Finding our way Home... (The law of the Jungle Revisited)

In times of great distress the only thing of value that you could possibly possess is your support system; your family and friends, neighbors and loved ones, the web of your existence and defense against the darkness.

Worldwide we have seen that regardless of crisis or tragedy, it is the strong neighborhoods and strong communities that come out the least worse for wear. This is no accident as humans are basically social animals with a strong herd or pack desire and mentality yet we have allowed ourselves to be driven apart and isolated in our own pursuits.

The fact is we fair best in numbers, and we become our best selves through the encouragement and strength of our group, but despite knowing this on an instinctual level we have allowed ourselves to be separated from the group in exchange for simple unimaginative lives to fulfill a failed social experiment that seems to want us alone and powerless.

The breakdown of the community culture has had the effect of isolating the people and disempowering a unified response to anything, leaving the people alone and unprepared to deal with whatever trouble comes, and the selfishness and greed that is encouraged and promised is a trap to lull the very low self esteeem isolation brings.

We need to face up to this.

We have allowed ourselves to become isolated worker drone-consumers at the expense of our sanity and collective goodwill for a promised convenience that offered much but delivers only empty, lonely lives in our advanced years and mind-bending drivel as childrearing support during our formitive ones; we have to change that.

Socially we have become a nation of drug addicts and alcoholics fighting to find ways to cope with meagre existences when abundance and love is all around us waiting for us to see. Our people have traded lives of bounty, joy and sharing for quiet desperation and fading to nothing at the end over a dream concocted by some and sold by others that delivers nothing promised. 

The rum culture has made it so that every time people get together it's to 'wine up' on each other, but that cannot be the only purpose of socializing. We have been reduced to dogs in heat or loners, with no real ideas exchange taking place from which the nation and its people can grow, and no fertile ground to encourage our next generation of global superstars.

This needs to change.

All of the abuses that currently plague society from drugs to the growing gang problem could be neutered by strong neighborhoods and effective communities, and systems put in place to serve the people on the ground level (local government, police medical, schools etc) would find competent support to effect their mandates as is the wont when people of like minds get together.

We need neighbors to be neighbors once more, to be in each other's homes and lives so that we become a collective again and not just numbers on a street.

Strong communities allow for strong families that raise children able to contribute socially while living a decent life.

Strong communities prevent the growth of illegal activities in their midst such as drug blocks and gang centers and have been shown to be the most effective way to prevent the growth and development of these activities on a national level.

Strong communities exchange information and ideas to keep abuses in check, from government to business by the easy flow of information.

Strong communities are made up of people who care for each other and who are there during good times and bad, regardless of the vicissitudes of life.

It is time to make quality of life job one for every person in society by encouraging and actively promoting the growth of strong neighborhoods and communities.

We need to create recreation grounds and community activity centers every hundred meters and make it possible for people to become one nation of smaller communities as opposed to a million plus souls.

Community activities and local cultural agendas must replace the mad rush to spawn that is sadly now all that is left of our combined rich heritages and which need to be reclaimed with a sense of urgency before they are lost forever.

We need to make our people one people again, a sea of humanity in service of each other on song for a better tomorrow for everyone.

The solution?

Strengthen your families through generosity and love, they are the bedrock of your existence and are the people that make you valid; meet your neighbors and get to know them well as extended family; and finally get involved with your community towards a better quality of life for you and your loved ones with a view to a positive redevelopment of the nation as a whole.

As Rudyard Kipling so eloquently said in 'The Jungle Book' - "...even as the strength of the wolf is the pack, so is the strength of the pack the wolf..."

Something to think about...