The Quest for Community- A Call to Public Health
 
Introduction & Preface
*In case you're new here, we're covering a set of essays on Robert Nisbet's classic work, The Quest for Community.  Scroll through the feed for previous essays.  When finished they'll all be compiled into a complimentary PDF.

In "The Quest for Community" Nisbet offers us a definition of community:
 
“The product of people working together on problems, of autonomous and collective fulfillment of internal objectives, and of the experience of living under the codes of authority which have been set in large degree by the persons involved.”
 
He follows up his definition by reminding us that people come together because things can’t be done in isolation.  I’m reminded of even Thoreau’s assistance by friends and family members when he set out to live at Walden Pond alone for over 2 years.  All human achievement is done through community.  Roads are built, inventions are created, buildings are constructed, cities exist and people survive through communities of various kinds.  Even languages exist because of community.  It could be no other way.    
 
Social order exists only through the basic building blocks of community- family, religion, arts, politics, professions, and government.  Where other forms of community breaks down, the government must expand and take over all power, and thus grow exponentially.  So ironically, the more individual “freedom” is touted, the more the traditional forms of community are discounted, the more the government must step in with programs, deficits, and rules, to fill the void of authority.  The goal of community rightly considered is to have healthy groups, based on freedom of association, but also unchosen obligations and duties where people put limits on themselves individually to achieve certain goals together– safe cities, generational stability, stable economies, and good places to live with a vibrant culture, for example.  
 
Modern American culture can be characterized by one word- alienation.  Of course this varies from place to place, but the overall sense is that the social order is:
 

• Remote
• Incomprehensible
• Fraudulent
• Beyond hope or desire
• Inviting apathy or boredom
• Uninteresting

 
Manufactured symbols of togetherness, like the Super Bowl, big Hollywood movies exist, along with programs of political correctness, patio festivals, political media spectacles, concerts, and new consumer product launches but these are ephemeral ways of being together and don’t have any overall effect.  We might get into these things temporarily, but the substantial and concrete means of community, of accomplishing things together, like the local governments, the political party, local business, churches, labor unions, and even families, which normally carry on over countless generations, are slowly fading away. They’re still there, but rarely do they inspire our loyalty or devotion.  
 
Nisbet gives us 3 ways modern people are alienated, weak and rootless:
 

1. From the past- from our history, our national traditions, our ancestors. 
2. From physical place and nature- from a hometown, personal ties, a region, a local culture, and from the outdoors and natural creation.
3. From things- from property, hard, material property, things one can touch or even be debased by.

 
Even though Nisbet recognizes those 3 types of alienation, he says that the two most important parts of community are:
 

1. Social function- extended family, neighborhood, apprenticeship, social class, & parish, which give people roles to play.
2. Social authority- not power, which is external and rooted in force, but in statuses, functions, and allegiances, given by the associated members of the community.  

 
Power, Nisbet states, arises only when authority breaks down.  One immediately thinks of the constant battles with crime in the inner cities.  Families no longer exists, and fathers as authority figures no longer exist in these communities, so the state steps in as a power broker, with guns, bullet-proof vests, cameras, and all-out efforts to restore order where this is no authority.  Power seeks homogeneity, regimentation, and manipulation, and Nisbet likens this to a war environment and a military state of affairs.  Compare this state of affairs to the famous quote by Proudhon:
 
“Multiply your associations and be free.”
 
Multiple associations at the basic level create healthy authority and community.  Where there is no longer authority, power steps into the vacuum.  
 
Interestingly, Nisbet points out a different problem in Suburbia:
 
“But what we get in many sections of the country is a kind of suburban horde.  There is no community because there are no common problems, no functions, no authority.  These are lacking because….effective control is vested elsewhere in boards, councils, offices of counties, districts, or adjacent cities.”
 
Could this be why so many mass shooters happen to come from the suburbs?  This sense of alienation and remoteness, the non-existence of community life?  Could it also be why so much depression, addiction, and suicide takes place in seemingly healthy and affluent suburbs?  It’s something to think about.  On a positive note, it seems as though the incorporation of many suburban areas into cities, I’m thinking of places like Alpharetta and Brookhaven, GA as well as others, is a step in the right direction.  
 
Two other thoughts.  Mercia Eliade, in his classic book The Sacred and Profane, a favorite of mine, discusses the world “coming into being, into existence.”  Someone’s hometown or place of birth, where they came into the world, where they were born, is to them a sacred place.  It is where they entered into this world.  Without a concrete sense of place, existence itself is limited in this sense.  
 
If there is no sacred home, there is no existence or “being” as the philosopher of religion or the anthropologist would say. With no place which existence began, life can’t have much concrete meaning.  This could also apply to the entire universe itself, coming into existence.  If it wasn’t founded or started, then it doesn’t exist.  We need a home of some type. The world must be founded before it can exist.  This is a broad topic falling under the philosophy of religion, which we’ll save for a later time.  

