Categories
culture

Communities Are a Subset of Networks

Build Community
Photo by Niall Kennedy

I have long been interested in the need for and value of communities and the fact that we have lost the value and sense of communities to a large degree in our modern society. I have said many times in private and even in public that most of our problems in society would be improved if not altogether eliminated by a revival of community life. Prior to reading Communities vs Networks however, I had never really paid attention to the specific similarities between networks and communities. After pondering the post however I would suggest that rather than networks and communities being on different ends of a continuum the reality is that communities are networks by definition even if most networks don’t rise to the level of community. Allow me to support that claim by sharing tweaked versions of the statements from that post which contract networks and communities:

  • Networks May Be Artificial, Top-Down; Communities Are Organic, Bottom-Up (originally “Networks Are…”)
  • Networks Allow Passivity and Consumption; Communities Require Action and Contribution (originally “Networks Encourage…”)
  • Networks Can Be Location Independent; Communities Are Usually Attached to a Place (added “Usually”)
  • Networks Often Divide a Person Into Parts; Communities Nurture the Whole Person (added “Often”)

Based on those statements a community would be defined as a network that functions organically, requires action and contribution, and nurtures the whole person and that such groups are usually attached to a place. The question in distinguising communities then isn’t whether the group is more like a community or more like a network. Rather, it is how much the particular network fits the definition of community.

Categories
thoughts

Home Is What You Make It


photo credit: Joel Abroad

In the perpetual effort to have a presentable house where multiple young children live and grow, an idea finally came to me that people will treat themselves and their surroundings in a way that reflects how they view them. If children view themselves as carefree and without responsibility they will take no responsibility. If they view parents as having the primary purpose of serving kids they will treat parents as servants. If they view their home as little more than a shelter from the wind and rain they will treat home like a cave.

On the other hand, if kids view themselves as someone special with important responsibilities and a grand destiny, like princes and princesses, they are more likely to look beyond the desires of this very instant and plan to meet the destiny they envision. If they see parents as important role models they are more likely to emulate them rather than make demands on them. If they see home as a sanctuary, rather than a shelter they are more likely to treat it with some respect and care.

Categories
life

Personal Challenges

We had a neighborhood party last Saturday and as we were driving home we got talking with the kids about one of our neighbors and his son who is autistic. As we explained some basics about autism we did so in the context of the fact that everybody has different challenges in life, that the challenges we face may change at different periods of our lives, and that autism is one of those challenges that some people have to deal with.

This got the kids talking about their individual challenges and then they started asking Laura and I what our challenges were right now. When they asked me what my life challenge was right now I told them that my challenge right now is that my life is not always perfect, that sometimes things do not go as smoothly as I might wish.

As I thought about it, that’s a pretty good challenge to have (and I’m sure it can’t last forever). Everything in my life is going pretty well right now. It’s not that I’m in total control and the world bends to my will, but when things do not go as planned there are no devastating consequences. I do not get distraught when something I want remains out of reach because nothing that I need has been denied me, and nothing that I want right now is time sensitive so I can afford to wait when necessary.

Categories
culture life meta pictures technology

Speed Affects Lifestyle

Preface

I was laying in my bed at 5:00 AM (when most people should be in bed) and my brain started reviewing the images of the roads I commute on. I began to think of how such a complex road system would be entirely unnecessary if we were not able to travel at the average speed of today’s normal commute. Consider this a stream of semi-consciousness about the impact that our speed of movement has on the kind of life that each of us lives.

Then

Let’s place the year 1889 as the baseline of a slower lifestyle. I choose that year because it predates the advent of the car, it is late enough that we had the ability to move faster than horse and wagon with the use of railroads, and it’s 120 years ago – a nice round number.

In 1889 most travel was done by horse or on foot. As I recall traveling 30 miles in a day was generally about as far as a person could expect to go. In the late 1870’s the Transcontinental Express was able to average about 35 miles per hour traveling across the country. That would appear to be the functional limit of traveling speed for that time.

Now

Today people regularly travel 70 miles per hour on their daily commute (outside of rush hour) only because we have created an artificial speed limit of 65 mph on our roads – without that speed limit most vehicles could easily travel at 90 mph.

For the sake of simplification let’s consider the differences that we would see if we were to limit our physical traveling of people to 5 mph (a fast walk) with a limit of 30 miles per day, as compared to today when I can comfortably make a trip of 600 miles in a long day and regularly commute 20 miles each way to work.

Comparison

In our modern situation the only real limitation on where I work (physically) is how much time I am willing to commute – I can choose to live 50 miles or more from my place of employment so long as I am willing to take the time to commute. In the slower lifestyle if we assume that I am willing and able to spend 6 hours of my day commuting in addition to the 8 hours I need to work then I could work as much as 15 miles from home.

