women’s work. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, in a wonderful article in the journal Feminist Studies, showed that our notion of the self-sufficient farm family was bunk. There was a lot more to do than just berrying or washing or husking or quilting. Say you needed some homespun woolen cloth: there were eleven separate tasks involved, from herding sheep to dressing the fabric, and, as Ulrich noted, “it would have been an extremely unusual family that commanded the tools, skills, and labor to perform all of these steps at home. . . . What was true of wool was also true of flax,” she said, “for a family might grow its own; have it retted, swingled, and hackled by a flax dresser; bring it home for spinning and reeling; send it out to be woven; and then consign it to the bleach fields or dyer for finishing.”
Some of this exchange might have been paid for, much of it bartered, and a lot of it simply unaccounted for, since the reciprocal hand-lending was inevitable. Douglas Harper, in Changing Works, a poignant account of the dairy farms of northern New York, interviews farmers old enough to recall the time when “we would pitch in and go help. Everyone wasn’t so busy then. Oh, they had time or something.” You can read about it in Wendell Berry novels; if you want to still see it in operation, you may need to visit an Amish farm.
That’s because the advent of cheap fossil fuel, and the prosperity, globalization, and specialization it allowed, changed, well, everything for those who went along (which is to say, everyone but the Amish). You could look at almost any profession-baker to banker-but let’s stick with farming. When you depended on horsepower and human labor, you needed help. When you depended on high-powered machinery, you simply didn’t. Once you had a big combine, you could do it yourself. As one farmer told Harper, all of a sudden “there was no need, no call, really, to go see them. . . . I don’t think anyone has anything against anyone-you just don’t have any need to be there.” And all those machines let farms grow steadily bigger, which had as its logical result a far greater physical distance between the farm families who remained.
We could count this as simply the way of the world except for two problems.
One, of course, is that the era of cheap fossil fuel may be coming to an end, either because we run out or because we take global warming seriously and seriously cut back. Either way, the massive, invisible, industrialized methods we’ve come to rely on for feeding and clothing and fueling our lives may start to break down.
And the other problem is that we may break down. We weren’t designed to be this distant from our neighbors-we descend from apes who spend most of the day grooming each other for the practical purpose of removing lice and for the even more practical purpose of building the deep bonds that give their lives security and meaning. The economic life of Homo sapiens has always been about that kind of contact-until now, until us. Research has shown that when we live on car-filled streets, our number of close friends drops by half. We eat half the meals we used to with friends, family, neighbors. Forget about the flax-swingler; our clothes come through the ether from the mysterious geography of Lands’ End. We don’t need each other anymore, and that’s the saddest thing we’ve done-sadder even than the scourge of climate change, which at least is anonymous and impersonal.
Once we’ve started down this road, it’s hard to turn back; being a neighbor is a skill like any other, and it’s a skill we’ve increasingly lost as we’ve turned into hyperindividuals. Say you need the proverbial cup of sugar: do you turn to the neighbor or turn the car on and drive to the store? One survey found that three-quarters of Americans didn’t have a real relationship with the folks who lived next door. (New upscale houses now routinely come with dual master bedrooms, since even the talent for being a mate seems to be dwindling.) The big question for this century may turn out to be how fast we can relearn the skill of neighborliness.
Take farming again. The local food movement is helping to build demand for small farms. If it continues, we may someday reach the point where we once again have more farmers than prisoners in America-which will be a good thing, if we’re hoping to grow our food with less oil. But if that’s going to happen, it will take more than farmers’ markets-it will take farming communities, with enough small growers in the neighborhood to teach each other what needs doing. One of the best young farmers in my corner of Vermont, Spencer Blackwell, recently graduated from several seasons of growing grain and beans on the Intervale land in Burlington-a kind of incubator for young farmers with a dozen little start-up farms in any given year. “Maybe it was a little bit what it was like in the 1800s, when every other person was a farmer,” he says. “You need to know something-what’s the best time to plant oats as a winter cover crop-and there’s someone right around to tell you.” You can borrow equipment too, which is helpful because, as Blackwell points out, almost everything at the implement dealer is designed for mammoth farms. “I don’t want to grow a thousand acres of broccoli-I want to grow five acres,” he says.
