Last week I participated on an Alternative Spring Break trip to Las Marias, Puerto Rico. While there, I learned quite a bit about sustainable organic farming, bio-construction and, more broadly, about how to be a member of a community — not just how to be part of a community, but how to actively contribute to the community’s well-being. Knowing that my actions — washing my hands before helping to prepare dinner, using biodegradable soaps and taking care of the gardens from which we got our food — would impact everyone else on the trip made me especially careful about how I acted. Community involvement is, I think, mostly overcooked in the United States. We all consider ourselves good members of the community — whether it’s local, national or international — and believe that doing a little community service here or there is enough to meet this quota. On the whole, few of us consider ourselves lazy or inconsiderate members of this planet. But the idea of maintaining a good community, and the standards a strong community requires, are much higher than we often recognize.
To make these abstract concepts more concrete, here’s a story from the trip. One afternoon, weary from construction and feeling baked in the sun, our team decided to traipse down the river to cool off. We had been there for barely two minutes before we noticed thick smoke billowing from the fields across the river: our neighbors, it appeared, had decided to clear their land by burning it. It did not take long for the strong wind to carry the smoke across the field to where we were, deteriorating the air quality to a point where we had to flee the falling ashes into a nearby bamboo forest. All afternoon the fire burned, keeping us from finishing the tasks we had set for ourselves and stranding us farther away from the farm. We later learned that the fire had been started by fishermen who wanted to clear a path to the river.
In essence, the fishermen had acted as bad members of the community. By considering only their own goals, they had subjected those around them to the costs of their activity — namely, thick, debilitating smoke. While the example may seem trivial, the corollary leapt immediately to my mind: countries like the U.S. that pursue their objectives regardless of how their actions impact the international community. The ways in which the U.S. has acted like those Puerto Rican fisherman are countless: supporting undemocratic regimes in order to secure economic assets or thwart the spread of communism, refusing the ratify climate treaties that would limit emissions, and exploiting resources for our own gain are just a few examples. The list is long, and it exists in similar versions for many other countries in the world.
Yet while this problem may seem evident, the solutions are far less so. The solution to the fisherman problem would have been simple: a little communication about their goals and intentions would have cleared it all up, and we would have planned our day such that we could get our work done before or after the fire. But communication about goals and intentions on an international scale are much trickier; in fact, there is significant scholarly debate about whether it’s even possible for nations to honestly and reliably relay their intentions to one another. Fear, mistrust and mutual exploitation seem to be common international currency. Attempts at forming an international community — the United Nations, for example — meet fierce and constant resistance and enjoy limited effectiveness.
At home, though, the idea of community is much stronger. We can and should work to cultivate a sense of community within the borders of the U.S. As Robert Putnam, a professor of international affairs at Harvard University, argues, this sense of community — expressed through civic engagement and involvement in community-oriented activities — has showed a marked decline in America in the last few decades. People spend more time at home watching TV and less time attending town hall meetings, petitioning their representatives, lending their voices to school board meetings, or — and this one really gets me — voting. Since a high point in the 1960s, voter turnout has dropped by a quarter. Civic engagement, intimately connected to the sense of community, tells a sad tale of decline.
The takeaway, though, is that we can change this trend. Communities are powerful. As I learned in Puerto Rico, when communities function well, the benefits for everyone are manifold; however, when communities deteriorate and individuals forget they belong to a larger collective, everyone suffers. This lesson is something we should all consider as we enter the working world and begin to actively contribute to our local communities. How we interact with each other will shape our communities, and our communities will shape our nation. I think we can all agree that our nation needs a little shaping up.
Russell Bogue is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. Contact him at r.bogue@cavalierdaily.com.
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