The Half Life of Community 2-1-10

Anderson, South Carolina

Last night a man full of life came to my house with his son to celebrate his 90th birthday. Not worrying about his cholesterol, Bill enjoyed a truly decadent double chocolate cake made by another well-wisher. I’m told it had several sticks of butter in it. We had the satisfaction of asking many questions about life by ‘mining’ Bill’s nearly century old memories; wondering if the world has really changed. He described a world, a sense of community, of connection that is hard to fathom in the transient disconnected culture America has become. Could there have really been a time when people put down deep roots and connected firmly to those around them?

Bill’s son Andy must be about fifty. He now lives three thousand miles away. Still, Andy has the vast luxury of knowing where home is. His father has lived in the same place since World War II. Andy gets to board a plane and come home in the literal sense of the word. He is able to bring his own children to ‘the old home place’ on the south side of town.

Another friend in her mid-fifties also has the grand luxury of knowing where home is. Her mother and father lived in the same house since the Korean War, perhaps even a bit earlier. Joanne never knew any other house as home. On all of my visits to a small town of nine hundred people outside of Pittsburgh, I have always been in awe at the sense of history, place, and connection to be found among several large extended families. For the most part these extended families have stayed put, never dispersing on the winds of economic opportunities. Perhaps they knew where true wealth was to be found.

There must be no greater comfort than knowing where home is. Perhaps that is why I am asked to drive a wheel chair van to this little oasis in southwest Pennsylvania a couple times a year. I have often wondered if one can really gain ex-officio membership in places like Brigadoon.

By the time I was fourteen I had lived in twenty-two places, always being the new kid in school, never being able to relax into the familiar. Mom never felt at home in her own skin, seeking consolation in men, bottles, and pills, therefore we lived in places for as little as ten days. I have no personal concept of home and family other than what little bit I have been able to buy into with birthday cakes or long-distance driving services. The miracle is that I actually managed to graduate from high school.

Nearly three weeks ago the world entered into a curious form of community, one borne out of catastrophe. When ever disaster washes onto the shores of public consciousness we enter into a form of solidarity with the afflicted, mesmerized by the images and sounds of cataclysm. For some days we think of little else but the tenuousness of life; becoming arm-chair voyeurs of tragedy.

When the twin icons of American prosperity fell to earth on a September day, an amazing sense of solidarity swept the world. The night images of candles lit throughout the world suggested that we were all in this together, that we truly needed each other. For a season we were no longer afraid of each other, only of some vague ‘they’ who brought this carnage to pass. After perhaps six or eight weeks, the flags were taken down, the images faded, we got back to business as usual.

Five years ago the earth convulsed under the Indonesian archipelago and the dreams of millions were washed out to sea by a tsunami of destruction that spread across Asia. The day after Christmas in 2004, a 9.3 magnitude subduction earthquake lasting 8.3 minutes precipitated other earthquakes as far away as Alaska. 230,000 people died and millions were left homeless. For weeks the world was transfixed by images of naturalized Armageddon. The images faded, we got back to business as usual.

Four years ago Katrina showcased our powerlessness. On August 28, 2005, a category three hurricane breached levees in fifty places, producing a storm surge that washed six miles inland, reducing an entire city to a moldy cesspool of despair. Looters and gangs of armed gunmen pillaged the city. For weeks the world was again transfixed by images of the end of the world, your world if you lived in New Orleans. Many made fortunes selling defective trailer houses. The images faded, we got back to business as usual.

Three weeks ago the earth again convulsed. One January 12, 2010, a rupture of the Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden Fault sixteen miles west of Port-au-Prince provoked a 7.1 magnitude side-slip earthquake that leveled a city of three million. Millions lost their tenuous hold on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 170,000 bodies were counted and buried by the end of January. We entered that curious solidarity once again. For two weeks the world was transfixed by images of naturalized Armageddon, Haitian style. The images faded, we got back to business as usual.

When I went onto the news services yesterday morning there was not a single reference to Haiti. There was a large photo and plenty of commentary about the nocturnal exploits of a $55 million football player booted from the Pro Bowl for failing to fulfill his obligations to his team mates. Perhaps one does not have to be able to pound little white balls into tin cups in the ground in order to join in the august over-paid ranks of professional athletes who have forgotten that others are looking for heroes in a convulsant world. The images faded, we got back to business as usual.

Also on the wire services was a piece about the top destinations for Americans to migrate to for higher paying jobs and good houses. More money and bigger houses are viewed as end points. At this point, Haitians would just like to have gotten out of the house alive. 170,000 didn’t. Millions of Americans are on hoof, looking for greener grass elsewhere.

An important number in nuclear physics is ‘half-life,’ the amount of time it takes for half of a radioactive substance to decay into an inert compound. In twice the time, only a quarter of the active compound will remain. In three times the half life only 12.5% will remain. The rate of decay is all important in nuclear medicine and in running nuclear power plants. It is even more critical if one does sinister things like making atomic weapons

In a recent five year period nearly half (45.9%) of Americans moved their place of residence. 120,347,674 of them. More than 22 million changed states of residence. 25,327,355 changed counties of residence. 7,495,846 changed countries. Some cities in the north have seen nearly half their populations disappear. The half life of community seems to be around five years, excepting in Southeast Asia where it was reduced to 8.3 minutes. In Haiti we saw it was shortened to about twenty-two seconds.

If every five years 45.9% of the American people move, in only twenty years we will be living with less than one out of ten people we once lived with. Ninety percent of our active dynamic neighbors will have been replaced with inert faceless strangers.

I have been living in my present house for nineteen years. My street is a real-life confirmation of the sobering demographic statistics I gleaned from Census Bureau data. I now live in a street of total strangers who have interiorized themselves in front of flat screen panels, dwelling in Internet social networks. Gone are the neighborhood block parties, Sunday afternoon potluck dinners, and outdoor games. The images faded, we got back to business as usual.

I have no idea who lives around me. Those who left here for bigger palaces in the hinterlands are also living among isolated strangers, if the census data is correct. As they say, the neighborhood is changing, and it is not for the better. Asians, Haitians, and Louisianans did not want to move on, yet they were given no choice in the matter. Most of us who move do so by choice. More than half of those moving do so independent of employment demands, staying within their counties but disrupting their neighborhood social fabric. Do we honestly think we are going to find what we really want for our souls if we move to a strange land filled with strangers who have as little sense of place and history as we do?

One of the most celebrated stories in the industrial psychology/empowerment literature is one called “Acres of Diamonds”. In the account, the protagonist dissipates his meager resources and decades of his life making desperate bids to find diamonds. He comes home in old age, exhausted and broke, only to find the equivalent of the Cullinan Diamond in the streambed behind his shack. He was wealthy beyond measure but never enjoyed his largesse, being too busy grazing on the other side of the fence.

Perhaps you will find the diamonds you seek in the old ranch house next door and not in the Georgian brick pile with Palladian windows out in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps you can extend the half life of your community by staying put. Bill and Joanne’s families figured that out. For them, the images of community never faded. For them it was business as usual.