For the rest of us, who aren’t planning to actually till the soil ourselves, relearning neighborliness means joining a CSA or going to the farmers’ market (where shoppers have ten times as many conversations per visit as they do at the Shop ‘n Save).
It means putting solar panels on our roofs and tying them into the grid so that our neighbors can cool their beer with the sunlight that falls on our shingles-and, of course, it means buying that beer from the local brewery. It means buying CDs when the artist is selling them after a concert, and listening to your local public radio station instead of the XM satellite-from-nowhere. It means not just supporting the idea of mass transit but getting on the darned bus sometimes.
It means embracing nonindependence-which to us may seem un-American, but in fact it is just the opposite. Tocqueville, in the greatest clichè of American political science history, called us a nation of joiners. We’ve gotten away from that-become a nation of drive-around-by-ourselfers. But in a world that seems likely to grow a little tougher all around, with weird weather, rising prices, and falling profits, a neighbor is what you’ll need most.
Bill McKibben is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College; many of his essays are collected in the new Bill McKibben Reader: Pieces from an Active Life.
© 2008 Orion Magazine
Unfortunately, it’ll take a lot more than what’s gone down so far to get us to that point.
If I Were Elected
I would IMMEDIATELY pull the plug on the “MAIN STREET MEDIA”. I would encourage (and if neccesary) fund independant reporting.
I would IMMEDIATELY pull my troops from any country America was at war with.
I would SLOWLY withdraw my troops from countries America considers “Allies”.
I would ensure the “popular vote” across the board. Paper…no plastic.
I would sit back for a year and see how the world developes.
I would re-arm my troops “to-the-teeth” with whatever they wanted to confront the next battle they may face.
I would sit back and see who (what country) decided to piss me off and then I’d decide (after vote) if that country was deemed to be a detriment to my countrymen.
I would provide a job and a home for EVERY one of our homeless.
You can’t tell me we don’t have the money.
On the domestic front:
Instead of fighting a “war on drugs”, I would institute progams where we teach our children the skills to deal with problems rather than run from them. If Drug Dealers have no customers…they have no market.
Instead of jailing people for domestic crimes I would educate them on the benefits of peaceful resolution.
Vote for Me. Make sure your vote doesn’t count.
The hard times are coming folks. No doubt about it.
I know what it takes to break open the ground to plant a garden by hand. For a 20x 20 plot it was three eight hour days of back wrenching labor. I finally broke down and used the community gardens rototiller.
Then was the endless hours (pleasantly spent) weeding with my then wife. No pesticides. Fish fertilizer.
The payoff? The most wonderful, flavorful best tasting fruits and veggies I have ever had. Store bought food PALES, literally, in comparison.
I also have hard won skills in woodworking and some general carpentry.
Will I make it through the coming crash? Probably. Better than the vast majority of the population of the large west coast city I live in. But I am willing to help my neighbors. I even know many of them by name. And I have friends of the same mind set, but with differing skills. We should get by. But it won’t be easy.
The people I truly pity are the children and teens of today who have never known want. Only instant gratification.
They will suffer. Badly.
Mac.jr, are you crazy or what? Pull our troops out and re-arm them and I assume re-train them and EDUCATE our kids—LUNACY they’ll never vote for this craziness. What would you do about ‘gated communities’? And the swells that live in them? What about public executions for the treasonous bastards in the ‘gang of thieves and thugs’ now in power? OK, we don’t have to execute them, just put them in the ’stocks’ and publicly display them on the Mall in DC. Nothing would be too good for them. Literally.
What if what’s coming is not just a recession like the Great Depression, what if its the same visitation of another planet like the one that visited Planet Earth in the days of the Sumerian Civilization. Then What?
We have a government all ready to bunker down in the mountains of the southwest, and maybe Virginia.
HOw will we survive? Or will we?
You notice how many people are interested in responding to this topic?
PASS A LAW FOR MAINSTREAM NETWORK MEDIA, WHEN THE KNOWINGLY LIE AND PASS ON FALSE INFORMATION THAT THEIR LICENSES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION, AND THEY ARE PERSONALLY FINANCIALLY LIABLE FOR ALL CLAIMS OF DAMAGE THEIR MISINFORMATION CAUSES.
