The Desire For Community
How to understand the cognitive dissonance created by a growing desire for community, on the one hand, and our commitment to individualism.
We have watched the price of food rise over the past few years, and some of us have begun to ask ourselver afford the grocery bill?" Indeed, many have started economizing already, no longer able to afford all the necessities and being forced to make tough decisions. Most of us are feeling this, I think, despite the economic indicators to the contrary. It's dawning on us, one by one and all at the same time, that if we're going to survive in the coming years, we are going to need each other. We will need to share knowledge about how to grow food in containers on apartment balconies, how to buy land together in remote places, how to immigrate and find community elsewhere, how to forage safely in our backwoods, or how to forge meaningful friendships in adulthood.
I know I'm not the only one experiencing this rise in the desire for community. We are starting to realize that the problems that we face in the United States and the industrialized hyper-capitalist West, cannot be dealt with on an individual basis. This has led me to think about the individualism that I cherish so much, because at first pass, it seems to be at odds with community. On TikTok, currently a leading marketplace of ideas, you will find post after post that critique and interrogate American individualism.
I've always been a staunch individualist. As a woman born in Latin America into a family with roots in Indigenous matriarchies, but in a culture that has patriarchy superimposed upon it through years of colonial rule and American control, I took refuge in my “feminist” version of patriarchal individualism. It has made my life possible, a life that often feels like an anomaly. It didn't matter that "they" didn't mean me when they said “individual rights,” that they didn't plan for me to overhear them and take individualism to heart.
My belief in my individualism allowed me to separate myself, in my teen years and beyond, from my immediate family. Moving from Latin America to the United States helped enormously with that. When I came to the U.S., my American mother's family was no longer a functional structure. So, in the ether of American culture I floated, dedicating myself with a lot of gusto to becoming an American—an individual with individual rights and aspirations to becoming all sorts of impossible things, including a Philosopher and feminist writer. And gosh darn it, I was going to be who I was going to be. And I did all that.
The more traditional idea of community feels suffocating, dangerous even, but I have tried to create an alternative kinship group around me. (Not very successfully, but for rather interesting reasons that I may later recount….) I both value American individualism and identify with the desire for a kinship community, not just to those who are like us, but to those whose differences can actually bring a mutually beneficial exchange of ideas, knowledge, and practices.
We have two choices, as I see it, and maybe we need to exercise both at the same time. Actually, I know we do. We need to fight within the existing system and try to make changes using “the master’s tools”1 — individual rights, freedom of speech, public education, the freedom of the press, all the values and institutions that our liberal society has put on the table, many of which are good. And the other choice, which I think is more productive, is to build out alternatives. I see a generation not so much turning away from protest activism, as realizing that it is not enough. No one is going to save us from looming existential threats but ourselves and our ability to give each other mutual aid.
As someone who has been on the left of left for a few years, what I have noticed is that these more radical eruptions of community, like I have seen in queer communities or in the Occupy movement, are very difficult to institutionalize. They will not last, and that is okay, becoming mainstream is not their goal. Typically, they are absorbed into pre-existing institutions, ultimately benefiting the systems of power already in place. They act as escape valves that let some social pressure out. But this is also a way to renew, pass on, and maintain knowledge about how to organize, how to resist and empower each other, and how to work with others with whom we may have significant disagreements. This knowledge is present, in living memory, and the tools are there for the taking.
Maybe, given the current set of circumstances we face, there is a chance that the next time there is such a moment of eruption, something could come of it that could be longer lasting. Instead of mass popular movement, think small-scale changes and micro-programs to share human necessities like food, seeds, labor, housing, etc. I leave you with this TikTok video that I think expresses the sentiment well:
The writing is clear as a bell. The challenge lies in the scale of our dysfunction (environmental, social, economic) and the urgency of the work before us. I strongly agree that we need to work for change on both the macro- and micro- scale. It's easy to feel overwhelmed, but that gets us nowhere. It's important to recognize that progress is incremental. We can't do more than our part, but neither can we do less. I'm turning back to watch the related videos you shared. Thanks, again!
Thank you for this rich and challenging post. I'm convinced the both-and approach you advocate is essential: practicing solidarity with all living under today's toxic capitalism AND joining with others to create build new, adaptive forms of community.