Community
The human spirituality lives in such solitary confinement that is becomes individuality and individuality becomes a secret that is carried to the grave. (Leunig:1983 p 34)
This quote is taken from one of the most striking, and haunting, cartoons I have ever seen. It is by Robert Leunig, an Australian political cartoonist. He is known for his support for Aboriginal causes and is one of the few white people to have open access to Arnhemland, one of their sacred homelands. The cartoon is from an aboriginal perspective, illustrating their puzzlement at how white people relate to each other, and how the concept of individuality informs this. He starts by saying ‘once white people had sacred sites and a dreamtime’, accompanied by a picture of some people with a communal dream bubble, going to several people, with people dancing in it. The next scene has a caption that says ‘all this was eventually subdivided’, accompanied by people with individual dreams dancing alone. The next scene says ‘such a subdivision is now called privacy’, showing people starting to hide their dreams from each other. The last three scenes use the words above, showing people getting increasingly isolated, with difference and individuality being not something to celebrate, but tragic bi-products of this isolation. The final scene shows someone going to their grave crying and saying ‘I’m so lonely’.
Yet in this society a premium is given to individuals over the community. We talk about freedom from government and interference from others, rather than our right to community and to be able to make a decent living. This idea of Rugged individualism has consequences as Burkhitt says
not only do people in the Western world feel separated from others with whom they live and who make up their society, they also feel divided within themselves, riven between the selves they present in relations with others and the individuals they feel themselves to be deep down inside. The armour that protects and separates us from others appears also to drive a deep wedge between our feelings and our ability to express them in public. (Burkhitt: 1991 p45)
Rugged individualism is also ideological, in that it serves to justify division and inequalities. Goldman talks about it being a masked attempt to repress and defeat the individual and their individuality and serve existing political elites. The individual may gain a spurious independence from the old ties that bound - the family, the local community, - but they ‘become manacled to and dependent upon a market that invades every aspect of their lives. They must consume to be free, but that dependency enslaves them to a market bent upon restricting their choice and closing down their options’ (Jeff and Smith, 2002, p40)
However we should examine those who invoke the idea of community, as it is a terms that has been appropriated by the right to justify exclusion of others, or to avoid responsibility for economic and political inequity and discrimination – saying such things are the responsibility of the ‘Big Society’. The protagonist in the rant challenges the myth of community. Authors such as Belton (2009) regales against romanticising ‘community’ talking about how cities were historically seen as places to escape the watchful eyes of one’s judging neighbours. He also talks about how communities can be discriminatory and not the progressive forces we like to think they are. However, in the end, as Marx says ‘“Only in community with others has each individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in the community, therefore, is personal freedom possible.”