Editorial 6.8, August 2004, by Deirdre Helfferich Taking Care of Our Own Ester is a place where its inhabitants pride themselves on their community spirit and their independence. Ester is a state of mind, we say. We try to respect each other’s privacy and stay out of each other’s business, yet we also look out for each other and our village. Sometimes these attitudes can backfire. Small towns like Ester run the risk of becoming ingrown. We can forget what is important to us. This is especially true if one of us behaves badly. We might react in several ways, protecting that person even though they did wrong, effectively condoning their behavior, or ostracizing them, reacting to a single incident and overlooking, in our outrage, years of good behavior and community fellowship. A single act can grow long tails, as one person put it, stretching out into the hours before and after, even days and weeks surrounding the triggering event. It can tear a community apart, quickly, or fester slowly, preventing healing for years after. Or, it can bring a community together, and teach us all some important lessons about our fellow citizens and ourselves. This line of thought was triggered, of course, by the beating Jeff Rogers received at the hands of a stranger, and the events that led up to it and the consequences that it produced. They are still evolving. I was safely away that entire day. While we were minding our own business, a slow drama was developing in the center of the village. We found out about it when my husband decided to go to the bar for a little socializing, only to discover the troopers, an ambulance, a lot of very upset neighbors, and a bludgeoned, semiconscious friend. Hans ended up taking Jeff’s wife to the hospital, and eventually driving them back home when Jeff was released in the wee hours of the morning. The rumor mill has since been very active, naturally, and the village is gradually deciding what the story really was. It turns out that there are several players, and three incidents of violence that day. The man who assaulted Jeff is still at large. Some hard feeling has been generated within the community, with blame being laid at some point by just about everyone I’ve talked to (including me, I’m sorry to say). Things seem to be settling down, but the major act of violence caused more damage to our sense of camraderie than to Jeff’s head. Good thing he’s a geologist. The entire mess has illuminated a few issues. Some bad behavior earlier that day on the part of the people involved was tolerated or seen as harmless, even though they were getting out of line, because they were, supposedly, locals, and were indulged more than it turns out that they should have been—but, of course, hindsight isn’t much help before the fact. So what is a local, and why should someone who is local be allowed to get away with more silliness than someone who is not? And at what point does silliness become dangerous and bad for everybody? When should people intervene, and how? And now that harm has been done, how can we repair the emotional damage? How can we avoid this kind of thing in the future? One obvious answer to the first question is that a local is a person who lives here, or near here, and who has a stake in the community. Somebody like this has the normal social control of accountability: if you dance naked on Main Street in the middle of the day, you are still going to have to look your friends and acquaintances in the eye the next day at the post office. However, if you are just visiting, you don’t have to worry about it. You can move on to the next town, without fear of the wisecracks or disapproval of your neighbors. In other words, we are responsible for our actions, and we must face our neighbors and the people we care about, and deal with the consequences of our behavior. A person who is local can get away with a little more than a stranger, in part because they are a known quantity, with a history to help place their actions in context, and in part because we know they won’t overstep certain unspoken limits, although they might push them, because they have something to lose if they do. Several of the people involved in the day’s events were not locals by this definition, or had only recently moved here and so didn’t have the same level of history as someone like Jeff, who has lived here for many years. So they didn’t have the same social pressure to behave well. Yet, they were making the transition in many people’s minds from occasional passers-through to local regular. But it wasn’t just the newcomers whose decorum would fail to impress Miss Manners: Jeff blew it, too, shocking those who know him. Localdom does not guarantee common sense or proper etiquette or good judgement, it just means we know where to find you when we want to tell you what a twink you’ve been. It also means that we can hurt each other more easily, through subtle slights or ostracism, because we do have a stake here and we do care. The other questions are harder to answer. But one thing is clear to me: it may be important to mind one’s own business, but it is also important to look out for each other and for the wellbeing of the community. That means that rather than wasting time and energy being angry with each other, we should look at ourselves, and see what we can do now, in our own behavior, to recognize when we or our friends have gone too far and try to get home before we embarrass ourselves or hurt someone. If everyone had gone home, things would have settled down right quick. | ||
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