Communal living

“ Thus we have as a first or simplest community the family, next the village, then the full or perfect state, which, seeking to realise an absolute self-sufficiency within itself, rises from mere living to well-living as an aim of existence. ”

“ This conception of the community as a vital common possession explains the relation of religious, educational, ethical, economic institutions to one another. The community is the clearing-house of all these influences. It is the medium by which they exchange [Pg 93] with one another, in the interest of human life. The perfection of this exchange and the abundance of communal influences makes the community good and desirable, or poor and undesirable.
Sometimes one says that the community is "a good place to live in." ”

“ How much is left undone, for the sake of society! But let us pause a moment, and ask what society is. Is it a community of tried and trusted friends, united together by the ties of perfect love? Listen to the remarks of those, even of your own family, who return from the evening party, or the morning call. Is it a community of beings with whom mind is all in all, and intellectual improvement the purpose for which they meet? Observe the preparations that are made—the dress, the furniture, the food, the expense that is lavished upon these. ”

“ It is commonly, but I think erroneously, thought that community life necessarily means a living together in centers or villages. I conceive, on the contrary, that it is possible to develop a very effective community mind whilst the persons still remain on their farms. ”

“ Now if ever there was a community which needed to study the art of living, it is our American one; for at present, domestic life is so wearing and so oppressive as seriously to affect health and happiness. Whatever has been done abroad in the way of comfort and convenience can be done here; and the first neighborhood that shall set the example of dividing the tasks and burdens of life by the judicious use of the principle of association will initiate a most important step in the way of national happiness and prosperity. ”

“ The change of bodily functions gives him a new outlook upon life. He begins to see and understand that he is a part of the community in which he is living and begins to understand that the community life is made possible by a disposition on the part of his neighbors to help each other. He also begins to understand the institutional life about him and the family and sex tie on which it is based. He sees also the need of the school, the church and other public institutions. ”

“ This brings us back to the goal with which we began this discussion of the collective goals of civilizations: The primary task of any civilization is to survive.
Each individual human being, living and working in a civilized community occupies a sphere of action, enjoys the advantages and disadvantages and accepts the responsibilities and duties which pertain to his sphere. Within his sphere the individual succeeds or fails in so far as he leads a rewarding personal life and contributes his share toward the collective life of the group to which she or he belongs. ”

“ And social work is the development of the chance for all of us to participate more abundantly in our common need to live.
"As fast as in you lies, let your civic societies look farther than conserving or planting or beautifying, or even cleaning. ”

“ I was merely contending that a community of comparatively poor people who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow—tilling the soil and possessed of high ideals of good citizenship—such people beyond question afford the greatest example of contentment, morality and happiness. ”

“ IN THE COMMUNITY That is what it means to be a member of the body; and membership in a family, or a school, or a club, or a community, is just the same. We have already seen, and we shall see more fully as we go on with our study, how completely we are dependent upon our communities for food, for the protection of life, for education, and for all else that makes up our life. The community that does not provide for its members in these things is like a sick body. ”

“ Our problem is to recreate the home, the setting of that social group of man, woman and child, which we call the family, and which is the natural nucleus of the commonwealth, and the moral gymnasium where the young should best learn the arts of fellowship. ”

“ Moreover, the satisfaction of all wants in the community itself is a moral gain. If individuals live this life in the bounds to which their group and family associations are confined, the steadying [Pg 87] influence of society is at its greatest. ”

“ This is the social lesson: for people to understand that their every act, their work, their home-life, the kind of recreation they demand, the kind of newspapers they read, the bearing of their children, the bringing up of their children—that all these so-called private acts create the city in which they live. It is not just when we vote, or meet together in political groups, or when we take part in some charitable or philanthropic or social scheme, that we are performing our duty to society. ”

“ Communities differ from one another according to the living which they supply, or the wants which they satisfy. Modern men will not live in a community that does not satisfy a pretty long series of wants. For instance, a graduate of the American common schools will desire bread, clothing, shelter—all of comfortable quality—and education for his children better than his own, musical enjoyment, aesthetic culture, the possession of some books, access to many magazines and the reading of a daily paper: and varied opportunities for the exercise of the play spirit. ”

“ A community where all the property belongs to the government, and to which every man contributes by his labour, that he may have his own wants supplied; a domestic society which very much resembles a great public school, and converts a citizen, through all the gradations of his existence, from form to form; and where every man, like an automatical machine, must be fixed in his proper place,—supposes a society of passionless beings which social life has never shown, and surely never can. ”

“ The reason for existence of any community is found in the living which it supplies its residents. Men are attracted to a community by the increases in their living furnished by that community. The first element in the getting of a living is the securing of daily bread, shelter, clothing and the satisfaction of physical needs. It is a mistake to think of the community as beginning in religious institutions—narrowly understood—or in social gatherings or in educational service. ”

“ For what is it that we look forward to as our people gradually improve? Not surely to dealing with them as a class at all, any more than we should tell ourselves off to labour for the middle class, or aristocratic class, or shop-keeping class. Our ideal must be to promote the happy natural intercourse of neighbours—mutual knowledge, mutual help, of a kind, certainly, but not this professed devotion of a life; and it will be better from the beginning to mould our system so that it shall bear witness of what it ought to become. ”

