Chapter 4

Responsibility and Spiritual Growth

In the preceding chapters we saw how the quality of life has declined in my Camp Springs neighborhood. The decline is apparent on several levels. On the gross level, there's been a marked increase in crime, including acts of violence. At the same time, aspects of community life that touch on individual awareness and reflect finer qualities of character—courtesy, respect, compassion—have also been affected. At the risk of contradicting myself, I must point out that this unflattering portrait is somewhat misleading. When you look at the big picture, the quality of life in these parts is not that much worse—or better—in the late 1990s than it was in the late 1960s or even the late 1660s. With minor variations, the overall quality of life has been less than ideal throughout these decades and centuries.

You don't have to study history all that closely to see this. Civil war, slavery, religious persecution, genocide against native Americans. Witch trials, lynchings, the Klan, the Mob. Street gangs, riots, assassinations, bombings. The gibbet, the pillory, the rack, the stake. Society has been replete with violence and criminality since the earliest days. As children we were taught the explorers from Europe and their colonial descendants brought civilization to this continent, but it seems to me a strong argument could be made that civilization actually declined after the arrival of the European, that the quality of life on the coastal Chesapeake plain and elsewhere in the Americas was actually better during the age when the only inhabitants were indigenous people. Granted, the basic requirements for sustaining life—food, water, medicine—have seen improvement, although the disparity in their distribution is troubling. What I'm referring to are the non-material elements we discussed in chapter 1—awareness, courtesy, respect for the garden zone and safety. When you assess the quality of life not just for a privileged elite, but for all of society, you have to conclude that generally speaking, these core factors have remained at a fairly constant and distinctly poor level for centuries. Could we extrapolate and use the same criteria to assess the quality of life in Europe before America was even colonized? Yes, and I dare say we would come to the same conclusion, that with few exceptions, there is nothing particularly civilized about the history of man leading to the development of modern society.[1]

But what is the relevance of this assessment? Crime and violence have been with us throughout history. Do you think you're going to change human nature? Let's get real. Crime is a fact of life, so deal with it. Install the dead bolts and the window bars, activate the alarm system and when we catch the thieving little bastards, let's lock them up and throw away the key. There's the answer for you.

There are several things wrong with this argument. First, it's not useful to generalize about the nature of man. The word nature is not well defined in this context. Every person born into the world is unique. Some develop into good people, some into bad, and some of us hardly develop at all. Solutions are not going to come from generalizations; rather, they require that we recognize the supreme individuality of our species. Second, there is no disputing alarm systems and dead bolts still serve a purpose in our society, but we need to balance these reactive measures with something preventive, otherwise nothing will ever change. By preventive, I mean truly preventive. We need people working on the kind of prevention that incorporates the new mind- set we discussed in the first chapter (see section 1.2 ). As we saw, it's an approach that turns your perspective on the quality of life completely around, which brings up the third point. When you fathom true prevention, and see the full range of possibilities, your perspective becomes so broad, so all-encompassing that, yes, there is importance in knowing where you are relative to history, and there is importance in having a global view. It's a bit of a paradox. While you are striving to keep your attention focused at home—on your family, your neighbors, your community—you are also cognizant of where you are in time, where you are on the planet and where you are in the universe. But how can your mind be oriented inward, on yourself and the immediate environs, while at the same time be looking outward, toward the distant reaches of time and space? If the here and now demands your undivided attention, how can there be room for universal applications?

It's a question that deserves closer examination, but let's leave it for now and get back to the practical consideration of what exactly we mean by these balancing measures of prevention.

Our discussion has raised a number of distinct concerns regarding the quality of neighborhood life. It's possible to conceive several prevention oriented schemes to address them. For example, we could address crime through a program of prevention. We could also design a program for humanitarian concerns such as homelessness. And there might be a third plan for issues related to green space maintenance. I suggest these programs could all become part of one package. We might still operate the community patrol, pen letters to pastors and prepare tree reports, but this activity could come under one umbrella, both practically and philosophically. What makes such a consolidation possible is the common element unifying these diverse concerns: awareness. In pursuing each of these avenues, our strategy is to refine awareness, individually and collectively. Refined awareness is the key because it sits atop the quality-of-life pyramid. When collective awareness is improved, the other factors follow suit. There is more courtesy, hence more respect for the garden zone and finally greater safety.

Let's take a concrete example. Consider juvenile crime.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .text truncated

Figure 4.1 Spiritual Growth