Lisa Miller tells the story about a sixty one year-old woman named Janet. She lives in a small town surrounded by forest and winding highways. Janet had no history of mental illness until, about 20 years ago when she began hearing voices. ‘Little by little, one by one, the people in my life have all dropped out, and now I’m back to being kind of solitary again. And I don’t like that,’ she says. Her daughter had just moved to South Carolina, and her relationship to her church community had frayed. She is very lonely. “We don’t live the way we used to,” she continued. “We used to live tribally. The tribes could always share. There was a huge close-knit community that could share. I know what we need. I don’t know how to get it, but I know what we need, we need people.” There are many people like Janet in our country, people longing for the close-knit community, something that once supported a wide swath of us almost by default. We need neighborhoods; we need to reopen our churches, we need neighborhood parties, we need children playing games in the vacant lots, laughing, and having fun until after dark. Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner, explained; “It’s not the factory closing that has torn us apart; it’s the church closing.” The root cause was a cultural collapse. While the educated and wealthy elites still enjoy strong communities, most blue-collar Americans lack strong communities and institutions that bind them to their neighbors. The central institution that has done that, in the past, has been religion. As well as the dissolution of our most other cherished institutions such as nuclear families, places of worship, and civic organization. Their absence has not only divided us, but eroded our sense of worth, our belief in opportunity, and our connection to one another. The system, as set up by the elites, isn’t allowing us to live out our lives in the way humans are supposed to live, in families supported by a community.”
The declining membership in community churches have probably caused the declining tribal type living and neighborhoods. But they’re also as invisible as a lonely woman lying awake in an empty apartment at night. She is so isolated that she can’t fall asleep, and her only reliable company is a chorus of unwelcome voices in her own head. I remember well, in my own youth, when neighborhoods were alive with kids playing games until well after dark, while our parents were often visiting with a neighbor couple. Family garden plots were side by side and neighbors exchanged stories over the fence while weeding or cultivating their precious gardens. We would meet again in church on Sunday where the youth listened to Bible stories and brought coloring books of Old Testament stories home to color. We were all equally ragged as times were tough, but we were happy. Why? Because we had people around us to socialize with, to be involved with, and to help one another when we needed help. There wasn’t any mental health problems then that we were aware of. People needed people!
Today, people are so involved in social networking, electronically, that they have lots of contact, but I am afraid that it may not be the kind that they really need. People need to touch and be touched by others, now; hugs, kisses and touching is done through the Internet. Electronic touching may be fine for awhile, but if a loved one starts showing signs as did Janet, talking to herself, etc. maybe we should close our electronic devices and start hugging again.