The Decline of Community

By Volodymyr Kish

I have written many times in this space about the challenges facing Ukrainian organizations in the diaspora. Loss of language, displacement from our ancestral roots, generational alienation, competition from a North American culture rich with sports, entertainment, culture and social alternatives – all these conspire to erode our Ukrainian identity and the strength of our Ukrainian communities. It is as evident in our political and cultural organizations as it is in our churches and parishes.

The more I think on it though, the more I am beginning to realize that there is also one more important, if not critical factor, that has significantly influenced this decline, and that has been the dramatic shift in our values and priorities as individuals. Specifically, I am referring to the fact that over the last few generations, people have become far more absorbed with their own individual needs, wants and desires at the expense of a broader and more altruistic involvement in their community and other common social structures.

To put it into context, I offer the example of my parents’ generation of fifty or sixty years ago. They were no less opinionated and likely had as many different points of view as we do, but the one big difference was that when it came to certain goals and principles, they were remarkably united and dedicated to a common cause be it political, cultural or spiritual. They subsumed their individual egos and agendas and worked and sacrificed for the good of the common cause, which they understood was greater and more important than their own individual egos or agendas.

I remember how my father, despite the fact that he was religiously agnostic and believed that much of the church hierarchy and practices were remnants of feudalism, nonetheless put in a phenomenal amount of effort, time and money into helping build a Ukrainian church in the wilderness of a mining town in Northern Quebec. Similarly, though he could not subscribe to the ultra-nationalism that drove much of Ukrainian organizational life in the post-war period, he was a strong supporter of the UNF branch in our town, because he recognized the importance of its cultural and educational programs, and the role they played in maintaining a strong Ukrainian identity.

I have been involved in Ukrainian organizational life for over forty years now, and have seen it evolve from having a strong unity and cohesiveness of purpose, to one where there is no longer a clear sense of vision around which people can unite and work as one community with common values and goals.

Even Ukrainian churches have not been spared. Most parishes that I am familiar with are afflicted with cliques, generational differences, linguistic divides, and significant disagreements over even the Church’s essential purpose. Is a Ukrainian church’s prime mission to preserve the “Ukrainian” aspect of its existence, or to carry on the missionary goals of Catholicism or Orthodoxy? Is the purpose of the Church Hall and its affiliated organizations that of supporting the religious work of the Church or the other way around. Each parish has a religious, social and cultural dimension, but I think it would be safe to say that there seems to be little agreement as to the relative priority and importance of each of these.

All this comes about because over the past few generations, we have been brought up to believe that individual rights and opinions are the most important things in our society. We are taught to be assertive. Our consumerist and materialistic society constantly bombards us with the message that we deserve more, that all points of view are equal, that we should all do “our own thing” and have the freedom to satisfy all our desires, and that individual self-actualization is the ultimate ideal.

All this is not to denigrate the positive benefits that have come about from freeing the individual from many longstanding historical political and social constraints. But, we should also realize that there has been a stiff price to pay in the corollary, that being weakening of the strong sense of community, the strength of social group bonds, and the dedication people used to have to common causes. When everyone wants to have things their own way, how much more difficult if not impossible does it become to find the compromise and the willingness to co-operate to achieve social, cultural, political and spiritual goals that transcend the individual, but are crucial to the well-being of the community or society as a whole. We must all realize that we lose a lot when we don’t find a proper balance between the wants of the individual, and the needs of society as a whole.