The Generosity of Community

I wrote a few weeks ago about the value of social capital – how it was once common for neighbours to have each other over for music and stories, for families to eat together, and for many other kinds of gatherings. Similar forms of gathering were once common throughout the Western World, but lingered in Ireland here than in most places, perhaps because prosperity arrived here later.

In most other Western countries – in most of Europe and North America --- people acquired televisions and cars in the 1950s, so people began spending more time driving and watching telly than with their family or with neighbours – what we might call “electronic culture,” rather than human culture. Here, perhaps, the trend took place more in the last 20 years, according to most people I talk to.  

Either way, though, the trend is difficult to resist; we all find it easier to deal with a television or video game than another person, or to just drive to pick up a pizza than to cook a meal. The more people turn to electronic culture, moreover, the more difficult it becomes to stand against the tide; you can’t play cards with friends if no one else plays, and you can’t meet with neighbours for storytelling if all your neighbours are just playing video games.  

If prosperity helped erode that community culture, though, going back is not as easy when prosperity fades – people become accustomed to simply getting a pizza rather than cooking, or spending 20 euros at the cinema rather than sing or tell stories together, and children grow up accustomed to such a life. In other words, we grow accustomed to buying distractions, and when we have less money to buy them – say, when people are laid off or have their salaries cut in this on-going depression – they feel the poverty more keenly. An Irish family today, even one hit hard by the depression, might still be making twice the money they were in the 1980s, yet feel poorer.  

When people do feel poverty more keenly, it is once again that social network – a real one, and not just a web site – that can alleviate their burden, either through loaning us money, repairing your car in exchange for a favour, or minding our children. We think of such behaviours as helping an immediate problem in the short term, but they help build a network of trust in the long term.

“Other things being equal, people who trust their fellow citizens more volunteer more often, contribute more regularly, participate more often in politics and community organizations, serve more readily on juries, give blood more frequently, comply more fully with their tax obligations, are more tolerant of minority views, and display many other forms of civic virtue,” wrote sociologist Robert Putnam.  

“Moreover, people who are more active in community life are less likely (even in private) to condone cheating on taxes, insurance claims, bank loan forms, and employment applications. Conversely, experimental psychologists have shown that people who believe that others are honest are themselves less likely to lie, cheat, or steal and are more likely to respect the rights of others. In that sense, honesty, civic engagement and social trust are mutually reinforcing.”

As times get difficult and more people need such assistance, though, that same erosion of community also makes people less likely to give to charities, and charitable donations have declined across the Western World. As a general rule, wrote sociologist Robert Putnam, we are likely to give more in the presence of other people. “Joiners,” Putnam wrote, “are nearly ten times as generous with their time and money as non-joiners.”

If this all sounds quite grim, we can also look at the glass-half-full side: Even when people are not being pressured to give their time and money to help others, they still do so, without realising how many other people are doing the same. A recent survey found that the amount that people gave was greater than the amount everyone imagined everyone else gave; in other words, we are better people than we realise, but now that we live much more isolated lives, we don’t see it or encourage it in each other.

That trend can be reversed, though, and more easily here than in most places, as it is so much newer here than in other Western countries. Older people here remember a time when people had much closer communities, so reviving them should be much easier here than in most Western countries. The Irish don’t have to start from scratch rebuilding. 

Photo: Musicians at Wren Day.