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Re: Civil society
[Rod Dreher 03/29 08:51 AM]Mike, the guy in the book who confronted the developer in a story mentioned in Crunchy Cons, says I lose him with my Derbish gloom: Get out there in the community and do some good. There are good folks out there, doing good things. But they need all the good people they can get to help. And by "community" I don't mean forming little enclaves of counter-cultural "communities." Seems to me it's possible to do all the things like turn off the TV and avoid fast food, etc., and still find the redeemable and rewarding aspects of civil society right outside your front door. I just wonder if you'd be cheerier, and the rest of your Crunchy-Con cohorts would be cheerier, if the "sacramental sensibility" y'all espouse consisted more of engaging in actual activity, in actually doing things — as in the "active love" that Zosima tells Alyosha Karamazov we all must do in our community when the former sends the young novice out of the monastery and into the world — instead of pondering one's own virtuous navel while consigning the world to hell in a handbasket.
Since your book is a very personal treatise about the rewarding and sacramental experiences in the lifestyle choices you and your wife have made, I hope you don't mind a rather personal — but in no way negatively intended observation: I see a very similar lack of civic-mindedness displayed by the Crunchy Cons as I see in the Bowling Alone mindset, a (dare-I-say equally self-centered) escape and retreat from the public square and from community life, the major difference being merely the type of house and subdivision. Sure, you might justifiably claim that within your cloister you're engaged in more virtuous pursuits than the Bobo and the Patio Man — like making your family your highest priority. But there are other virtues besides making the best life for your family, and it indeed seems possible to turn family into a defensive fortress as opposed to getting out there into the community more, which at the same time will help one's younguns to learn love for/commitment to community as well.
I tell you this: mainstream society on the tube or in the mass culture at large, which seems to be the basis of your description of it, is nothing like what I experience in countless little Kirk-ian platoons in the community (the kind CCers profess to admire but I see no evidence in the book of participating in). In short, since I view Crunchy Conservatism not as an effort make "lifestyle" into a politics but as a challenge to conservatives to let their politics more greatly inform their lifestyles, I offer a challenge back to the Crunchy Cons:
Get a babysitter more often. (Your children will not be ruined by this). Get out there and be with more people, and do things. Make the world better in ways both small and big. Crunchy Con-ness seriously lacks communitas. You can engage in it and still be a Crunchy Con — maybe even a more truly "sacramental" one at that, for I know of few sacraments done in solitude and outside the community. You will also be happier for it.That’s a serious challenge. I’ll try to answer it tomorrow, because I’ve got to finish some projects before I leave today. I would just point out that one shouldn’t necessarily assume that the people I talked to in my book aren’t engaged in communitas. They might not be, but when I interviewed people for the Home chapter, for example, I just talked to them about their houses, not their community activism. I also don’t see why it doesn’t count as community activism to be involved in building up one’s own “little enclaves.” But I imagine Bruce and Caleb might have something to say about that. N.B., I said to Julie one night, not long after I had to quit taking a night class because I worked so many long hours that I didn’t have time to devote to it, that I don’t understand how my dad was able as a younger man to devote so much time to community service activities. Then it occurred to me: when five o’clock came around, he was off the clock. Period. The end. Me, I come in at 8:20, and don’t usually get out of here until 7:30pm, which gives me about an hour or so with the boys until their bedtime. Five days a week. Believe me, if I could work shorter hours, I would. But I can’t. I know other dads in the same position.
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