Building Community

Ten years or so ago we had a Forum here in Grand Junction on the subject of community. It was called American Voices. The speakers were from Denver and Grand Junction and one from Chicago. As I re-read the notes I took at that time I realized sadly that we have made no obvious progress in developing true community in ten years; In fact nationwide and locally we are even more divided. I wish we could have the same program today -- right here in River City.

The focus of the forum was building community. In order to do that it is necessary to address what the speakers called, “the middle voice,” the political center. Now mine is not usually considered to be one of the middle voices. I am at one end or the other, taking a stand, but I have never claimed omniscience.

The speakers were deeply committed people who did not consider “the middle” to be an amorphous lump, but rather an active, vital part of the body politic. One of them said that it consists of almost all of us, excepting the kooks on each end, who cannot be reached by any kind of reason . True community can be achieved only by people who are willing not only to defend their beliefs, but also to listen and try to understand the opposition. It takes a person with strong principles to be able to find the middle. That was the hopeful part.

Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes fame, sees no middle ground. He mused, “I need some help with my homework assignment, Hobbes. I’m supposed to write a paper that presents both sides of an issue and then defends one of the arguments.” “What’s your issue?” asks Hobbes. “That’s the problem. I can’t think of anything to argue. I’m always right and everybody else is always wrong. What’s to argue about?” That’s the attitude that makes community very difficult to achieve. That was the troubling part.

A community is more than a place on the map. It is a state of mind, a shared vision, a common fate. We can no longer take community for granted in the United States. We have too much evidence that it is unraveling. Building communities becomes highly important public policy and imperative to our public and private futures. Community is not a guarantee, but a continuing challenge. This was one message from the Forum

Today we have become so polarized on issues that we are threatening the very system that gives us the right to have those beliefs. Our founding fathers battled over politics. Today we are often battling over religion going under the name of politics. Many of the conflicts in our society today are between church and state --abortion, birth control, homosexuality, creationism, racism, evolution, censorship.

The biggest challenge for tolerant people and "communitarians" is to try to find some sort of common ground on which to discourse with "the other side." As my friend the philosopher said, "You need two sides to define the middle". In my favorite coffee shop on Patterson there is a shelf holding a donkey and an elephant, facing each other. They are the gifts, to each other, of two groups of coffee drinkers, one of Republicans, one of Democrats. The two groups are having fun mixing the art of political discourse with their morning coffee.

John Kennedy wrote in "Profiles in Courage", “It is compromise that prevents each set of reformers from crushing the group on the extreme opposite end of the political spectrum. The legislator...knows that there are few if any issues where all the truth and all the right and all the angels are on one side.”

As a nation we have survived many crises I expect we can survive the social crisis in our society today, but it won't be easy. There are too many American voices like Calvin's.