From Ronald Kim's, "The Wretched of the Earth," Fall '99 From Ronald Kim's, "The Wretched of the Earth," Fall '99Is humanity possible without community? Almost everyone I know who's seen the critically acclaimed film American Beauty has been struck by its astonishing blend of hilarious comedy and tragic intensity. The movie's powerful and shocking depiction of the silent fears, desires and anger behind many a white, middle-class, Middle American family resonated with millions of moviegoers. After all, what kind of real community would feature a hardline gay-bashing ex-U.S. Army colonel and his sedated wife living next to a gay yuppie couple? Yes, this is the movies, and movies tend to exaggerate reality, but equally unlikely combinations of people lived together in my Center City apartment building two years ago -- and no, they usually didn't get along either. One could even interpret the plot of American Beauty as a depiction of the sort of hell that breaks loose when people who move to a bland suburb specifically to avoid human contact make the "mistake" of getting to know each other. We all know the proverb that "no man (or woman) is an island," meaning that even the most introverted of us need human interaction. But the needs of human beings go beyond occasional nods, or exchanges of "What's up?" or sickly sweet small talk in the workplace. As those who've grown up in less-than-perfect families have learned, humans need more than to eat dinner every night with the same two or three people. Humans need to grow, to meet new people, to expand their contacts and to keep exercising their minds at any cost, no matter how high. If they don't, the best possible result is stagnation and boredom. As Kevin Spacey's character says at the beginning of American Beauty, "I'm 42 years old. In less than a year, I'll be dead -- and in a sense, I'm dead already." Trends in U.S. society over the last two generations have not been conducive to stable, familiar social environments that make people something more than strange faces or objects for small-talk torture. First suburban flight, then the rise of the two-income family and finally the growth of the twentysomething urban professional class -- all compounded by what I recently called our country's "pathologically high rate of mobility" -- have combined to isolate individuals more and more from each other and dissolve close-knit social networks of friends and family. Certainly not all these patterns are necessarily negative in themselves -- least of all the rise of working women. But it is difficult to see how the widespread epidemic known as "the midlife crisis" can be good for individuals or society at large, especially as it begins to affect people at younger and younger ages. Children with absolutely no sense of home, no attachment to where they grow up? Young college grads moving from city to city, having to start over and make new friends wherever they go? Maybe I'm missing something, but there must be some side effects to these trends. The fact is that, for many students at schools like Penn, college will likely provide the most -- even the only -- communal experience of their lives. Four years ago, I would have laughed at anyone who suggested that I'd look back to when I could stay inside all day and still run into friends or see them from my window. In college, it seemed that I knew everybody and everybody knew Ron Kim. During my two years of living in Center City, I often walked the streets and wondered if I'd ever feel at home. Having moved to West Philadelphia three months ago, I've come to understand what I appreciate about my new neighborhood: simply put, that it is a neighborhood. I've also learned that the trend toward fragmentation and dissolution of communities isn't necessarily irreversible. A sense of attachment to and pride in one's community has led longtime residents of University City to protest Penn's increasing westward drive in recent years. It's not that they want to keep Penn, Inc., from having anything to do with them; many of the folks I've met work at the University or visit the shops and food trucks around campus every day. Instead, neighborhood groups are warning against the potential threat that Penn's plans -- like those to build on the site of a popular dog park -- pose to this sense of civic pride, which can still be found in much-mythologized small-town America or in many major cities, especially in Philadelphia, a city of neighborhoods. Of course, some people are able to enjoy the mobile, unsettled professional or academic life and don't mind the constant in and out of new faces that pass from one year to the next. Some folks marry young, settle down quickly and never grow tired, bored or frustrated with family life in the 'burbs. And I admire that. But for those of you who, like me, know something of the personal and social ills I've mentioned above -- personal crises, loneliness and worst of all, alienation -- it is worth considering whether a revitalized sense of community might not bring a greater sense of humanity back to our increasingly stressful, isolated and self-absorbed lives.
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