I know the title seems counter-intuitive, but if you let me explain, it will all make sense. Many of the issues we have with this pandemic are due to the fact that we no longer have communities. We have given up community life for a qazi-global outlook. Let's examine the reality of what happens in a dead community, but first, let's recap how it dies.
The first stage of death was retail. The small grocer, the mom and pop store on the corner. The corner drug store, the town hardware, the 5 and dime, they are all gone. Replaced first my the Supermarket, then by the Big Box store. Walmart, Costco, Target, Home Depot, the list goes on. All these big chain retail stores are easy to shop, easy to get all your things and get out. The drawback, the clerk doesn't know your name. The guy at the meat counter, if they don't have a meat counter or the produce department. They don't know you. Most people at these stores don't even go to a checker, they use the self check out. The small store couldn't compete with Sam Waldon's monstrosity and many of them are long gone.
The second nail is when we decided that the megachurch was the best way to do church. We go to churches of 500+ and they are getting rid of the things that use to connect us. Many of them are throwing away Sunday School, moving to small groups, which is simply the peer groups who are connected anyway. The Sunday school programs that survived are not done in a way that connects people. We sit in rows, watch things on a screen, are treated to a concert with lights and cool effects. We hear a message and we leave. Gone are the days of the small church that is under 100 that still has potluck. We can't afford to pay a pastor and purchase a building anymore for a small church, the community church has been priced out. Bigger is the only way to preserve the model of church we have in America. Unless we want to change the model, and church folks aren't good at change, the big and megachurch will be the only way we can pay for our buildings, pastoral staff, and utilities. With it, a little more community dies.
Much like the issues with the local church, gone are the neighborhood schools. We use to walk to school because there was an elementary school in every neighborhood. They are where the community met for PTO meetings, concerts, and parent-teacher conferences. When my children started school in town, they were in a small community school. That school is gone and now there is a big school which merged three schools together. It saved the district a lot of money, but it cost more of community. Now the gyms are packed out for concerts and appointments are made for conferences. It's become the same nameless sea of faces that church and stores have become. The big mass of people has taken away our chances to really connect with our neighbors because these are people from four different neighborhoods.
This building a bigger institution has wrecked our sense of community. Add to it the automatic garage door opener and streaming video services like Netflix, we don't sit outside. We stopped connecting and we are raising a generation who don't know how to connect. We have increasing sex trafficking and child abduction that we don't want our kids to talk to anyone we don't know. We don't know our neighbors, so we don't talk to them. We have become suspicious and the neighborhood watch is replaced by video doorbells so we can keep an eye on the neighbors. We don't come out of our sanctuary, we are so focused on our electronic devices that we don't know the people next door. We often lose connection with the people in our homes.
Now, when something like the Corona Virus, or Covid-19 hits, the breakdown of community because obvious in a couple of ways. First, we don't trust the people around us and we have to make sure we are taken care of. We don't stop to think about others as we buy every roll of toilet paper on the shelves. We don't consider others as we stock up for 6 months, and people who don't have the financial means or are unable to get out can't get basic necessities. We are so concerned about taking care of ourselves that we don't stop and consider others. Their faces never come to mind because we don't know them. We don't consider them, we don't care about them. We just want to take care of ourselves.
After we buy everything, we choose to do what we want, when we want. I saw a report on the beaches full of college students at Spring Break. They were asked why they ignored the quarantine, and they basically said they didn't care and just wanted to have fun and party. They only care about having fun, only care about themselves. More and more young people only care about themselves, they have no sense of obligation to the community. The reason is, they don't know anything about what community looks like. They have grown up shopping in a giant store, attending a giant school, going to a giant church and not knowing anyone outside of their Snapchat list. They are disconnected from the people all around them. Naturally, they don't care about these people, they haven't learned empathy or compassion. They are raised by the people hoarding toilet paper. They are raised by price gougers. They live in a world where slavery and sex trafficking is a real concern and fear. Society has stopped being civilized and community is gone. We have seen it play out when a crisis hit. You see it on the news every night.
Normally, this would be the time where I write a solution. Sadly I don't have one. We can't fix the schools or the churches, the small shops are gone and are not coming back. The world has changed and until our society comes to the point of self-destruction, it will stay this way. Perhaps Western Civilization will fall apart, much like the Roman Empire. Perhaps we will all reset and go back to a community lifestyle. Maybe we will exist in the Hunger Games or some other dystopian society will bring back a sense of community. Maybe something will turn us around, but on the track, we are on, I see little hope for us now. May God have mercy on our selfish souls.
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