The Real World
Wednesday, May 30, 2012 at 11:52PM I realize I’ve been away from the blog for almost a month now. It has been a busy month, but mostly a good one. Your Minor Heretic has projects on top of projects. That aside, I rely on inspiration for my blogging. It shows up or it doesn’t, and I am resisting the lazy practice of posting pieces that say little more than “Hey, look at this!”
I was at the local farmer’s market on Saturday morning. It was a sunny, flawless morning, and the crowds were out. A local folk duo played and sang. A high school kid I know performed juggling and acrobatics to raise money for a circus school scholarship. I bought greens, artisanal cheese, locally baked bread, and a maple glazed cinnamon bun for The Librarian’s lunch. Bliss.
Part of the market experience is meeting half a dozen friends and having a series of conversations. I met up with an old friend who is a dedicated peace activist and we exchanged greetings. I said something about the glorious day, and then something about how this market, the local meeting place, is what the good life is all about. He agreed, and then made an important point: Part of a living, vibrant community is coming in contact with people you wouldn’t ordinarily, voluntarily associate with. It means dealing with people who annoy you, who disagree with you, and who might find you slightly off-putting in the same way.
He was right. Mixing with everyone, not just your in-group, is important for full personal development and for functional civic life. That’s one thing that Vermont has going for it. Most of us live in small towns. Anonymity is not an option. Clustering with absolutely like-minded people is theoretically possible, but the rest of the population keeps leaking in around the edges. Our geography and small population push us up against each other, but unlike a big city, we are going to see these people again and again. We have to deal with our differences in a civil way.
The same goes double for town meeting. Any moderately sentient resident can stand up and speak. And we do. Unlike the so-called town meetings arbitrarily staged by politicians, we actually have to make some decisions together by meeting’s end. And, unlike those who attend the theatrical forums for posturing and bile, we have to see each other and interact in the days and months after the budget is passed and the church supper is but memory.
I’m a member of our neighborhood online forum. It is restricted to residents of our town, and mostly concerns itself with goods needed and offered, comments on road conditions, wildlife sightings, lost pets, and local events. It is nothing earth shattering in itself, but the key to its virtue is that it engenders a thousand small, face-to-face interactions between people who might otherwise not meet. When I say meet, I mean a real personal meeting, not a nod on the street or a public exchange over a school bond issue. Each meeting is a chance to see another human being as an individual, not an archetype. It humanizes us to each other. It is those endless mundane contacts that provide the glue of a civil society.
My conversation at the market reminded me of a passage from a speech given by the headmaster at The Mountain School, Mac Conard. (I was a student there back in the late 70s) The Mountain School was small, just a few dozen students, isolated on a hilltop farm in Vershire Vermont. We raised a lot of our own food and did most of the physical work around the place. I’ll have to paraphrase what Mac said, but he remarked on the expression, “the real world.” People said to him, “This farm on a hill in the woods is all very nice, but what about teaching these kids about the real world?” Mac responded that this was the real world. Forests and fields, wild and domesticated animals, gardens, chores, and getting along with people you can’t escape – these are the elements of the real world. Cities, high technology, easy mobility and anonymity are common in this country, but these things are also artificial. Ubiquity doesn’t make them any less contrived.
I am concerned with structure. As Herodotus wrote, “Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.” It is the structure of our social institutions, our architecture, our urban design and our daily lives that pushes us this way and that. Anonymity and isolation are seeds of inhumanity. It is important to build into our society the structures that bring us together, face to face, over and over, even when we annoy each other. It is that repetition, those thousands of unremarkable little interactions that convince us of each other’s humanity. Knowing each other allows us to disagree without contempt. Knowing that we will meet again allows us to lose the argument, this time, with some amount of grace.
So here’s to farmer’s markets and concerts on the green. Here’s to the dog walkers in the park and the people taking their own sweet time about their errands downtown. Here’s to town meeting and this meeting and that meeting and that guy I always disagree with. Here’s to benches and porches and parks. Here’s to wide sidewalks and narrow diners. Here’s to potlucks and work parties and the people down the road having a lawn sale. It all adds up to the real world.
Minor Heretic
A big welcome to the people of Venezuela. For some reason this post has been getting a large surge of hits from your country, plus some from Sweden, France, Germany, China, and a dozen other places around the planet. Anybody care to enlighten me as to the why and how of the international popularity of this post? If you have an idea, please respond with a comment. Just curious. Thanks
M.H.
farmer's market, town meeting in Human Behavior
Reader Comments (5)
I love how you draw such insightful lessons from a mundane activity. Could you tell me how the private online forum works? How are they able to restrict it to just the local area?
Yeah.
Thanks, Lam. Check out the Front Porch Forum site: http://frontporchforum.com/ . It's a great idea, pushing the virtual back into the real.
Great post. Thanks for sharing and reminding me of your blog. It was nice to meet you last week. Cheers, Ivan
That is a wonderful, insightful piece. I'm very serious. That absolutely nails it. Part of the joy of reading it is that it changes my relationship with my own home. Good job!