Secondly, the efforts to build more community in the suburbs, both with architecture and the way suburbs are built, as well as with incorporation, are good efforts.  I hope these efforts will continue to improve community in the suburbs. I recommend checking out the work of Charles Maron at Strong Towns.  www.strongtowns.org
 
 Read Next: The Quest for Community, a Call to Public Health
 
 

The Quest For Community- A Call to Public Health 

Introduction
 
“Apart from authority, as even the great anarchists have insisted, there can be no freedom, no individuality.” – Robert Nisbet.  
 
It’s a given fact that community health has declined drastically in the U.S. since World War II.  More people live alone, live isolated, and suffer from depression, than in any other time in US history.  Even though the country has seen dramatic improvements in technology and a reversal of institutionalized racism in the government and public and private sectors since the 1950s, and this is undoubtedly positive, society itself has never been so divided, fragmented, and atomized.  We live with road rage, mass shootings, depression and suicide epidemics, drug addiction, multi-generational poverty, ever-declining schools, political polarization, and social isolation and alienation on a scale unlike anything we’ve known as a nation, or even as human beings.  
 
Community health is as important as nutrition, fitness, health care, the environment, or any other aspect of health.  I would argue that it is the most important part of health, the one that binds the others together.  A person without a healthy community or culture is not healthy.  Healthy communities build healthy citizens, people who feel both a sense of belonging and a sense that their lives have meaning and are worth living. 
 
In this series of essays, I’ll be summarizing a well-known and pivotal book on community by the former UC Berkeley sociologist Robert Nisbet, called “The Quest for Community” which was published in 1953.  It’s unlikely that this book, considered by many to be the definitive work on community in American history, makes it into many Public health curriculums.  I could be wrong, but modern American education, particularly public education, is administered in purely “utilitarian” terms and avoids value judgments of any kind at all costs.  So in that sense this book is a “conservative” book, not in the modern left / right dichotomy or political sense, but in that it sees valuable things about the past like community, which have been lost in modernity. 
 
Modern public health discourse is completely relativized of moral or value judgements, because that’s the postmodern world we live in- moral judgements, unless they are part of the zeitgeist- the “march of history” of dogmatic progressivism, are not allowed.  For example, If men and women are statistically happier, healthier, and wealthier if they get married as husband and wife before having kids, and stay married and stay employed, this is effectively “off the table” in public health discussions because under modern public paradigms of social discourse this reinforces the “patriarchy”.  In discussions on public health and community health, tragically, moral discussions, about what we “should do” and “ought to do” are off table.
 
The “Quest for Community” is therefore a different kind of book than what we’d see coming out of a top tier university today.  Perhaps because it was written in a different era, 1953, a professor at an Ivy League-caliber (Berkeley) institution was allowed to publish it, with great influence.  It’s doubtful that he would have been able to now, in 2020.  Books with moral overtones about community health coming out of leading Universities are now few and far between.  
 
I’ve thought long and hard about community health my whole life.  I’ve even struggled with the concept myself, how to live it myself and how to teach it as something worth working for.  Maybe it’s because of the way I was raised, in a small town, where my parents still live in Alabama, attending the same church they have attended my whole life, 43 years.  Maybe it’s because so many people in my community- teachers, neighbors, family members, and friends helped raise me and I feel a certain moral responsibility to pay others back through community.  Or maybe it’s because my family goes back to the founding of America, and has been in the Southeastern Appalachians since the country began.   Regardless, culture and community have been a concern of mine since I was young.  
 
Community seems to have declined even more since I was a child growing up in the 80s.  I can remember when town squares were vibrant, when family reunions were big, and when High School football games were the biggest thing all year.  And I can remember like yesterday a day when I as an 8 year old child, would leave my house and visit every single house on our street, and go inside each house.  What sane parent would do that nowadays?  What the hell happened over my short lifetime?  What happened to our communities?  It’s a dark theme and I’m not sure we want to know.  I think sometimes we’d rather watch TV or stare at our phone.
 
Sure the internet made an impact.  The growing sprawl of isolated suburban-style living didn’t help build community.  Abundances of smartphones and entertainment didn’t help either.  But there’s more going on than that with the almost complete collapse of community.  So follow along as we make our way through Robert Nisbet’s “Quest for Community.”
 
I will summarize each chapter as I go, pointing out highlights and giving you some quotes.  One thing to keep in mind is that the book was written originally in 1953, although the preface was updated in 1970 by the author, as the U.S. was going through the “Cold War” with the communist Soviets which dominated the nation’s attention.  Nisbet’s ability to see through to the deeper parts and problems of this era with keen insight and depth, is what inspired me to write a summary of it.  Communism was a revolutionary movement, another in a long historical line of revolutions which began with the French revolution.  
 
