This post by Athenae is exactly right. We are only safer by building community, not by walling ourselves off and building a fortress. This go-it-alone, every-man-for-himself attitude that has infected American politics is an artifact of wealth and privilege. Those who live under the delusion that they are self-made, when they must employ scores just to maintain their personal fiefdoms, seek to apply their perverse notion of self-reliance to governance. But it doesn’t work, can’t work, has never worked, for a society to seal up its borders and attempt to disengage from the community. Society breaks down when fear, suspicion, and distrust rule the day.
I have been struck for some time by the dichotomy between the current competing trends in politics and society. Politics has become more insular, more combative, more polarized. At the same time, social trends – certainly in the technology world, where I spend so much of my attention – have been marked by a radical drive towards collaboration, openness, and harmony.
Perhaps what’s so striking about this is how socioeconomic differences tend to track with these competing trends. If I may generalize rather blatantly, the open source movement is driven largely by those in the middle and lower classes. Government is filled largely with the wealthy and privileged – or those who want to be – and influenced by monied interests. The former seeks success by inclusion and community. The latter seeks to succeed by division and disharmony.
We need a tectonic shift. We need the molten fire of the community-driven subculture to push through the crusty surface of the status quo. It can’t happen soon enough for me.
