Truth from the Heart: community

Can Beauty Be Our Superman?

10:26:00 AMCatherine Yanko

Robert Putnam recently made an eye-opening discovery: That while bowling leagues, and group bowling are experiencing a downward spiral of popularity, solo bowling is on the rise. The significance of this discovery, I think, is fairly self-explanatory.

The modern man is slowly eliminating himself from his community and becoming a mere floating individual. You can float around from place to place without any rhyme or reason. You can do what you want, whenever you want, as long as you don’t harm anyone. Of course each man was created as a unique and irreplaceable being, but that does not eliminate man’s need for another. True community is essential to the perfection of man’s destiny.

There’s a distinction between the way a floating individual views community and how one ought to see community. Floating individuals view community as a mass of people unintentionally thrown together. For example, let’s contrast a crowd of people at a local park with a family. Unlike an authentic community, like the family, the people at the park do not have clear roles. Each individual is equal and does not participate in another’s personal growth. Attendance to the park does not birth particular rights or responsibilities. The group is merely a gathering people with no intentionality.

The tendency of individualism is to view community in a selfish manner, namely to act as a means to an end, pleasure. If community is recognized in its fullest sense, one comes to understand that the individual is actually made for community. Dietrich von Hildebrand highlights that,“Community can never be understood if the individual person is not grasped in the full depth of his being, nor can the individual person ever be fully understood if his capacity for sustaining communities and his fundamental orientation to community are not grasped.” (2) True community is a direct participation in man’s fulfillment.

When man is closed off to others, isolation sets in. Believing that you can do everything on your on and avoiding weakness creates a tainted view of oneself. In reality, everyone has weaknesses because humanity is flawed. The truth is I didn’t make myself, and I cannot do everything on my own. Communities also create an awareness that individualism ignores. It makes you more aware of particular issues that may affect yourself and others.

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which gives value to survival.” (3)

Community provides man with a necessary space to flourish because it speaks to our own humanity. We were not created to be alone.

Each day we experience an array of societal pressures. We are promised with happiness if we are to become a certain size, dress a certain way, and attain a certain wealth status. With the strong emphasis on me, the collective we is often overlooked. The unhealthy elevation of the individual is projecting a false understanding of community. In its fullest sense, when the truth of the person is recognized and understood, community is an avenue to man’s fulfillment. Isn’t it much more attractive to be a flourishing whole rather than a floating fraction?

Are you bowling alone?

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1. Image One
2. Dietrich von Hildebrand, My Battle Against Hitler, 388
3. C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
4. Image Two

communion community family

Family Isn't Everything

11:01:00 AMCatherine Yanko

Wedding season has weaned to a close while so many last names in my phone contacts remain jumbled up. For me, this summer was packed with weddings. Each one I went to was different. From receptions in an art studio to a hunting lodge to the elegant ceremonies, I thoroughly enjoyed every second of the love stricken atmosphere. But, amidst the perfectly laid decorations and the photo shoots, I started to wonder: What happens next? What happens when the pinterest boards are no longer pertinent, the drawn out engagement period is over, and there is no wedding left to plan? I started to wonder how does a couple transition from this self-obsessed state of planning into life.

I think the craziest part is some people don’t make this transition. It seems like necessarily couples have to get out of the inward focus since the wedding is over and the possibility of children now is open and welcome. But, I really don’t think all couples make the transition. Think about it. There’s the couple that upon marriage still does not immerse itself in community. The only relationship, albeit a very important one, that is being formed is with one’s spouse. It is not like this is just a newlywed thing either. Think about all the couples, young, middle-aged, and elderly, that quite frankly don’t have friends.

Man is made for community.

The second man forgets this is the second man loses himself. Each individual has to take it upon his own to delve into community. No one else can do this for him or her. Karol Wojtyla says of persons, “As he seeks to determine the particular lines along which his personality must develop, the main direction of his love, every man must learn to integrate himself into the activity of God and respond to His love.” (1) To integrate oneself into this direction of love does not look like our perfectly crafted pinterest boards we have to perfect our lifestyle or contained in the four walls of our homes. This is a love that goes out to all of society.

Family life is a great way to rid one’s self of their egoism, but another danger presents itself. An egoism that displays itself in obsessions with one’s family is still a kind of egoism. We all had those friends growing up that could never hang out because they had their third family game night in a row. Or, how many times are we more concerned with our families looking perfect by spending hours on photoshoots and thousands of dollars on outfits instead of remembering there is a whole society out there calling out for help, physically or in this need for community. Families need society if we want to avoid this kind of egoism.

