From: nelson_p@APOLLO.HP.COM
Newsgroups: sci.econ
Subject: Re: Wage Slavery
Date: 16 Apr 92 14:30:36 GMT


From: kent@phoenix.ocf.llnl.gov (Kent J Crispin)

>It just doesn't make sense to me to say that the breakdown of culture
>and community is the problem, because I immediately wonder what caused
>the breakdown.  IMHO, a breakdown in this context has to be considered a
>symptom, not the disease. 

>WHY do you think that "culture and community" have declined?

  I tend to have long postings, so I was hoping to spare everyone
  but since you asked:


  To ask what caused the breakdown we have to look at how cultural
  values are maintained and transmitted to subsequent generations.
  I would suggest that the major institutions are:

    Family.

    Community (i.e., those individuals with whom you interact 
    regularly and share close, interdependent relationship)

    Ethnic and religious identity.  Tradition, custom, religious
    teaching, etc, help people define "right" and "wrong", define
    roles, goals, aspirations, reponses to crises and problems, etc.
             


  Following the industrial revolution all of these were disrupted.  
  For one thing, we became a very mobile.  In pre-industrial times 
  it was not uncommon for a person to spend his entire life living
  in one small town or village; now we move constantly, breaking the
  ties and support systems that would have functioned in the past.
  
  This mobility also had the effect of causing a great mixing of 
  cultures -- waves of immigration, moving to the cities, living 
  in close proximity with people of very different backgrounds.
  I'm not suggesting this is bad in itself (each one of my grand-
  parents came from a different country, with different languages
  and religions).   But historically people lived in close proximity
  with others who were "like them" sharing a common set of values,
  roles and identity.  When a child was out of the home the values
  he was exposed to were generally consistent with those he got in
  the home.     Societies with low crime rates tend to either be
  culturally homogeneous (e.g., Japan, Sweden).

  The role of the family is also diminished.  Families are smaller
  today than in preindustrial times, and are less of an integrated
  economic unit.  My mother grew up on a farm, and farm families were
  the norm before the industrial revolution.  Everybody in her family
  (11 children) worked on the farm.  They went to school the minimum
  they were required, but most of the rest of their time was NOT their
  own.   Today between school, the mall, TV, and after-school-activities,
  kids have relatively little interaction with their families.  So the 
  family just doesn't have the impact on defining the child that it 
  used to.  (not to mention the fact that families fall apart more 
  often today)

  Technology is another factor.   Mass production and mass retailing, 
  change our relations with our neighbors.  I can have a job in another
  town and buy everything I need to live at the supermarket or the mall
  where I'm just another anonymous customer.  I can live a life which
  is totally disconnected and independent from my neighbors.  And this
  is quite common -- people often live for years in a town without
  knowing their neighbors.   But in the past, this would have been nearly
  impossible.  The people who helped you raise your house, delivered
  your children, sold you food, ground your corn, sat next to you in 
  church every Sunday, etc would have been your neighbors.   

  The cultural changes which have occured in our society have been
  the result of industrialization and technology.  The government
  didn't do this.     
  
  BTW, I should hasten to add that I'm hardly pining away for the
  past -- the "strong sense of identity" and "cultural values" are
  also what produces the tribalism and warfare of Yugoslavia and
  Lebanon, and racism and bigotry in general.   Religion is anti-
  thetical to rationalism and science.  Small towns could also
  be very stifling, provincal, conformist.   

  But we have yet to evolve institutions and values to take over
  where those earlier forms have faded.   And this is why people 
  turn to geovernment -- customs and traditioanal values don't work
  so we replace them with law.   Community and family support
  systems are gone so we demand welfare, etc.

  Libertarians fantasize that if only the government were gone
  all these old institutions would return.  They fail to grasp
  that it was industrialization, technology, mobility, etc, which
  did away with those old institutions, not government.  

---peter