Community Is the Answer
Civic engagement can make a difference.
In the aftermath of the US presidential election this past November, I went searching for answers. How did this outcome happen? And why has our society become so angry, hateful, and divided?
Everywhere I looked, one central theme seemed to emerge: the importance of community. And how, as a society, we’ve lost this value.
It doesn’t take being a sociological scholar to know that we’re an extremely individualized society — to our own detriment. Individualism has serious limitations but at this point, it’s deeply entrenched in every aspect of lives. I’ve been searching for community, largely in vain, for the past 20 years.
Community is built into institutions like colleges and universities, especially back when I was an undergrad before the advent of social media, and I fully experienced that. I continued to have a strong sense of community into my 20s. Living with roommates in New York City, pursuing a career as an actress, and working in the restaurant industry waiting tables all facilitated that.
By the end of my 20s, I’d given up acting and worked in Corporate America. A few months before turning 30, I moved into a studio apartment in Brooklyn, where I lived by myself.
There were still a few shreds of community available to me in the early years of living there. My building was made up of mostly studios, which meant that there were a lot of young, single tenants. We called our building “The Dorms,” and dubbed a nearby takeout spot a block away “The Cafeteria” because we’d often run into each other there. We even organized a few group gatherings, like a building-wide barbecue in Prospect Park and an after-work happy hour at a nearby bar.
But as I inched further into my 30s, more and more of my neighbors started moving out of the building, getting married, and having children. That was the pattern in general, it wasn’t just confined to the inhabitants of my building; people broke off in pairs and became more difficult to make plans with.
Part of the issue stems from the fact that in our society, romantic relationships are prioritized above all others and the nuclear family unit is central. Community involvement and making time for friendships don’t rank as high on the list.
But it goes beyond that.
In my search for WHAT THE ACTUAL F*CK IS WRONG WITH OUR COUNTRY?!? I came across a documentary on Netflix called Join or Die. It focuses on the work of renowned social scientist Robert Putnam, who’s found that our country’s “decades-long decline in community connections could hold the answers to our democracy's present crisis.”1
Putnam points out what’s obvious once you think about it: People used to be a lot more involved in their communities, which has sharply declined over the past few generations. Things like garden clubs, bowling leagues, Kiwanis Club, gatherings through religious institutions, potluck dinners, neighborhood block parties and barbecues, various associations, and countless other iterations used to be a lot more common and popular. Today, they seem almost nonexistent. Though clubs are probably still there for us to get involved in; we just have to try harder and dig a little deeper to find them these days.
When I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2018, I learned firsthand the importance of community and how essential it is to our well-being. At the time, I was single and living alone, and my community rushed in to support me when I needed it. This actually really surprised me, because prior to my diagnosis I’d felt extremely isolated and lonely and like I didn’t have many close friends.
What transformed this for me what that I shared what I was going through and reached out for help. And I learned that, when given the opportunity, people want to help and be there for others!
After sharing my diagnosis publicly, so many people reached out to me and asked how they could help. Friends and neighbors prepared home-cooked meals for me and dropped them off at my apartment on a regular basis. A group of people I barely knew from one of my 12-Step meetings hired a private chef to bake me fresh sourdough bread and make homemade soups. Other residents in my building picked up groceries for me. Someone I barely knew offered to get me coffee from Starbucks any time I didn’t feel up to going out in the morning. My building’s superintendent handled all the household tasks I was no longer able to do while undergoing treatment, like taking my AC out of the window when it got cold (TBH I couldn’t do this when I was healthy, either!) and changing my light bulbs when they burnt out.
These are only a few of many, many examples of my community helping and supporting me throughout my cancer treatment.
It’s amazing that this happened and I’m so grateful, but it shouldn’t take a health crisis to engage with our community. We need to build community today so we reap all the many benefits on an ongoing basis — and then the added benefit is that our community will then be there for us when we’re going through a crisis and need it most.
As time went on after my cancer treatment ended, the feeling of community I’d experienced started to slip away. Then COVID hit and it vanished altogether.
When I moved to the suburbs early in the pandemic, I found that it was more difficult to cultivate community in suburbia than it had been in New York City — and it wasn’t easy in the city! But I recently finished watching that documentary I mentioned earlier, Join or Die, and I have a renewed sense of commitment to putting effort into this.
The way I see it, there are two components to civic engagement:
Cultivating community, it whatever ways make sense to you and spark your interest
Participating in local government, when applicable
Unless you’re interested in politics or being a politician — which I am not!! — the former will happen a lot more often than the latter. But it’s still important to pay attention to the issues that arise in your local community, and when you feel strongly about something, to make your voice heard.
In fact, this week I did something I’ve never done before: I participated in local democracy by making my voice heard on an issue that’s important to me. And it was exhilarating! I’ll talk more about this in a future newsletter, so stay tuned 👀
💬 Let’s Discuss:
✨ How do you feel about community involvement and its importance?
✨ What role does community play in your life? Do you wish it was more?
✨ If you are involved in your community, in what ways?
✨ Have you seen Join or Die? If so, what did you think?
✨ Do you know of any helpful or inspiring resources about cultivating community? Please share them in the comments!
I appreciated hearing your take and reaction. I loved the chance to interview Rebecca and Pete Davis. It's so good for society that they made the film AND that Netflix picked it up.