“ In the last analysis, however, the largest contribution of the home to the community and the best means of solving the problem of its relation to community life, is in the development of the best social attitudes among its members toward each other and toward the life of the community ”

“ The more of true human life each member of a community receives, or the more each one suffers himself to be governed by the highest good and truth, the more orderly, industrious, united, healthy, and happy is that community. The more truly human does it become in its form, organization, and activities. ”

“ On the whole, they are prepared for the gradual disentanglement of men from the Normal Social Life altogether, and they look for new ways of living and new methods of human association with a certain adventurous hopefulness. ”

“ When our relation to the community is fully realized, it will be seen that the health, the happiness, and the consequent powers of every individual, concern not only his own life, but also affect the whole community of which he is a member. ”

“ Importance of social environment I take the explanation of the differences that distinguish communities to be this: That each society, small or great, necessarily weaves for itself a web of knowledge, beliefs, customs, language, tastes, institutions and laws. Into the web woven by each society (or rather, into these webs, for each community above the simplest is made up of minor societies that overlap and interlace each other) the individual is received at birth and continues until his death. ”

“ Look, for example, at the great mass of your populace in town and country—a tremendous proportion of the whole community! Are their bodily wants better, or more easily supplied? Are they subject to fewer calamities? Are they happier in childhood, youth, and manhood, and more comfortably or carefully provided for in old age, than when the land was unenclosed, and half covered with woods? ”

“ If you can once see that a working majority is obtained for the handsome passions, for the feelings that draw us together, rather than for the feelings that separate us, then you have laid the foundation of a community and a free government and, therefore, if you can do nothing else in the community center than draw men together so that they will have common feeling, you will have set forward the cause of civilization and the cause of human freedom. ”

“ In process of time, there is a family of families, called a community, embracing hundreds of individuals connected by ties of blood so attenuated that they possess no binding influence. Common interests, affinities, and sentiments supply the place of family relationship, and make laws of amity and equity for them as a population. Next we have a community of communities, or a commonwealth of these individual populations, generally called a nation. Here is a lesson for the moral nature. Here are thousands and tens of thousands of men who never saw each others’ faces. ”

“ The strict standard of the household prevails within its limits. Books and magazines must not discuss, however seriously, the problems of life. But in the intercourse of the community there is not the same care. The moral life of country people requires cultivation of the leisure hours, the casual talk, the occasional meetings of men and women, and especially of young people. ”

“ I should like each worker and thinker to have and to know his place in the scheme of civic improvement; and I think it perfectly possible for every man to know what it is that he is trying to do, what contribution it is that he ought to give to that joint life which is called here civics, which is the life of a city and the life in the city. One man cannot possibly concentrate it all in himself. Within a society such as the Sociological Society a general scheme is possible in which each individual and each society shall play its acknowledged and recognised part. ”

“ Right living conditions comprise pure food and a safe water supply, a clean and disease-free atmosphere in which to live and work, proper shelter, and the adjustment of work, rest, and amusement. The attainment of these conditions calls for hearty coöperation between individual and community—effort on the part of the individual because the individual makes personality a power; effort on the part of the community because the strength of combined endeavor is required to meet all great problems. ”

“ In the home are developed thoughtfulness for others, a spirit of self- sacrifice for the common good, loyalty to the group of which the individual is a member, respect for the opinions of others of long experience, a spirit of teamwork, obedience to rules which exist for the welfare of all. If these and other qualities of good citizenship are not cultivated in the home, it is not in a healthy condition nor performing its proper service to the community. ”

“ Here a word must be said about the subjective aspect of society, which, in its objective aspect, as we have seen, is merely the struggle and process of adjustment. What is the relation of adjustment to sympathy and to understanding, to communication and to concerted purpose, to the evolution of a social constraint through which the community controls and shapes the individual, to cooperation and to social organization? ”

“ When a community of States, by the most potential voice of Law, says to the whole body of its laboring population, Ye are not men and shall not be; ye are chattels—it is absurd to speak about kind treatment—about happiness. ”

“ HOME. SOCIETY is marked by greater and smaller divisions, as into nations, communities, and families. A man is a member of the commonwealth, a smaller community, as a hamlet or city, and his family at the same time ”

“ And may a polished community be compared to a man who, having executed his plan, built his house, and made his settlement; who having, in short, exhausted the charms of every subject, and wasted all his ardour, sinks into languor and listless indifference? ”

“ Now, if we trace out the laws which govern human life in society, we find that in the largest as in the smallest community, they are the same. We find that what seem at first sight like divergences and exceptions are but manifestations of the same principles. ”

“ Sanctioned by law, by the custom of long tradition, by economic and social valuations, the home calls for personal devotion of will and purpose from every individual for the welfare of the group of which he is a privileged member. ”

“ After all, the primary object of all civilisation is to provide for every member of the community food and shelter and fulfilment of natural cravings. And when, in what passes as a civilised community, a whole class is called upon to go without any one of these our human requirements, it is little wonder that it should break out. ”