This week it was that time again: I disappointed myself. I realized that I am not who I want to be or should be, according to my own ideals.
I suffer from this more often. For example, I adhere to spontaneity and adventure, at least on paper. In reality I am not really flexible and I have been eating the same on my bread for seven years a week for seven years. What should I do with this? Do I have to accept it? Or should I force myself to live more to my ‘values’, as it is called nowadays?
This week’s insight is worse than the spread-issue, because it is something bigger, with more moral charge. It’s about my favorite subject, democracy. He involves more than just politics, it was in his sociologist Mark van Ostaijen this Tuesday Volkskrant-Column. Democracy requires mutual trust, and that arises in associations, trade unions and other forms of Civil Societysays Van Ostaijen. “That is not the biggest challenge to professionalize our party politics, but to better socialize our democracy.”
The SCP report on social cohesion in the Netherlands was published on Thursday. Although social confidence in the Netherlands is stable, “the way of living together” is the most frequently mentioned social problem among respondents. As a negative point, people call, among other things, “me-culture and individualization.”
I totally agreed. Yes, I thought, we have to meet in the public space, exchange thoughts, unite, take action where necessary.
And then the insight came: although I really think all this, I don’t feel like it. I am rather individualistic and I hate collaboration and obligations. I try to be a good citizen: to greet the bus driver, the cashier and the road worker, to keep doors open, rectifying fallen bicycles. I have sometimes organized a neighbor’s drink, and did groceries for a sick neighbor. But these are one -off or temporary things, with a favorable relationship between difficulty and reward. Would I be willing to cook indefinitely for a lonely neighbor for an indefinite period of time? Would I like to do volunteer work in the community center? In theory very happy, but in practice …
This week’s insight is worse than the spread issue issue
I also have a double feeling about citizen participation, such as citizen councils and neighborhood budgets. I believe that citizens have more faith in politics, and perhaps even more sense in life, if they have freedom of action. But I don’t have to think about deliberating with a group of land or neighbors on a free afternoon. It seems inefficient, frustrating and downright annoying. That is what politics is for that, I think: so that we don’t have to do Kissebissen about where our money is going.
In short: I may nod in agreement with plea for more community spirit, in practice I want something else. I do well in our anonymous, bureaucratic welfare state. I pay taxes, cast my vote, and in return I can go my way and be left alone. The system has absolutely disadvantages, but not for me, at least not immediately. And I can express my social involvement that I do feel through my work: As a journalist I can talk to people with exactly the desired distance, attend demonstrations, observe burger calculations. As long as I only have one foot outside the door.
This is of course a typical example of privilege. The comfort of someone with a good job, a large network and great health. The Civil Society Is there for those who are not enough for the state: people who need care, help or company that the government does not offer, or people who want to get something of the state through a trade union or industry organization. All this does not apply to me. With a relatively clean conscience I can withdraw to my own circle: I still pay taxes? Surely I comply with the rules?
But that will also stop for me. If I become help myself, of course, but possibly earlier. The point is: my form of life assumes peace and democracy. If democracy is attacked, such as in the US, or if your country is invaded, such as in Ukraine, you can no longer afford such individualism. I often have to think of a Volkskrant column in which Kustaw Bessems wrote that “connecting to others” is the best antidote to foreign threat and mutual enmity. “It sounds crazy, but joining a cooperative with solar panels, helping as a volunteer with the elderly transport, set up a neighborhood vegetable garden, invite young people to the sports club or write pieces in the neighborhood newspaper: those are all things you can do to make us stronger as a country.”
I think he’s right. I also think that many people are just as little sense of this as I do. Shall I, will they be reluctantly overcome on time?
Floor Rusman ([email protected]) is editor of NRC