PULL THE PLUGS ON ALL THESE CORPORATE GARBAGE DISPOSALS, LIKE RUSH AND O RILEY NOW AND MAKE THEM PAY OF OF THEIR FAT CORPORATE FILLED WALLETS FOR THE LIES THEY KNOWINGLY SPREAD.
The real problem is television. So many of us just spend hours and hours and hours staring at the idiot box. TV has even moved into restaurants and bars so we can look at the idiot box instead of reading or talking to someone. Other people (like me, sadly) spend hours every day looking at the internet. Who wants to start a bowling league when you can just look at the flashing images and let your mind hibernate?
Most of my neighbors are probably glad that they don’t have to rely on me for a cup of sugar — let alone tools, food, and clothing. Relationships based on necessity continue to develop even if proximity is no longer as critical.
Advances in communication technology may further minimize the importance of proximity.
I have been traveling, visiting communities and living in community with others on the land for forty years. We joked about it that someday they would need to know what we’ve learned so I’m writing a book now and I just posted a little article called “In the company of friends” in my blog at http://goodwordswan.wildflowerstew.com
Do these and we’re on the way to a better nation:
Break-up the banks. Back to where they know you and the community. Keep the profits at home, not New York or London, China (or wherever)
Break-up the Media and Telecoms. No more conglomerates. Local control only. No more owning more than one TV station or paper.
Break-up the mega-charities. United Way and all of them. They suck the life and goodwill out of local communities.
Break-up the mega agro factory farm business. The results are unhealthy and unsustainable.
Break-up the military industrial complex and close the bases around the world, or convert them to peaceful entities. If we stop threatening and murdering people around the world and destroying their lands, they won’t want to kill us.
Second Life.
Exactly Bill -
What is needed is for people to prepare for a life beyond empire. The individualism of the Reagan era and the callous disregard for humanity of profit driven corporations has doomed the empire and only community - the cooperation of those in our proximity - will allow us to aspire to peace, love and understanding.
Become part of the movement - engage with your neighbors, overcome your fears, and work to make your world a better place and you will achieve a better world.
MILITANTLIBERAL
you are dead right about the t.v. i haven’t had a t.v. for over 30 years. ok i have internet, but there is a big difference. i can come back to the internet at any time and not really miss anything. whereas people are glued to their tellys and don’t want to miss any part of the ‘episode’ or whatever. they are like drug addicts in that respect and must get their ‘fix’. these days, people just don’t want to help, even if it costs them nothing. i cannot rely on my neighbours for help. i recently asked the ‘man’ of the house to help me with fixing a curtain rail. it would have taken all of 5 minutes to hold one end of the rail, whilst i fixed the other end, but the telly was on, so i said, oh you’re watching telly. ok, later. but he never came to see what i needed. in fact, he didn’t even look at me. his eyes never left the screen. i will never ask them again for any help. people today are very insular………..
The vast majority of Americans still receive the majority of the “news” from Big Corp Media, and the vast majority of them still stick to the big three “networks,” who, along with FOX, also own most local affiliates.
Three, four hours of propaganda a day for, say, 8 years - that’s called Dr. Fed’s Super Terrific Brain Washing System.
As a result, said vast majority is virtually clueless - they have no idea what “empire” and USA have in common, for example. Nor can they find Iraq on a map, or cite KIA/WIA stats, or even name the capitol of the state they live in.
We who have had the veil lifted tend to forget that most still live in that other reality where, sure, America has a few pimples, but We’re Number One and the rest suck.
Most people only drive safer AFTER they t-bone a family of 5 while drunk. And they only drive safer for a short period of time before they revert back to their old ways… and t-bone another innocent family. The same applies to our present situation - no amount of “truth” will have any effect until said vast majority is t-boned by what’s coming down the pike. Meanwhile, the rest of us should be focusing on preparing for the hellish future at our doorstep…
Try getting on the darned bus sometimes in San Francisco, Bill. So packed like sardines, you’ll get to know your neighbors a little too well.
Or how about Silicon Valley? One loud, rude, stupid individual jabbering on a cell phone, or blasting a Walkman into their ears for half the bus to hear, so that there’s no opportunity to be alone OR have a conversation.
