I’m glad to see you’ve discovered the blessings of having a close knit community. Yer quite right, living in the city can be tough. Even though we’re packed in like sardines in a can, no one talks to a one another. I try to say howdy to all my neighbors when I see them, but they just look at me like I’m crazy and hurry off. California is definetly not like where I grew up in Denver, or even how life in at my grandparents place in Illinois. But while there isn’t much of a community in my neighborhood, I’ve at least found a community of like-minded folks online that I can turn to for answers and ideas when I need them!

I do alot of reading, particularly about ancient cultures and tribal peoples. There is one undeniable truth that I’ve come across in my research: Human’s did not evolve as rugged individualists. We were created as innately social creatures who work together in groups to make a living. For a long time, that group was the tribe. Then the rural village. Looking back on history, problems began when populations began to get to dense, when there were to many people living in a small area. You could deal with the village becoming a Town, but people were cranky and you didn’t know ALL your neighbors. When the Town grew into a City, well then you had to isolate yourself just to survive. Ironically the more people there were, the less of a “community” there was.

I remember watching a PBS show called The Human Animal once, hosted by psychologist Desmond Morris where they talked about the psychological pressures of high population density. To illusstrate it, they did an experience in New York City and in a rural village in Italy. They had an actor lay down on the street and pretend to be ill. In New York, people stepped over the actor and paid them no attention, and aid did not come for 2 hours. In the rural village, aid came within 10-15 minutes. Mr. Morris went on to explain that the human mind can’t deal with recognizing hundreds and thousands of individuals. It becomes overwhelmed. It was geared to recognized between 30 and 60 faces. In a city of millions, a crowd of people becomes more like a forest of trees, merely obstacles to be avoided instead of other humans to be recognized, greeted and acknowledged.

I’ve always remembered that lesson, and I’ve seen it at work time and time again as people in the city band together into social clubs (and into gangs). They are creating their own tribes, their only little communities where they can feel comfortable and at peace. Full of people they can lean on for support when they need to. You’ve got something special Judith, I don’t think there are but 4 people I could call on for help, and they’d never just show up out of the blue without me asking.

Sage