From a community standpoint I could not reasonably interact with anyone outside a 7 mile radius on a reagular basis in the slower community whereas in the modern-speed community I could with no more effort interact with people anywhere in a 100 mile radius. If we had an even population density over that whole area that would mean that I have access to 204 times as many people on a daily basis. If we assume that there really is a limit on how many people I can know well then there I can really only know ½ of 1% of the available information about those I can interact with on a daily basis compared to the slower society

Conclusion

I am really not trying to suggest that our society has gone all downhill since some utopian point in our past, but I do like to think about the real results of what we think of as progress. As I was looking around (on the internet – there’s a new kind of speed there) I discovered an entry in Wikipedia on car culture that focuses on cars and addresses this same mindset of “what has really changed with this progress.”

What are your thoughts on the effect of rushing about in our society?

Categories
culture Education thoughts

Use the Proper Tool

I have written before about our national propensity to use government when it is not the proper tool for the job. Scott summed my point up very succinctly in a recent post:

There is a proper tool for every job. Use of the wrong tool often produces substandard results. Sometimes it is necessary to make do with what you have. That’s called innovation. But regularly using the wrong tool when the right tool is available is just plain stupid.

One of the basic tenets of classical liberalism is to regard government as a tool to be used only where it is most appropriate; the chief role of government being to safeguard and expand liberty. Many people (from all over the political spectrum) view government as a big stick to be employed in forcing others to conform to their particular view of good.

Government is not the only tool that we often use inappropriately, and sometimes the wrong tool is employed not because it is the tool of choice, but because we refuse to use the proper tool. Such is the often the case with regard to schools disciplining children.

A large number of schools use potentially dangerous methods to discipline children, particularly those with disabilities in special education classes, a report from Congress’ investigative arm finds.

In some cases, the Government Accountability Office report notes, children have died or been injured when they have been tied, taped, handcuffed or pinned down by adults or locked in secluded rooms, often to be left for hours at a time.

Some people would be quick to blame the authoritarian, impersonal schools for their outrageous methods of discipline and while I am far from a believer in the infallibility of schools I think that such blame is misplaced in the vast majority of cases.

The real blame lies in the fact that many parents fail to enforce discipline in their homes and even among those who do enforce discipline in their homes all too many make themselves unavailable to take on that responsibility when their children require more discipline than can reasonably be applied by a teacher in charge of more than a dozen students. What’s worse, is that we cannot even safely place the blame fully on the shoulders of the individual parents. Too many of them are forced into situations where they cannot devote themselves to parenting full-time. (Sometimes they just feel forced into those situations.)

As a society we have set too low a value on the role of parenting – placing it completely secondary to economic productivity. We have set expectations too high for our material and economic standard of living – where the luxuries of yesterday must necessarily be necessities today. Consider cell phones for every family member over the age of 10, cars for everyone over 16, cable TV, computers, game consoles, television sets in every room, dance-lessons, sports, and hobbies for each day of the week.

None of these things is intrinsically bad, but together they form unreasonable and unsustainable expectations and they destroy the possibility for most stable families to keep at least one parent available to take care of their children when needs arise.

Not only that, but we expect the schools to provide many of those hobbies through requiring gym, art, and music classes as well as extracurricular sports. The result is that even where there are parents at home and available the children often spend too many hours under the care of their teachers and not enough under the influence of their parents. This serves to lessen the parental influence and offers incentive for parents who would otherwise be available to commit themselves to other activities lest they feel they are wasting their time.

The problems are complex and interwoven so that any hope of identifying the solutions is dependent on our recognition of how and when any given tool can be used and insisting on using each tool in its proper place rather than finding favorite tools and trying to make this reduced tool set suitable for all our needs.

Cross Posted at Pursuit of Liberty

Categories
culture life

Racing Together

We were discussing Concern for the One today in class and as we talked about how some people get lost because they grow weary one of the class members, Travis Staten, talked about a marathon that he ran recently. He talked of how weary people get running a marathon and about how everybody encourages their fellow runners. I thought of my own marathon experience and I can attest to that spirit of cooperation. Not only the encouragement from other runners, but the verbal encouragement from those spectators who are watching and cheering for all the runners passing them on the course. I suspect that the selfless instinct to bolster the spirits of all those who are racing “against you” comes from the fact that the course is so long that you are competing against yourself or against the course more than against your fellow competitors. Finishing is an accomplishment.

Travis summed it up perfectly by describing the feeling among runners as:

I’m going to make it – and so are you.

When he said that I realized that our approach to life should be exactly the same.

Categories
culture life

Done in Wisdom and Order

I have heard this statement from Mosiah 4:27 applied to many things:

And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength.

Somehow in all the repetitions, in my mind the statement had become divorced from the context in which it was given. I don’t mean to suggest that it was not applicable in all the places I have heard it applied, but I learned a lot about the proper disposition of material goods (the context it was given in) when I avoided generalizing the counsel.