Same thing on the trains, except you have the added distraction of personal laptop computors.
Can you blame anyone for not wanting to use public transportation in this area, when people continue to dismiss and separate themselves from their fellow citizens in any way possible.
Things need to change between some people’s ears, or this could get pretty ugly before it gets better
PERMACULTURE
Yes, permaculture.
As opposed to the tempculture we now have.
n’ now w/computer wi need ne’r leave the house jus’ go online n’ have it delivered.
Peace, universal health care, human rights
www.carolmillercongress.com
When we went from the land to the cities, the die was cast. Forever would we be dependent on the ways of others for our survival. Drought or flood or other acts of God might spoil our crops but now men play gods with others lives.
Cat here….Any one ever heard a guy named David Icke….? Youtube…let your mind feel between the lines…this guy is reading between the lies.
No leader. No followers
I was raised on a farm/ranch and learned a great many skills, both in food processing and general things that come in handy, not to mention survival skills that we took for granted that everyone knew.
As the years passed, I discovered something…city people don’t have a lot of that knowledge. In fact, very little of it. To me it was common sense!! To them it is shockingly new….
All this time these “cultured” city dwellers have been thumbing their noses at the country hick and farmers…the “simple” people out in the country…
Guess what…those people will survive when the rest of the world is standing in line for a loaf of bread in the city.
I am glad I still know how to cultivate a garden…and understand survival away from the crowded and culture of the city.
I live in a city at the moment, but still own a farm…thank goodness…daily I think how much better off that would be.
we already saw on the news this very thing. It was called NO after Katrina. Remember when people were told to walk to the next town? When they got there were greated with a road block and guns and told to turn around. They is Joining right there. If that is the americano you want you are welcome to it. Keep your tinned goods and preserves safe and powder dry.
Good article on a vital subject. Nothing gives us more security — real security than real community. Rugged Individualism is a capitalist scam to keep us divided, consuming, and competing with each other in a way that harms us and benefits our exploiting class.
If we are to survive as a civilization much less build a better one, we need to be building real community where we live. We need to be growing our own food together and sharing our skills with each other in a “post money” system. It is still true that the more you give, the more you get. We need to be taking care of each other because this decaying system can’t be counted on to do it.
Nice article but. In 1995 I installed solar panels. Not many, four 55-watt panels. They were $350 each. With charge controlled, wiring, batteries, etc., that was a $2,000 plus investment for 220 watts of power. Cost of solar panels today? Roughly $650 for a 110 watt panel. Isn’t that great? $650 to light up the equivalent of a 100 watt light bulb! As fossil fuel prices continue to rise so will the cost of PV panels. The system is inherently rigged to protect surplus value and making your own power does not. So then, it must remain unaffordable by those that own the means to produce them. Such is the nature of the system.
McKibben touches on a serious issue-folks don’t join things anymore. Why is that? How do we change that? are excellent questions, I think.
My cynical answer to “WHY?” is that our nation has turned away from the community, inward. A conversation with my sister this weekend, illustrated this. She told me that she has no desire to ever join a group or board to do work for which she is not paid. “What is the point of that?” she asked .
With the economy the way it is…perhaps we will HAVE to turn to each other out of necessity and survival and stop being so selfish.
With the momentum of the internet the protests have moved from the streets to computer screens. Progressivism in this moment is driven by addictions and not commitments. The revolutionaries of the Sixties now morphed to the status quo: a few notable exceptions, of course.
While I get involved in my bio-region, I have absolutely no intention of ever voting for a Democrat again.
My vote will continue to go to Third Parties.
But I respect and admire McKibben’s work. He is one of the few people who authentically deserve the title: Environmentalist.
JOZEFL My buddy got a used boat this weekend, and he is planning to install solar panels that will create electricity to POWER the engine. I wonder if others have found a way to make that conversion for the times when oil becomes far scarcer?
CAT: Funny you should mention Icke. I watchined a re-run of a program on Secret Societies (I think that was the moniker) on The History Channel and there was Icke being interviewed. My massage therapist is a big fan of his, so at her recommendation I checked out his website. Everything stated about the Trilateral/Bilderberg and PNAC makes SENSE, until he gets into the blood line stuff. Doesn’t that make you think he crossed a line?
