By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
As I have already talked about in a previous article far too may people nowadays, in Britain, and more than likely elsewhere, are taken with a belief in entitlements and rights but no one wants to know about the fact that those rights (and entitlements) some with strings attached, namely responsibilities.
Citizenship is not (just) about rights and human rights, Magna Carta (not that that document was ever intended for the common man), Bill of Rights, etc., but about the responsibilities of a citizen.
In addition to that what is lacking so much today is community spirit; the spirit to get involved in actions for the community and also simply being part of the community proper.
Proper community is what makes us tick, as human beings, but proper community has been created away by the powers-that-be and now they want to resurrect it. It now suits them as the funds to do it government controlled are running out. Enter the “Big Society.” But that is neither here nor there at the moment.
The problem that we have, and that is one of the main reasons that our world is the way it is today is that community has been destroyed by a variety of ways and mostly through greed and people's egotism.
When the entitlement mentality arrived – and how we go there still beats me a little but the welfare state (and no, I don't want to be without this safety net) in having made people dependent on the state has much to do with it – everything, more or less, went out of the window and people began to believe that they are entitled to this and to that and it is their right to have this and that.
Some seem to take it so far as to believe that they are entitled to have and drive a car, to have abundant fuel to power it, and that they are entitled to flat screen and plasma TVs and all that jazz.
Welfare recipients moan that they have not enough money to feed their children but have a huge TV in the corner and large sound systems. Hello, people! The welfare money that you are given is for getting food on the table for you and your kids and not to keep up with the neighbors (and bankers) with fat salaries.
But, again, sorry, I digressed somewhat.
Citizenship is something that in many other countries of Europe is actually being taught in schools. Children are taught what is expected of everyone as a citizen of the country in which they live and while this might be seen as indoctrination by some it, theoretically, makes the point that all rights come with responsibilities.
Community spirit now is something that you can't teach but was once something that just seems to have been there. Whether it was simply because everyone was in the same boat and therefore everyone relied on one another or whether it was borne out of religious beliefs, I could not say. Fact is, people used to help each other, and that even in the not so distant future, and not just in the villages and in the rural communities.
We must rediscover this community spirit, and some people make a serious effort to do so, such as the Transition Town movement and good luck to them. But that is but a small drop in the ocean and our communities need more than just that to get back on their feet as living communities.
It could be that once we can no longer travel all over the place cheaply and easily by aid of the motorcar with the ICE (infernal combustion engine) things might change and community and community spirit will arise again. The end of cheap and abundant oil and thus the end of cheap and abundant gasoline and diesel is not that far away and when that begins to bite we need to get back to doing things at home, on a local level.
People will need each other again when that time comes and it would be good not to wait that long, in my view, even though that time may be very close at hand.
In the same way as transitioning towards a post oil world transitioning towards a world of community spirit and cooperation is something that we must do as well at the same time.
In order to build and rebuild communities and community spirit we must act now; we have no time to lose. At the same time “citizenship”, in a loose sense of the word, also must be relearned. The entitlement idea no longer works once the proverbial has hit the air moving device and we are stuck where we are due to lack of fuel to run our fuel guzzling motor vehicles or when fuel has become so expensive that we can no longer afford to run those vehicles.
Where did we go wrong, I wonder, as to people and community? The welfare state cannot be blamed for it, really. Somewhere along the line people have been led to believe that they are entitled to all those things and to all those “rights”, even to the detriment (of the rights) of others, and this made the majority of people in the developing nations into serious egoists with a total “me, me, me” attitude, from children to adults alike.
Everything has become a competition as to how to get more than the neighbor whether this is a bigger car, a better BBQ, or whatever you may wish to think of.
The attitude seems to be “I have a right to have this” even if it infringes on someone else and especially on the Planet and the future of our children and children's children. Our use – or should I can it abuse – of fossil fuels and natural resources is a great example of this and while the biggest culprits are the corporate giants each one of us is, to some degree to blame for this as well.
Time for a serious change and this change must be made now...
© 2011
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→Citizenship & Community Spirit
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