What is Community

Walking through the streets of Clapham today I was struck by how something had changed. It was not the boarded up shop fronts, or the greater police and media presence. It was a change in the air. Something felt like it had been purged; lifted. Almost like a bubbling resentment, anger had been let out.

For a long time I have felt there had been a lot of anger on our streets. And not just witnessed by the gang attacks or the malicious incidents but in every day life: in a shopping line, at the bus stop, on the tube. A gradual wearing down seemed to be happening of Respect and Community. Sitting on tube trains I would notice how few people gave up a seat for a pregnant woman, or took note if there was an altercation. Common decencies like letting people off a train first, please and thank you and generally being mindful of each other and our planet were less noticeable. I've walked behind people, young and I have to say old too, dropping litter with the same abandon of a rioter smashing a window- a lack of care.

Am I saying this has all disappeared? No not at all. But much in the same way that I have heard people talk about the Blitz spirit I saw some of that today. Its a sense of coming together. And quietness that may have been fear, may have been sadness, but also seemed an internal looking. For too long we have wandered around with ipods on full blast, phones dangling from our hands, our nose in a magazine and eyes glued to an ipad or media images on posters. Unaware, blocking out the world around us, each other and our inner emotions. Levels of over drinking have increased, levels of drug taking have almost become a norm, and with that a desensitizing of soul in this city. Emotions supressed, not expressed go where? Today it seemed people have been forced to really wake up and look at the city they live in, their neighbours, themselves. Ask questions: would I have done the same if presented with the opportunity, what do I want to do to the rioters, why did this happen? I heard people asking why. I heard the blinkered cries of "animals" and also heard the voice of insight: there were reasons. Animals do not attack their own. Animals attack to survive. If you are going to call these looters animals then ask why are they attacking their own. Why do they feel they need to fight for survival? We may laugh at the fact they robbbed a Poundland or a KFC; that a bag of rice is seen as a trophy; but ask what aspirations do these people have that even in the throws of so called "criminality" they set their sights on the mediocre?  And no- having a Blackberry does not mean you are privileged as ex actress Glenda Jackson thinks. It means you have a Blackberry- how you got it is another matter. More importantly deprivation takes many forms- not just the financial. From family, to support, opportunity, hope, love, sense of purpose, sense of safety- and on. We are constantly told money is not everything so why are we assuming that a nice pair of trainers and a fancy phone means all is well?

If we feel that disconnected from who we are, from where we are from, from the community in which we live then what is there to stop us hurting our own? An African proverb that is being posted on networking sites:
"If the young are not initiated, they will burn down the village just to feel its warmth".

We have lost our sense of community, worldwide and state wide. When images of people being tortured and photographed were released, when the slaughter of the innocent is seen do we feel the commonality of that blood, pain and fear? Or do we neatly segregate it into different faith, different beliefs, bad guys them, good guys us. When people walk by a homeless man begging for money in the snow as they shop for Christmas do they feel his pain? Do they think: another wino, addict, poor man, dont give him money or do they spend a monent to walk in his shoes.

There are plenty of generous people, donating and caring, I am not saying that. I am saying where is our community? Do we feel members of the World? Do we feel we are One? And that concept is not something to be shunted to esoteric circles. It is not about crystal waving hippies in some field, it is about us all as citizens of the world and caretakers of the planet and thus each other. As the proverb says, without initiation we are lost. Initiation happens in community. Small and large moments are marked and celebrated. Grievances and joys are shared. When the Shaman sit in circle, the circle represents that community. In that space everyone is equal and everyone is valued and listened to. With the celebration comes ceremony and with that a coming together to create- to build. So when people talk about the Blitz Spirit they talk of that coming together. That shared sense of being communities of the world and of together building, re building.

When we lack initiation, when our achievements no matter how small remaim unrecognised, unpraised and under valueed; when our problems are unheard and young children are committing suicide due to bullying and feeling they have no one to share this with- we seek initiation in a group that will be our surrogate commmunity. The looters, rioters whatever we call them, created their own renegade community. The ferocity with which they spread and the impact of their behaviour shows the power of coming together. Just think if all that passion, emotion and rawness was chanelled into something positive- what could we not achieve? What could we not change? Who could we become.