Read Robert Bellah’s chapter 3 in the TYCO Packet. Write a 1-2 page synopsis and submit in your Campus Cruiser journal. Then watch this video on the PBS NOW website and comment here.
The video you are going to watch is part of an on-going PBS project called Blueprint America that addresses questions about how to rethink and rebuild America’s transportation systems and infrastructure, and about how to plan for the growth and development of our cities and towns in more sustainable and community-minded ways.
Our readings right now are asking the question, what does it mean to be a human being? Bellah and his team of researchers are showing how in American culture we have a long history of imagining selfhood in terms of radical independence and self-reliance, emphasizing the attitude of going it alone, doing it on your own, and celebrating as the goal of one’s life an image of private accumulation of material things and seclusion from others and the world.
This model of happiness has informed the way we grow our cities, build freeways and suburbs, build houses and much more. And this is of course especially relevant right now as our government makes plans to rebuild America’s infrastructure to help restart the economy (by providing jobs, for one thing). All of these things have, for quite some time now, been governed by the idea that what we all really want is to live far away from one another, in gated communities and secluded suburbs so that we have as little contact as possible with neighbors and with people who are unlike ourselves.
NOW’s Blueprint America is posing the question: what if we rethink happiness? How can a definition of happiness that believes contact, connection, and community are good things, not bad things, lead to new visions of how and where we live, how and where we work, how our homes and transportation systems and cities should be built?
As you watch the video, make notes about any sort of connections you see between the discussion about commuting and transportation with the readings in Bellah’s book about the meaning of life, individualism, community, happiness, social responsibility, and personal contentment.
Submit your comments in the box below. Then be sure to check out the guest blog and be prepared to discuss it in class next week.
2 Comments
The lifestyle enclave for Americans is so far removed from a community oriented society. I believe what Bellah was trying to show was the relationship between individualism and the communities in which we live. The terrible transportation options given to the people of California illustrates how much it the American infrastructure has been neglected. Moving to the excerbs is what many Americans did not realizing that there were going to be high transportation costs and sacrifices. In an effort to move towards individualism and self reliance the people have become prisoners in there own home. They cannot afford to go anywhere because of the high gas prices. In addition, these people’s lifestyle enclaves are reliant upon individual choice. They are also an independent whole of society. Their lifestyle enclaves are segmented by each individual and those that have similar lifestyles. The restructure of America’s infrastructure is needed to help Americans become less dependent on the care. This crisis is not only affecting individualism but it is affecting the good for society as a whole. The external influences that are not in our control are a part of the greater whole and are essential to ones development in terms of self reliance and personal growth. If people are forced to move away from what there norm is there is a sense of personal loss. The shifting away from community based culture has reciprocal scenario in terms of what is good for the individual self and what is good for people as a whole. If you take away from one you take away from the other. The possible solution mentioned is to have more public transportation and to make cultural changes. This will move individuals and society in the direction of improvement for self and people as a whole.
I found this report to be sad on many fronts, the first being that so many people have moved so far from where they make a living. The family depicted in the report were barely making ends meet when the gas prices began to soar. They are now spending several hours in a car, rearranging their lives and spending over $1000 a month on gas even though they had a hybrid. The second issue that comes to mind is the simple fact that mass transit had originally been planned to play a huge role in the plan of urban sprawl. Big business, oil companies and car companies did away with mass transit to line their pockets and pan to the consumer’s preference for freedom to travel individually. Community travel turns to individual transportation nightmare. I think that it is sad that people are just now realizing the benefits of public transportation only after so many have lost their homes and are losing their savings to preserve their personal freedom of driving their own car and living out in the open. Spending hours in traffic doesn’t sound like freedom to me — it sounds like a virtual hell.
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