Barn raising: thoughts on going through change with the help of others
inaliminalspace.org
inaliminalspace.org
> We love the narrative of rugged individualism, the freedom to help ourselves out, choose our own way, and make a future.
> When we choose to go through a life transition without the help of others, we steal away from those around us the profound joy of building up a future – real acts of hope, faith and love in the world.
As someone who started out on a major life transition just a year ago with the explicit advice to deliberately form a supportive network, this rings resoundingly clear. Most people want to do good by helping, but sadly the opportunities to do so are abstractly detatched from day to day experience. I know there will be people who will want to respond with, "you know you can just volunteer," but the emotional texture of volunteer work is qualitatively different from being asked, "I'm going through something hard. Can I count on you for support?"
The individualism described in the article contributes to the atrophy of emotional vulnerability and forming support networks is an antidote. I hope in some small way the article inspires someone to do the same.
An Amish person getting support via well worn community norms is one thing.
But so much of the change that people find hard is when they discover that their identity or community doesn't fit them quite right anymore.
How supportive are the Amish if you decide you want to live a different life?
Changing politics, gender, religion, social class (income shift), other identity values or moving a long way - these are often "out of context" problems for the community and friends you have.
The article's not "wrong" but life is nuanced. It's not easy to build new networks.
Couldn't agree more. Forming support networks is swimming upstream against our social currents. But, rising against default mode social relations is inherently liberatory at the same time. Or in words more friendly to the audience, working harder (powering through individually), doesn't always trump working smarter(building support networks).
There is no work that does not contain an iota of it's author. To allow others to be involved with you is also to allow them to change you - and you to change them.
This is both a threat and a promise. If your identity is intimately aligned with the people who are helping you, this is great. If your identity is not aligned, this is terrible.
Individualism is an alternative, and it's an alternative to collectivism. One of the things collectivism depends on is a unified identity, often times touching the religious, cultural and familiar. Thus collectivism works well for the Amish who don't tolerate breaks from their hegemony - even choosing a different barn design can become a pitched cultural battle.
Nearly all of us operate in a patchwork plurality of social relations formulated on any number of identity perspectives. Sure, some people may read this and go full Amish, but the call to action doesn't seem to be that. The call to action is to take a risk, reach out to that acquaintance when the time is right, and ask, "I know we aren't that close, but I might need some support. Can I count on you?"
https://www.inaliminalspace.org/blog/barn-raising?rq=Barn
Also for those who know about barn stars on Wikipedia, barn raising and the particular idea of barn stars is the concept that inspired it.
The people helping can come in, help for a period of time, and leave feeling good. The person getting help likely feels no shame in the situation.
Would the community have a frolic if a man was an alcoholic with depression and his wife divorced him and moved away from the community? What if the farmer was injured in the tornado, say paralyzed? Some things aren't feel good situations when you come help for a week. Some things don't get better, they're just endured.
The advice in this article is good, but applies to a narrow set of situations that, honestly, are easier to deal with. A barn can be rebuilt.
In regions, where government interfere much, like ex-communists countries, and where population changed fast, this behavior becomes counter productive.
Because for this need long term relations with neighbors.
Only one nuance, to have such relations, one must be enough similar to his neighbors, at lest don't consider them extra-terrestrials, have similar everyday behavior, similar income, similar education, etc. But in long term communities this happen automatically.
Important areas mean, infrastructure objects, important for community, like water pumps/pipes, electricity transformers, and recreation area, and area where members walking with children.