The statement was made at the end of king Benjamin encouraging his people to give of their goods to those who sought their help if they were able. His statement was to remind those who might be overly generous, to not bring themselves to a beggars status in their efforts to help the beggars. Making that connection was not a major revelation to me, but combined with much of the best financial advice I have come across I came up with a comprehensive approach to the best way to allocate your money to be generous with others while not running faster than I have financial strength.

There are 5 avenues to dispense with material goods. In the proper order they are:

  1. Tithing
  2. Sustenance
  3. Savings
  4. Philanthropy
  5. Luxury

Having the order is one thing, but knowing how and when to allocate your means to each avenue is the tricky part.

First, pay tithing on whatever means you have. With what remains, provide for your own sustenance, in other words, the necessities of life for yourself and your family.

Second, once you have more means than are necessary for your bare necessities you should allocate some means to savings so as to be able to weather the financial storms that life will bring your way.

Third, when your means are sufficient for you to be able to put some money into savings on a regular basis you should start some form of philanthropy even if you are not able to save as much as you would wish to save. (I use the term philanthropy so as to avoid confusion with some of the meanings of the word “charity.”) As your means increase, you should increase your allocations to both savings and philanthropy in a balanced way (that may not be a 50/50 split, but it should not be giving a pittance to philanthropy while saving large amounts of money).

Fourth, once your savings has increased to the level you feel comfortable with for your future needs you may feel free to allocate excess resources towards some luxuries. (Of course by this time your sustenance should be exceeding a cardboard box for shelter and a diet that is limited to rice and Cup ‘o Noodles®.) As your means continue to increase you should increase your philanthropy at least as much as you increase your luxury (and you might want to increase your savings as well).

Finally, if your material means begin to exceed the level required for luxuries enough to make your live materially easy (meaning that more luxuries would not bring more fulfillment in your life) then you should allocate virtually all increases in your resources toward philanthropy.

Categories
life

Sans Agent

I have nothing against real estate agents, they definitely have their place in helping to buy and sell houses, but I just have to say how nice and refreshing it has been to sell my house without working through an agent or two. I met a great young family on Monday as they came to look at my house and they chose to make an offer. We were able, without any faxing back and forth and delays of having an agent write up an offer which is delivered to another agent who delivers it to the other party to review and counter, to work out an acceptable agreement whereby my house will no longer be mine in the next few weeks. We have not yet signed the formal contract, but we quickly went through the negotiations without having any go-between and because we are not paying any agent commissions we both had the flexibility to arrive at a contract price that was mutually beneficial.

When I receive a written contract (probably tomorrow) it will not have any significant surprises for me because we have already agreed on the concessions necessary to make this deal work and so I will be able to sign it quickly and move this process along so that I am free to buy my new house and be back to living in my own space. I’ll know what address to give people without wondering if it will still be the right address six weeks from now.

Based on my experience I would suggest that even if you want or need to use a real estate agent to buy or sell a property, if it is at all possible you should get the actual buyer and seller to work directly with each other until a broad agreement is reached, then let the agents handle the minutia for a smooth transaction.

Categories
life

Living My Ideals

With the beginning of my new job I will have the opportunity to use public transportation regularly. I have always been in favor of using public transit but since I have always either worked from home or lived close enough to commute by bicycle I have never really used the transit system in Utah on a regular basis. That will change starting in July as I become a holder of a monthly pass (I’ll be driving to work for my one day of employment in June because I wil not be at my regular office location on that day of orientation).

I hope and believe that I will enjoy that time in transit where I don’t have to worry about the traffic. I plan to read and think during those times as a way to prepare for and unwind from my workday. The hope is that this allows me to really be with my family while I am at home rather than having my thinking interfere with my attention during family times.

Categories
culture

Stability

As I have been exploring the issues of an ideal living environment I have come to the conclusion that there is a factor which I had not noticed before which can probably exist in almost any of the categories of places (large city, suburban, rural, etc.) which seems to have more influence over desirability of the location than size or amenities. That factor is stability of the area. In a city there are likely to be areas which have it and areas which don’t which means that looking at a whole city might be virtually useless in this search for an illusive ideal.

When I talk about stability I do not equate a static community environment with a stable community environment. Static indicates a lack of change to me where stable indicates sustainability. The two are largely independent of each other. A stable community would be one where residents are invested in the whole community and not simply their own household. It is one where there is likely to be less turnover because of that investment. I believe that this is the reason that our government tends to promote homeownership – the assumption is that ownership would tend towards becoming invested in the community.

I recognize that stability is not nearly as important at some stages of life (single college student for example) as it is at others (when you are trying to raise kids). I am basing my search for an ideal on the child-rearing situation partly because that is the stage I am at, but mostly because I believe that strong homes where children are being raised form the foundation of a strong society.

In a future post I will be exploring how to get into a stable community considering that they tend to have lower turnover. I’m sure that there are a variety of ways. I’ll be looking for insights both before and after I write that post.

So, critique me. Is stability as important as I have suggested? Have I defined it correctly? Are there factors that I have failed to notice? Besides resident buy-in to the community, what else contributes to stability in a community?