I know in England bloodline was a big deal, and the karmic blowback became hemophilia. The idea that the Knights Templars loaned money and became a prominent banking force until the King of France got the Pope to run some injunction to get them executed is viable. I don’t see how THAT group became the same bloodline that he claims goes to Yale and does the weird initiation there for Skull & Bones. There’s a lot of evidence that TOO many high placed people went through THAT initiation, but is it about power being coalesced into small, loyal circles, or blood line? I’m Ok with the former, suspect towards the latter.
For those of us who are socially awkward, shy, have social anxiety disorder, are nerdy/geeky, etc., being in “community” or trying to have relationships with neighbors is very difficult and uncomfortable. Of course, I am including myself in this group. I am envious of those who are socially adept, but somehow that isn’t me. Maybe I’m just a casualty of the insular culture that McKibben talks about, or maybe there are just some of us who aren’t groupie kinds of people.
However, I find that the Internet has given me the ability to communicate with like-minded people with whom I otherwise would never have the opportunity to communicate. This includes the CD posters. Maybe this is a cop-out, but it has been very helpful to me. And, when I do take the time to post, it gives me the chance to express myself in a way that probably would never happen if I were limited to the audience of my neighbors.
I am not disagreeing with McKibben, as I think he does have an important point, but the Internet does have its benefits as a community builder.
This is not a new thing, remember “Bowling Alone”. Well if you gave it some thought there are many ways to change this. I go out of my way to be neighborly. I find the small things make a huge difference..a smile..a hello…picking up a newspaper when you know they’re out of town, goes a long way.
When I was a kid (not that long ago) I knew everyone in my neighborhood. My parents used to make sure all the elderly folks in the neighborhood were looked after. I used to cut a lot of lawns for free. God was I happy
I almost look forward to the crash…get back to simple basics, afterall that’s what gives life meaning.
jxh261: “I almost look forward to the crash…get back to simple basics, afterall that’s what gives life meaning.”
You make a good point. I don’t know how quickly it will come, maybe next week, maybe in 50 years… but when the consumer society collapses, those around to see it are going to go through hell. Their children, however, will grow up in a better world.
Jaded:
Individualism is a capitalist scam?
Sorry don’t agree, why not be able to take care of yourself or family without having to run next door. Buying local well in the country even that is hard to do unless you shop at the farmers market, something I do but I also like oranges in winter. I just feel as the world is getting a little nuts being self reliant isn’t a bad thing. Some of these nice look at the passed CD stories are just that, wouldn’t the world be better if……..
jozef mentions the expense of solar panels.
Right… you need a bunch of panels and a decent solar window. Thirty 200w panels would be a 5kW system, but that should suffice for a frugal house. Cost? about $35k. Maybe you get some rebates and it’s less? But that’s what a new car costs and we have FINANCING for cars with $0 down, so go figure.
First, to make a solar house work, not only do you need to be able to cut down tree tops or whatever is blocking your sun from 9 am to 3 pm, but you’ll need an inverter for a grid-tied system, a friendly utility company that does net metering, and more. Or you’re off the grid and have the hassle of batteries as well.
Secondly, you’re best bang for the buck is conservation! Don’t use a dryer; figure out a year-round clothes line (maybe in the attic?). Don’t use a space heater. Get a new fridge. Put all phantom loads on power strips or switches so you can really turn off all the gadgets. Dump the PC box and get a laptop, get rid of incandescent bulbs. Do dishes by hand. Get a solar hot water heater. Get more insulation, double pane windows, weatherization–all that stuff happens before solar panel loads get estimated.
But this is NOT an unreasonable move away from coal, natural gas, and petroleum given the problems of global warming. The panels will certainly pay for themselves as fossil fuels become more expensive–indeed buy panels now before their price goes up along with everything else that requires fossil fuels to produce!
Self reliance is a core American value. People help one another in times of need, but otherwise you are on your own. These values are built in to the American people. To go against the built in ways is foolish. People understand unity and respond to it. Just do not ask them to do too much too soon or it will fail.