Man is a communal creature. If he doesn’t get community in a healthy way, in families, neighborhoods, guilds, crafts, churches, social roles, or hobbies, he will get it in darker ways, like revolutionary movements.  Revolutions, good or bad, are definite and concrete ways to belong to something, and the war mentality associated with revolutions can be a fulfillment of moral longing for community, which has been slowly disappearing in modernity.  Nisbet saw this clearly in the Revolutionary movements of the 18th, 19th and 20thcenturies- the French Revolution, Fascism, Communism, and various other groups and cults.   At their core, though they may have started with legitimate political complaints, these revolutions were also ways of people belonging to something.  Most people during the Cold War didn’t see this part of it.  The communists, as well as other fascists and revolutionaries, though some were certainly gangsters and sociopaths, were also atomized and deracinated people looking for culture and community in industrialized societies, caught up in a demonic political hurricane they eventually couldn’t control.       
 
I think about what Nisbet wrote when I watch the news today, because the news today seems always on the verge of Revolution, left or right.  I think it’s easy to latch on to one movement, one political party, or one group when what we see in front of us pushes us that way.  Especially when the concept of the Nation, in our case the USA, which is a modern political way of belonging, has had its essential story changed and now shamed.  It is no longer seen as a flawed but ultimately great and admirable country which we can belong to and be proud of.  The story has changed from what started as a flawed but essentially good historically European nation which eventually would get things right, to the current story of an inherently evil nation, tragically flawed and in need of overthrow by the guardians of progress.  
 
Under this circumstance, in 2020, many are looking for somewhere else to belong.  Not able to latch on to a sense of national pride, modern community has suffered even more than when this book was published. At least in the 1950s we still had the Cold War against the communists to bring us together.  Patriotism is dead or dying, killed off through narrative combat.  Luckily many are still looking in positive and healthy places for community, in workplaces, in neighborhoods, hobbies, or in churches and other civic organizations.  But many millions more seem to be either becoming radicalized or becoming violent, from self-imposed but also culturally encouraged isolation, loneliness, atomization, and a sense of nihilism and doom.  I’m writing to stop that destructive trajectory.  Perhaps the smallest bit of work can turn things in the right direction, in the direction of positive, constructive and healthy forms of community. 
 
Let’s see what we can learn from Robert Nisbet’s “The Quest for Community” which might speak to our time.  Enjoy this e-book and share it with a friend.  
 
 P.S. Stick with it.  The tone of the first parts of this e-book will be somber, and might seem negative, but I’ll offer some constructive tips at the end on how to build community health.  

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 There was a professor I had at Auburn who made a lifelong positive impression on me. Dr. Wang was a professor of Biomechanics & Kinesiology, which is the study of physics applied to the human body. Perhaps it was his Chinese background that made him teach in an usual way, but regardless he had a unique method which I liked. To sum it up, Dr. Wang saw the possibilities in every situation.  If you’ve ever read Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” you may already know what I’m talking about. 

One statement which he uttered innumerable times, in response to tough questions, was “could be.” What this indicated was that the laws of physics, though they are laws, don’t always hold in human movement because there are so many intangibles.  Many things outside of the predicted norms “could be.” Human movement is so unpredictable, that it’s not always black and white.  Pain and performance as a result, aren’t always predictable either.  

We already learned about a wrestler with -no legs- winning a championship. Humans regularly defy the laws of gravity, strength, and exertion to escape, to help others, and to survive. A few years ago, a man in Utah sawed off his own arm which was trapped under a rock and walked miles to safety. When it comes to what you’re capable of, don’t limit yourself. With a clear goal and a clear plan, the possibility is there for most things.

You and I could both hike the Appalachian trail, from Georgia to Maine, if we had to. We could squat 100s of pounds, we could walk to work every day, we could go days without eating. We’re tougher than we think.  Muscles were once our only motors, and they could be again.  Just because our lives are pretty easy doesn’t mean we could not do more. We tend to end up at a “thermostat” level, but if we push hard and exert effort day in, and day out, we can reset the thermostat to a higher level. The possibility exists for us to do great things, and to change.

From my experience, when it comes to fitness, most people need to change their mindset. Most people see themselves a certain way, a little pudgy, out of breath, or lazy, and they live that way. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.  They want to feel better, have more energy, and so on, but they end up stuck in a prison of their own making. We all do this from time to time, instead of thinking about the possibilities.

Do this “Possibility” exercise:

Find someone to look up to, who’s done what you want to do. Someone your age and body type, who’s gotten themselves in good shape, and use them as a role model. In other areas, find another person, someone who has what you want too. Instead of being jealous, try to emulate what they do. Study their techniques and methods. Ask them if possible and try to do what they do, so new things become possible for you.

When it comes to fitness, we’re creating a new future. Free will is alive and well, and you need to be open the future and what’s possible.  Allow yourself to think BIG. Consider the possibilities and you’ll have a good fighting chance to get there. You never know, like Dr. Wang said, it could be!

Read Next:  Becoming Anti-Fragile