September/October 1985 RAIN Page 15 over the country. It won't just be one remnant. There will be lots of remnants, some of them more successful than others. I think something like what happened to the Roman Empire will happen here: all kinds of groups, all kinds of movements, developing a new morale out of the demoralization of the old. So along with the fact that all kinds of old orders and regionalisms and localisms will be dying, there will be larger fellowships, transcending these regionalisms and localisms, which will have something deeply in common, that will be reinforcing, that will give a new beginning. A while ago, a German journalist came to study in the United States. He hadn't been here before. When he was through, someone asked him: "Isn't this a terrible place?" He replied: "I'm tremendously excited about the United States. The United States is just being born. What you see are just the dying remnants of Europe. But what's coming is a wonderful thing and its just being born out of the ashes of the old order." □ □ Steven Ames is a former RAIN editor who lives and works in Portland. ACCESS: Community Arthur E. Morgan (FROM: The Small Community, photo by ]oe ]. Marx) The Small Community: Foundation of Democratic Life, by Arthur E. Morgan, 1942/1984, 314 pp., $10 from: Community Service Inc. PO Box 243 Yellow Springs, OH 45387 Arthur Morgan was a man whose vision was at once profoundly radical and deeply conservative, drawing upon and seeking to preserve the best of human cultural tradition. And Morgan strongly believed that the best of human cultural tradition could be found in the life of the small community. Morgan was an idealist whose idealism was tempered by many years of practical experience in a variety of fields. The Small Community demonstrates a mature wisdom and breadth of knowledge of a man in his sixties whose lifetime activities had included engineering, participating in the creation of the League of Narions, development of India's Rural University System, being president of Antioch College, being the first chairman of the Tenessee Valley Authority, and founding Community Service Inc. Morgan was no armchair philosopher. Although The Small Community was written in 1942, its message has not become outdated nor lost significance. If anything, the book is more needed now than it was then. Witness this passage from the book: If the cell walls or tissue walls of the human body should be dissolved, the body would quickly die. Similarly a social organism ... is composed of cells and organs—individuals, families, and communal and functional societies. Each of these in its way has its own cell or tissue wall, its own individual life. ■ Only by maintaining its separateness and identity can its indigenous culture be kept alive and transmitted with dependableness from generation to generation. Today, as seldom, if ever, before, society is dissolving its cell and tissue walls, and as a result is losing power to preserve and to transmit its basic culture. In our time, with its instruments of mass media, mass markets, and mass culture, this process of dissolution is rapidly accelerating. Do we yet understand the significance of this? Is there anything we can do to counterbalance this massification of society? The Small Community has much to offer in this regard. After defining some basic concepts, discussing the role of the small community in different cultures through history, and discussing the importance of maintaining community in the modern world, the book offers a number of guidelines for community design. These include discussions of appropriate scale, local economic self-reliance, community planning, community councils, skills banks, cooperatives, health, social services, and religious institutions. It was refreshing to find a practical and empirical approach taken through-, out Morgan's discussion of community, rather than a reliance on theory or sentimentality. For example, although small community was his primary subject, his discussion of appropriate scale recognized that the community is not the proper locus for all human endeavors, and that regional, national, and international organizations are necessary for many things. In fact, the book includes one of the best discussions of regionalism I've seen, probably a product of his involvement with TVA. Bioregionalists, take note. If you believe in the enduring value of family, friends, and face-to-face interactions amidst a culture dominated by television, VCRs, automobiles, shopping malls, and rootless populations, then you'll probably greatly appreciate The Small Community. —FLS Community Service Newsletter, bimonthly, comes with $15/year membership to: Community Service Inc. PO Box 243 Yellow Springs, OH 45387 This spare and humble little 12-page newsletter comes from Community Service Inc., an organization founded by Arthur Morgan in 1940, and headed by Griscom Morgan and his wife Jane for many years. Community Service exists to "promote the small community as a basic social institution involving organic units of economic, social, and spiritual development." The newsletter focuses on concerns relevant to the family, intentional communities, and small towns. It consists of articles, book reviews, announcements, and reader participation. Few organizations serve the cause of community as well as Coinmunity Service. —FLS I
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