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<\/p>\nSix years ago, my wife and I moved to Omaha.\u00a0 We were excited for a change in life (new jobs, new start). We decided, as part of our downsizing, we would locate in a newer suburb where young families gravitated, where we\u2019d have opportunity to develop new friendships in a new neighborhood.\u00a0 We eagerly moved into a smaller house that was less than 10 years old in a newer development.<\/p>\n
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But our hopes for new neighborly friendships were quickly dashed.\u00a0 In six years, we have experienced virtually no interaction with our new neighbors.\u00a0 We\u2019ve made friends with a total of one older person.\u00a0 The house next door has had three owners since we\u2019ve arrived, with the latest being a single woman in the military who won\u2019t even acknowledge our hellos.\u00a0 Our backyard, a favorite hang out in the summer, has a view of about twenty other backyards.\u00a0 Rarely do we see anyone using his or her backyard or lovely decks. We\u2019ve come to learn that most people drive into their attached garages, shut the door and never come out until they drive off to work the next day.\u00a0 Our dream of neighborly involvement has been utterly shattered.\u00a0 But what has created this detached, unfriendly and uninvolved world we live in?<\/p>\n
Zygmunt Bauman\u2019s book Collateral Damage <\/em>provides an explanation for this very common state of our modern communities.\u00a0 Bauman\u2019s rather bleak assessment of our shrinking world (globalization) and expanding technological communication (internet) would suggest that humanity should be drawing closer together, when in fact these very modern movements are actually exacerbating our differences and causing us to be less attached in any real or meaningful way. A major blame for this lack of community rest on the shoulders of government.\u00a0 Bauman suggests that it is the very nature of government to use uneasy and fear as an excuse to swoop in as protector and savior, allowing government more control and greater involvement in our lives.\u00a0 As Bauman states, \u201cHumanities uncertainty and vulnerability are foundations of political power.\u201d[i]<\/a> \u00a0The most prevalent source of fear available is free market uncertainty.\u00a0 \u201cThe vagaries of the market are sufficient to erode the foundations of existential security and keep the spectre of social degradation, humiliation and exclusion hanging over most of society\u2019s members.\u201d[ii]<\/a>\u00a0 When this isn\u2019t enough, the government can stir up further insecurity through creating fear for personal safety, \u201cfears of the threats to human bodies, possessions and habitats \u2013 whether rising from pandemics and unhealthy diets or lifestyles regimes, or from criminal activities, anti-social conduct by the \u2018underclass,\u2019 or most recently global terrorism.\u201d[iii]<\/a><\/p>\n This creation of real or imaginary fear and potential insecurity has resulted in nothing less than a general lack of trust and suspicion.\u00a0 \u201cWith lack of trust, borderlines are drawn and with suspicion, they are fortified with mutual prejudice and recycled into frontlines.\u201d[iv]<\/a> \u00a0This leads further to \u201cwilting of communication; in avoiding communication\u2026the \u2018strangeness\u2019 of strangers is bound to deepen and acquire even darker, more sinister tones\u2026\u201d[v]<\/a>\u00a0 The evidence of this is most clearly found in our modern gated community, which walls out the stranger and announces to all that you are not welcomed.\u00a0\u00a0 This lack of trust pushes people apart and keeps them indoors.<\/p>\n Added to this fear and suspicion is our newest form of communication\u2013the internet\u2013where we find our modern sense of community even more eroded.\u00a0 Bauman suggests that traditional communities were founded on connectivity, loyalty and commitment over the long haul.\u00a0 \u00a0The new internet community provides a false sense of community, as it requires no commitments, no loyalty, no discipline and no long-term involvement.\u00a0 What is lacking most in this virtual world is what people need the most: real security. \u00a0According to Bauman, the combination of fear and insecurity and the turn to virtual community has resulted in a weakening of the \u201cbonds of interhuman solidarity.\u201d[vi]<\/a><\/p>\n It is a very sad picture that Bauman paints, and yet the evidence for this is right in my backyard. \u00a0Why else would people not meet or interact with their neighbors as they did in the old days\u2014or at least acknowledge you with a hello?\u00a0 If not fear, it is must be the painless and commitment-less community that they would rather rush to on-line where nothing is asked and nothing is offered. It is also, in my opinion, the 500 channels of cabal TV that provide more captivating entertainment (hours of Honey Boo Boo and the Bachelor) than one could ever find in watching birds at the bird feeder and rabbits playing in the backyard or the feeling the sun on your face converse with your neighbors on your patio. This same TV provides hours of news stories that only feed into our sense of insecurity and fears, that keep us indoors and safe from the strangers around us.\u00a0 And so, in our unsafe, unconnected, insecure world, how can we ever hope to break down the barriers of distrust and become real neighbors again \u2013 to enjoy the interhuman solidarity that we have lost?\u00a0 We have yet to figure out how to connect with our neighbors and truly despair of ever experiencing truly neighborliness ever again. Will it require that we begin by speaking truth to power (Bauman\u2019s source of fear and uncertainty), since there seems little opportunity to speak truth to my next-door neighbor? (She won\u2019t even respond to hello!) \u00a0But the bigger question I ponder is how can I hope to reach a lost world when I can\u2019t even connect with my own neighbor?<\/p>\n