Nolen: Neighborhoods trump individuals
Unfortunately, there’s one in every neighborhood: the one neighbor who doesn’t follow the rules. If you think back, there was one in every class. That one was always getting in trouble. If the teacher told the class to go east, he or she insisted on going west. When you graduated, you thought you had seen the last of your classmate. Now, suddenly, that person or his clone has moved next door.
The music from that house plays louder than from anyone else’s. The children or that owner’s pets can usually be found playing or hanging out in another neighbor’s yard. Their visitors park illegally on the sidewalk or in someone’s driveway. And for some strange reason, these people never notice that they are the only people in the block who behave this way.
Now there are two ways to handle this. One is by maintaining a close neighborhood relationship, where neighbors get together informally and have a chat with the newcomer. That can come out either good or badly, depending on the temperament of those involved. The other way is by forming a neighborhood association where there are sets of rules that govern the neighborhood. Sometimes these work well, but sometimes they can be too dictatorial to make for peaceful coexistence. Some people prefer not to be told what color they can paint the house they have gone heavily in debt to pay for.
When you hear people say they learned everything they needed to know by the time they were 5 years old, for many people this is true. If they had parents who understood that discipline is a form of love, and who taught them the difference between appropriate and inappropriate behavior, then they received early training on how to get along in the world. But not everyone is that lucky.
In some families, discipline is viewed as a form of punishment. People brought up under that system generally learn early to do whatever they can get away with until they are caught. Whatever the regulations are, they constantly connive to find ways to get around them. All rules and regulations are seen as barriers erected for the sole purpose of preventing them from having a good time. So, the chances are, if you have disruptive neighbors, you have to understand that their actions are the result of a lifetime of fighting off attempts to reform their behavior.
In the present climate, they see it as a struggle to maintain their freedoms. And they have politicians and political parties encouraging them. We live in a day when freedom of speech has been translated by some into the freedom to do whatever they want, whenever they want to, and those who try to stop them are either socialists or communists (especially since they are usually so uneducated that they don’t know the difference between forms of government).
So our neighborhoods have become like the country, overrun with individuals practicing their personal freedoms. We no longer see ourselves as a country united by common values where we build communities of people who see to each other’s needs and live in peace and harmony. Fair play and social justice are no longer our concerns. For many of us, it’s about getting ours and letting the rest of the people worry about themselves.
Some people see this as a survivalist strategy. Most of us see it as a way of life doomed to fail. In the early years of the nation’s history, when people had to fight to stay alive, they learned that their lives often depended on the assistance of their neighbors — so they banded together to stave off the enemy. We forget that lesson at our own risk.
A good neighborhood, these days, is hard to find.
Post office has provided a lot of good service
Well, the price of stamps is going up again. It’s understandable with all the competition. Many people do the majority of their communication by e-mail. A large number of people have their monthly bills deducted from their bank accounts, and United Parcel Service and FedEx are also in the business of package delivery.
Still, we have always relied on the U.S. Postal Service to be on the job through rain, sleet and snow. What we didn’t count on was that much of what they were doing would be replaced by advanced technology. We have gotten a lot of service for the price of a first-class postage stamp.
Some changes are hard to get used to. This is one of them.
