Such As She Was, Such As She Would Become

The issues surrounding the Samaritan vocation are, I would say, primarily personal. That is, they have to do with personal relationships as well as ways of living in our own lives. One of these issues is community. But what connection does community have with society? I don't think you can turn the Samaritan vocation into a social vocation...but the more I read, it seems unavoidable that the Samaritan vocation will have social implications.

In "The Gift," Lewis Hyde explores various societies that were small enough so that "community" and "society" were synonymous. But as he points out:

...A group formed on ties of affection could, perhaps, be as large as a thousand people, but one thousand must begin to approach the limit. Our feelings close down when the numbers get too big. Strangers passing on the street in big cities avoid each other's eyes not to show disdain but to keep from being overwhelmed by excessive human contact. When we speak of communities developed and maintained through an emotional commerce like that of gifts, we are therefore speaking of something limited in size. It remains an unsolved dilemma of the modern world, one to which anarchists have repeatedly addressed themselves, as to how we are to preserve true community in a mass society, one whose dominant value is exchange value and whose morality has been codified into law. (Hyde 116)

Rosemary Haughton asks some questions that help frame how we might approach what Lewis is discussing:

What is it that gives "ownership"? Is it simply paying for, owning a piece of land in the legal sense? Is it feeling responsible for it? Is it feeling oneself part of the history of a place, a group, a nation? Surely it has, at least, some quality of choice, of not being constrained but able to decide, to be there because one feels it matters. (Haughton 63-64)

Communities like those of the Catholic Worker, like Wellspring House, like l'Arche, like gift societies, are held together by intentional act. In other words, Dorothy Day could only build community because it sprung from her own sense of a personal vocation. Modern "society," however, (and I am contrasting that word with "community"), is held together by the state. I am an American, not because I chose to be (like Dorothy Day chose to be in her communities); rather, I am an American because I was born between the Canadian and Mexican borders. The question that Haughton poses is whether this is enough to sustain a society. I am reminded here of Robert Frost's poem, "The Gift Outright":

The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia.
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak.
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

"Such as she was, such as she would become." But what is she in the present moment? Hyde discusses the past at length. Haughton has a vision for the future. But what are we do at this present moment? Is it possible for me to be an American when I live in a "society" and not a "community"? What relationship do I have to other Americans? How does one relate to his own countrymen as brothers, when he has no basis for community with them other than the fact that we were all born between the Canadian and Mexican borders?

We hear a lot about "communities" in America. People speak of the "black community," and so on. They usually lay the stress on the first word ("black," etc.)...but it occurred to me recently that the common factor among all these groups is the word "community." People form community in America, first, by separating themselves from the larger "society," turning themselves into an other, and uniting around that common otherness. There is a sense here that community provides a common purpose, a common worldview, a common starting point, and that these form the basis for each individual's participation in society. Politicians pander to as many groups, as many "communities," as possible, because a politician can win many individuals by appealing to the "communities" that they identify with.

The problem I have in seeing my "Americanness" as being part of a community, as "possessing" the house that is this nation (to refer back to Haughton and Frost), is that I do not have a starting point on which to base that "ownership." I have no particular attachment to American political philosophy. I tend to agree with Illich's general criticism of Western civilization. I certainly have major qualms about contemporary politics (not only in the solutions offered...I don't think society even knows what the problems are, so its solutions are missing the point). Basically, I have neither a philosophical, nor a political, nor a moral or religious basis to unite me with America (or, rather, I only have these in parts). If we say that the Samaritan vocation has social implications, then it is hard for me to see what those implications are when being an "American" is just a geographical and political fact. In other countries, identity is rooted in a people, not in a government or a constitution. Those countries may have a constitution, but that is not the basis of their identity. This is why coups d'état in Latin American countries do not destroy collective identity...the people there identify as peoples united by common origins, not by a specific political system.

The more I read and think about modern society, the more I am convinced that the only way to truly change society is to rebuild from within. There is really nothing we can do about the structures on which our society is built (because society is too committed to and too dependent on those structures), and trying to find a common identity under those structures seems futile to me. Of course, we cannot completely ignore the existing structures...that would require us to leave the earth, which is impossible. But perhaps identity can only be found in "community," not in "society," and that may be why Americans try to identify as separate "communities" apart from the larger identity. Perhaps the only solution we have at this moment is to ignore the existing structures and try to build community on the small scale. But how can this work in a pluralistic society? As I suggested before, the basis of community is having a common starting point. But in building mini-communities from within, are we reinforcing the sense of "the other" whom we shut out? Obviously we cannot agree with everyone, not even with everyone in our own community. But what is the balance between community and otherness, and what implications does the personal vocation of the Samaritan have for these larger social questions?

I think I'm more confused than when I started.