It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village. It takes a village.
Where is my goddamn village?
Nobody Is An Island (props)
During the Depression, there was plenty of poverty and misery. Jim Crow segregation viciously discriminated against peaceful, industrious, law-abiding citizens. The very face of the earth seemed turned against us, as the skies were darkened by the choking dust storms of the 1930s. People had many reasons to feel sorry for themselves. They call it the Depression because that's just exactly what it was. You know how you feel when you're depressed. Imagine how it is when the whole country gets that way at the same time. But people connected with each other during the Depression. They had family and friends around them. Everybody was broke and so everybody was in the same boat. And as everyone who is poor knows, there is nobody who is more generous than another poor person. So people helped each other out. Not only with the physical necessities of life -- such as food, clothing and shelter -- but also with the spiritual and emotional necessities. It's pretty awful when you feel like you are all alone and the whole world is against you. Life is a lot easier when you are part of a network of friends and family, a community, a neighborhood.
--
RATIONALE: Social isolation is anxiogenic (causes anxiety) and may change the effects of anxiolytic drugs. (makes them not work as well.)
CONCLUSIONS: The lack of appropriate endocrinological changes challenges the concept of "isolation stress". However, isolation was anxiogenic in our study and it also induced subtle changes in the effects of chlordiazepoxide. It appears that mild daily stressors have a protective effect against the effects of isolation.
--
Isolation stress can (a) increase plasma epinephrine levels (that's adrenaline)
--
Edna St. Vincent Millay: "My candle burns at both ends/It will not last the night."
--
A husband who wants to console his wife, who feels burnt out and overwhelmed by her role as a stay-at-home-mother/wife, will tell her that "it takes a village...", and then he goes away to his "village" where he gets emotional, spiritual, and intellectual support (and stimulation) while his wife is still sitting at home, which is nothing at all like a village, but more like an isolation cell.
--
I know what I used to be. I am not much like a Mexican Jumping Bean put between the jaws of a clamp, which has been cranked down so tightly that it cannot possibly jump any longer, yet it is completely aware that it USED to be able to jump. Cruelty. I cannot think of many things worse to have happen to a person.
--
Our biggest problems arise from the fact that we have not only lost the way, but we have lost the address (Nicolai Berdyaev).
--
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature, which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.--C.S. Lewis, 'The Weight of Glory', Screwtape Proposes a Toast, Collins: London, 1965, p.109. [172]
--All of my lines are broken...Sociologists talk about 'social networks'. Your social network consists of everyone you know. Imagine a set of points some of which are joined by lines. The points are people, or sometimes groups, and the lines tell you who interacts with whom. Each person is in touch with a number of others, some of whom may know each other. There is no common boundary to the network (unless a tribe in Papua New Guinea hasn't been discovered yet!).
In modern industrial societies people move further away from their 'home town' or childhood village, and they move more often. Social networks therefore replace 'communities'. We know more people more superficially. As we move house (on the average every 3-5 years in some middle class suburbs) we leave friends behind and are sometimes hesitant to make close friends in the new location, knowing we'll have to leave them soon too. So marriage is becoming more important to satisfy needs some of which would be met by the wider community in traditional cultures. But the 'catch 22' here is that marriage is becoming more fragile, due to the disintegration of societal values. This is the terrible price we pay for a flexible economic system.
--
Now there's good news and bad news here. Individuals and families ought to have boundaries - physical, material, emotional - and others ought to respect those boundaries. Indeed, boundaries define us, in many ways. They tell us and others 'what is me and what is not me'. My fence tells me where my property begins and ends. My skin does the same thing for my body. Words do it in communication - particularly the word 'No!' which helps others understand that you exist apart from them, and that 'I am in control of me'. Taking time off from involvement with people or projects helps you gain control of your own time-program. Emotionally, we need some privacy, particularly when someone else wants to abuse us: because we fear being alone we permit another to invade our personal space. We may have to separate ourselves from that person for a time to regain our emotional strength. And we must learn that the abusive 'invader' is not the only source of love and intimacy in the world: we need to selectively 'expose' ourselves to others as well. For many humans, the desire to help others is a subtle (perhaps unconscious) ploy to invade their space to satisfy some of our own needs. We 'need to be needed'. The love we give is 'need love' not 'gift love'. Was it Thoreau who said 'When you see someone coming towards you with the obvious intent of doing you good run for your life'? And C S Lewis wrote about a lady who 'went around doing good: you could tell those she did good to by their hunted look.' Many people-helpers want to be 'little messiahs', saving everyone from themselves.
