The Egg Crate Community
At least where I live, in the San Francisco Bay Area, among the most spouted words are “community” and its corollaries such as, “together,” “all in,” and “We, not me.”
Yet everyone I know here, no matter how progressive they claim to be, lives as though in an egg crate. No, it’s not hermetically sealed but interaction with neighbor eggs is usually limited to “Hi, how are you?” “Fine.” “How are you?” “Fine.” People are even reluctant to ask a neighbor for an egg.
For example, today, I tried to be a good communitarian. As I was walking my dog, I saw a bit of dog poop and an empty beer can in front of a neighbor’s house. I put them in that neighbor’s garbage can. He saw me, opened his window, and barked, “Don’t do that.” My neighborhood — North Oakland/South Berkeley is among the most leftist areas in the world, so I’d bet he has never voted even for a moderate Democrat let alone a Republican. Yet he refused to let me put the stuff in front of his house that I hadn’t dropped, yet stopped to clean up and put in his garbage can?
Many people are better at preaching than doing. That’s probably core to why the formerly common Berkeley collectives are now gone. People spouted the virtues of the collective until it came time for them to clean the toilet. Might that also help explain why, after just a few decades, all the Communist countries except Cuba and Venezuela fell precipitously?
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Of course, this has implications for policy today here in the U.S. Idealists tend to push for policies based on how they wish people behaved — we, not me. Alas, millennia of experience informs us that while there are some saints, too many people too often prioritize me over we. That makes kumbaya policies work worse than policies that recognize the Darwinian and Maslovian-imprinted drive to take care of #1.
For example, few even of the most progressive-sounding walk their talk when it really counts. For example, do they live in our most diverse neighborhoods and send their kids to the most diverse public schools so they and their children can bask in socioeconomic and ethnic diversity? Or are they more likely to hunker down in largely Asian and white even gated enclaves and send their kids to tony, often gated private schools? And I have yet to meet even one vociferous liberal who has poor, let alone homeless, people living with them in their spare bedroom or three.
Performers, including in Oscar acceptance speeches, mouthe “virtue”-signaling platitudes but when asked if they walk their talk, most invoke their acting skills.
Are you and I any different? Or do we wallow in our egg crate’s compartment, chanting progressive cliches yet thinking twice even about borrowing an egg.
I read this aloud on YouTube.
Marty Nemko tries to transcend his Darwinian predispositions…sometimes. He is a career and personal coach, and author of 34 books including How to Do Life. You can reach him at mnemko@gmail.com