I think the biggest thing that is keeping families from going out into society is fear. We are so worried about how corrupt and immoral society is that we forget that we ourselves have our own issues too. Our families aren’t perfect, so why do we fear the impact of society so much? Of course there are precautions that need to be made for a pornographic and drug crazed culture, but the response is not one of a citadel. We cannot go about hiding. Instead Karol Wojtyla says that family should exist in these large societies because society has something to offer the family too.

“The family is in itself a small society, and the existence of all large societies- nation, state, Church- depends on it. Obviously any large society will keep a watchful eye on the process of its own ceaseless recruitment by way of the family. The family is the primary institution at the base of our existence as human beings. It forms part of the large society which it constantly helps to create, but it also has its own distinct existence, its own character and ends.” (2)

It is a lot easier to stick to our perfected ideas of what our families could be that are easily controlled than to allow others to call us into an integrated lifestyle where we work with others for a goal that is beyond our control. The good of society is a goal that cannot be abandoned in the love stricken sentiments of our newly weds. Families, go out. Change the world because that is exactly what your family is made to do. The family is not supposed to be your ultimate craft project that you can easily control and manipulate accordingly. Rather, it is a very messy love that the world depends on. Without families, there is no society. And without society, how can man flourish into his full personal being?

So, husbands and wives, it’s up to you. Will your family, in all the messiness it is, be a part of society or will you continue to be that isolated agent fearful of change?

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Image One

1. Wojtyla, Karol. Love and Responsibility, 258.

Image Two

2. Ibid, 217.

Image Three

college communion community

A Lesson for Graduates from the Little Prince

6:00:00 AMCatherine Yanko

Image One

Today I walked down to my University’s Admissions building to retrieve a form for graduation for this spring semester. Yes, this is long overdue but that is not the point. The point is I am graduating in the Spring.

Image Two (How I feel about graduating)

As I stared my adulthood in the face, a friend texted me and told me to watch “The Little Prince” on Netflix. When I came home, I opted for further procrastination on packing up for the school year and watched this film… and then found an online text of the book.

This movie begins with a modern girl who is interviewing to get into a competitive prep school. She fails the interview. To still gain admission to the school, she moves to be in the respective school district. This girl and her mom move into one of those neighborhoods where every house is a copy of each other. But, next to their new home is an exquisite and intriguing home unlike any other. This is the home of the aviator. The aviator is quite old but develops a remarkably beautiful friendship with the little girl. As he introduces her to “The Little Prince”, the viewer can see the girl come alive in wonder of the adventures of the aviator and hope of a world unlike her own extremely narrow and rigid one.

Right from the beginning, I found myself already in the same shoes as the little girl. As she focused on her admittance and interviews to Werth Academy, I found myself suddenly also anxious about my future. The upcoming school year bears its share of hardships in the academic sphere and an ever busy schedule. Graduation looming over my head also puts an added pressure to have the next steps of my life figured out. The mother in this movie had planned out her daughter's whole summer on catching up academically so she could succeed in school. In their kitchen, the mother hung a huge board of exact times (down to ten minute increments) of what the little girl should be doing every second of the day with little magnets to move as the tasks were completed. As this scene flashed across my laptop screen, I looked down to my planner already filling up day by day for this coming school year.

Image Three

As the mother said to the little girl pointing at her schedule, “This is you, this is your life”, I could not help but wondered how many times I have dug myself into that same thinking. How many times have I been so narrowly focused on my schedule, that I neglect the present moment. There is a reason why Hildebrand refers to living as an art and not a mere practice.

This is the mentality and world that pushed the little girl to finally admit, “I’m not so sure I want to grow up anymore”. In the face of her world seeming to expand as she ages, the little girl realizes she will not reach fulfillment in her current setting. She is in a place where the pressure is building up so much on herself that even when she desires to play with a friend her mother says maybe next summer and only every other Thursday for half an hour. The demand of the modern world sets individual people immediately against community. This demand is what I fear in graduating.

This isolation is disguised as success by modern man. If you can be the most successful at what you do, have whatever new possession it may be and the best of it, and are happy with yourself then you have succeeded at life. This mentality eliminates the possibility of community because it is irrelevant in the goal of such success. In the LifeGuide, Dietrich von Hildebrand says, “The true measure of the depth of man will much rather be found in whether or not he is awakened to that spirit of true communion, in whether or not there has been a breaking-down of the inner walls of self-assertion, in the defenses of the sphere of the ego” (50). It is impossible to live this full life without reaching beyond one’s isolation into community. Asserting one’s own desires or successes over others may help in the aim of graduation but will never gain authentic fulfillment.

