So I was walking with a friend tonight, and i started talking about something I realized before… when you look down my street, (i don’t know what your city/suburban/rural street is like) but when you look down my suburban street, you see all the shades are drawn. like during the day i’ll be driving down my street, and just lookin’ at the houses around me and there is no inside, there is no life. i mean yea, i see the kids toys strewn across the driveway and lawn, but the house is a closed book. And granted, at night it’s creepy to have all your windows black faces starring back, and you don’t know if anyone is starring back. But even during the day?
I mean what’s the deal with all this privacy? Stalking is bad, and theft is scarry. but that doesn’t happen to everyone. Privacy didn’t even really exsist as a “human right” until the last few centuries when the interior set up of houses started changing from single common rooms to seperate rooms to rooms with specific functions.
now a day all you get is privacy. I drive in my car alone, i sit in my house alone (With my family) I’m not sitting out on the porch hailing my neighbors… i’m making note of what i see them doing in the front of their house because that’s the most i’ll ever know about them, without being bold and ballsy and approaching them. I’m also not strolling down the street, passing other people out on the street, stopping at store fronts and such. no such interaction. And so when it comes to houses, I too shelter that from the world. I’m used to my personal bubble, and i sure won’t let that change. say hello to strangers? heck no.
and I guess, the idea of community is wrapped up, more like twisted up in this thing called privacy. The more privacy I have, the more suburan sprawl takes place, and the more dependent we become on cars (as it becomes more and more unstable) the less community I have, unless of course i spend my life driving from place to place to place, at which point it’s just useless because you’re so tired from traveling. But where’s the community. unless a diliberate choice is made, there is no accidental interaction. I see my church people on sundays, i see my work people every day, i see my family because i live with them and i see my friends because i drive 10 miles to see them.
and when there’s a loss of community (which makes up for sucky familys, sucky living situations, sucky life conditions etc) then there’s sooo many more spiraling ramifications that come from it that probably are depicted in at least 20 text and normal books.
I like community, it takes time to build it. but it also takes deliberate action, and continutity is not a given when you are forced by suburban sprawl (And so many other things) to create your own communtiy.
Bah, sleep is sprawling across my brain…. hope this was interesting.
