TV... Automobiles... Suburbs... Career moves far from family... Take your pick
to blame. Yet none by itself tells the whole story. Western culture has turned
from family, spiritual community, natural world, town, and the land to
commercialism, materialism, professionalism, and individualism. We made our
choices for unprecedented personal freedom and material wealth, and now we
wonder that we are left alone.
I often reflect that service-learning is a unique creation of a post-modern,
post-community world. It was only when community began to disintegrate that it
became necessary to create it. In the pre-industrial age, people learned most
things in one type of apprenticeship or another. One grew up to do what one's
parents had done. (Not always parents, of course. The household was the basic
economic unit, not necessarily the biological family.) One took care of those
around him/her not out of altruism, but because they were close. Most people
only knew one community, be it village, farm, or family. It was common sense as
well as religious value to take care of others.
Yet that world is gone. Today people are disconnected, alienated even, and
service-learning, this new thing, is badly needed.
I can't help but think too that there must be a spiritual dimension to our
recreation of community. This may mean conventional religion, but not
necessarily. Every religion seems to have a side oriented on a profound level
toward service to others.
I became a Quaker largely because service is at the core of the Quaker tradition
yet without doctrinal strings. I found it necessary to join with other
service-minded people, linked in a community of faith in something larger than
ourselves. It has not made the world's problems go away. I am having to work
harder than ever to create community. But it has made community possible.
When I was just out of college in the mid-1980s, I helped found a Minneapolis
group called the Revolutionary Anarchists Bowling League (RABL). I guess we were
a decade ahead of our time.
Peace,
Rich Cairn
cairn@gold.tc.umn.edu
Rich and Susan Cairn
3533 44th Ave. So., Mpls., MN 55406-2903
(612) 722-5806 722-6062 fax