One of the most profound moments of this movie for me was when the Little Prince and Aviator are in Africa together and the Little Prince looks around at the barren desert and asks the aviator why it is so lonely in Africa. The aviator replies that it is because it is lonely in the hearts of men. This is what is at stake this school year. We have the choice to perpetuate a lifestyle that will continue well past graduation. We can continue to close in on ourselves in the face of others. Or, we can welcome one another with gratitude and reverence. Hopefully, this year will be one where if the Little Prince were to come to my university he would not declare here too it is lonely in the hearts of men.

acting person common good community

Responding to Munich

6:00:00 AMCatherine Yanko

Image One

It was 6 am and I was surrounded by a group of my summer co-workers. We were waiting for our shift to begin, checking our phones, when one of the workers moaned and said, “Oh my gosh. Another shooting. Are you kidding me right now?” Someone else replied, “Another day, another shooting” and the conversation carried onwards until I asked, “So, where was that shooting at?” “Munich,” replied my co-worker, “but it was only eight people”.

Am I the only one slightly disturbed by the way we talk about these tragedies? Obviously, a diminutive phrase such as “only” to express the inherent dignity of the eight individual persons who were unjustly killed is not acceptable. What struck me the most was the treatment of a tragedy as a cultural norm. If this was the first time I have heard acts of violence similar to this be treated as everyday news and gossip, I probably wouldn’t be writing this blog post. But, it is from seeing it on social media so many times and conversations like these that I am starting to become convinced that many in today’s culture see mass shootings as an ordinary occurrence.

I think what we have lost here is our understanding of our relation as individuals to community. We have forgotten we are not merely individuals that just live next to other individuals. Between all of our “me’s” there is a “we”. This “we” calls us to solidarity. Karol Wojtyla speaks of this in depth in “Acting Person”. What binds us to this community is each individual’s participation in the common good. This common good can be aimed at collectively by individuals in the process he calls participation. He says, “The common good is obviously the good of the community” (251). This good of the community respects the fact that each individual is a person and seeks to allow his flourishing as such (252). Thus something so essential as existence is a guarantee in true communities.

Image Two

As I have been reflecting on this language and the loss of a sense of tragedy in response to these crimes, a memory from almost a year ago keeps coming back into my mind. A group of my friends and I travelled to Munich. One of the first things we did when arriving to Munich was pick what we actually wanted to see and what was secondary. The primary list was: Hofbrauhaus, Dachau, and the Olympic park. I’m sure you recognize one of those is not like the others. Dachau was the first concentration camp built by the Nazis. While we knew we would be paying our condolences at Auschwitz and Birkenau later in the semester, we still felt bound to go to Dachau. But, why? None of us had any direct relation to prisoners in this camp.

It is solidarity that bound us to those prisoners and still binds us to Munich and many other places today. At first, solidarity may seem irrelevant in the faces of these terrorists. Wojtyla says, “Solidarity is to some extent a restrain from trespassing upon other people’s obligations and duties or from taking over as one’s own the part that belongs to others” (255). Is this not exactly what is happening? Creatures are taking the role of the Creator and dictating their self over a fundamental right to existence we all have as persons.

Recognizing solidarity as a necessity, it still seems irrelevant considering the fact that I am not a member of these communities that have been terribly affected. But after reflecting on what constitutes the foundation of my own community, I realized individual persons are at the center of it. Each person is created for and thus sets the norm of community by their very nature as person. Wojtyla says, “It is the community of men, of all men, the community formed by their very humanity that is the basis of all other communities” (319). It is what Wojtyla calls the "personalistic norm": persons by their nature are to be treated with proper dignity. This personalistic norm must shape our communities as well. We have to give persons the space to become fully themselves.

This is why when my friends and I got to Dachau we weren’t the only foreigners. There were people from literally all over: Africa, South America, Canada, Germany, Asia, France, and who knows from where else. We came here to unite in what is the common good: the upholding of the dignity of the persons.

Image Three: Dachau

The question still remains: what do I, as a twenty year old American, do in response to these tragedies? Even though we seem to have little else binding us together, I am bound to these victims in our humanity. And, these horrific events demand a response from me as a member of the community of humanity. I have wrestled long and hard with this question of what to do because as much as I want to change the world, it is not going to happen over night. But, what I can do is create an atmosphere of solidarity in my own community.

Through my relationships and friendships, I can strive toward the good for others. I can help them strive in their own pursuits of their good. According to Karol Wojtyla, “Solidarity signifies a constant readiness to accept and to realize one’s share in the community- within that because of one’s membership in a particular community” (255). When this requires me to go beyond what would normally be my duty because other members are not participating in the community, I will chose to keep going. I wish I could tell you this is an easy choice. It would be really easy to wish vengeance on and to swear at the men and women who have obliterated their fellow men and women and dismiss their actions as lunacy. But, how does this restore what has been lost? I do not see how this is going to give persons the space to be persons, to mature, flourish, and grow. So, I have decided what I will do. To these tragedies, I will respond with love.