Against communitarianism, or: The modern world makes you think sometimes.

Comment published on New York Times online blog in response to opinion essay by Times columnist David Brooks, “The Rise of the Haphazard Self,” May 13, 2019:

Helping people manage their lives when a capitalist economy makes that almost impossible is one of those moralistic solutions.  Attributing to individuals sole responsibility for their problems is part of the problem we face to begin with.  Prescribing thick community is such a moralism, and communitarianism like traditionalism is an artificial reclaiming of the natural.  

The modern world is self-conscious and values are not given by communities and traditions, but consciously elaborated and chosen.  (Compare pop music to folk songs.)  Communities are a relic of peasant societies being replaced by voluntary associations and social networks.  This is not bad, but different.  So communitarian traditionalisms (strong communities and families anchored by traditional religious institutions) cannot be a solution.  

Neoconservatives have been saying this since the 70s, when they started telling black men that raising their kids and not structural poverty, and avoiding drugs and not class war through policing, were the cause of their problems.  Get an ethics, they seemed to say, and so, get a community. 

You cannot join a community; you join groups, like today's churches, which meet occasionally.  Artists and scholars may have far-flung friendship networks based on shared interests, and could not want it otherwise.  

It's smarter and freer.  Ethics, the question of the good life, is based on thought and the arts, not social givenness, which is no panacea.