Loren Mead summarizes the break down of a sense of community in our culture. (Five Challenges, pp., 46-50; Alban Institute) He suggests that the idea of neighborhood has disintegrated into isolated compounds designed to ward off fear of the stranger. With the downsizing of corporate America, workers at all levels have had any sense of loyalty to their place of work destroyed. Even the idea of group activities such as participation in a sport or even loyalty to a team has been dissipated.
Much of this disintegration of community may be attributed to the power of fear and greed in our lives as well as the impact of technology on our behaviors. As simple a factor as the loss of sidewalks in many neighborhoods and the isolating effect of the air-conditioned automobile moving from the air-conditioned house to the sealed office space has prevented the accidental meetings that often offer the opportunity for relationships. Yet people continue to be amazed at the powerful experience of a sudden snowstorm that brings them out of their houses to meet their neighbors or a tragedy such as a flood that binds them together.
Beneath the surface of the fears and other factors that cause us to become isolated from our neighbors, there is an incredible hunger for community. John Naisbitt, in the eighties, put forth the proposition, which he called “High Tech, High Touch,” suggesting that as a society became more and more dependent on technology which would force them away from other human beings, there would be an equally high pressure for the touch of other human beings which was essential for our living. (Megatrends: Ten New Dir3ections Transforming Our Lives; Chapte43r 2;p. 39 Warner Books; NY; 1982)
We have seen many attempts to fill that need in people’s lives since then. The attraction of certain cult groups, the loud sound of single’s bars, the popularity of all sorts of support groups and even the success of certain forms of church life are testimony to that hunger.
