Loss of Community 🛖

Watching the historical video in [[ japan-day18|Shirakawa-go ]], I was struck as I often am by just how much our communities have disappeared.

The video showed the traditional lifestlye of this mountain village, which is representative of the villages of the area. The houses of Shirakawa-go are exceptionally large dwellings in the “gaacho” style. This style is defined by wooden framing and a tall peaked roof covered in thick thatching. Within the buildings, there could be 2 to 3 floors, getting progressively smaller higher up in the roofspace. Traditionally, the bottom floor was used for all living and the upper floors were used for silk worm production, which was the staple industry of the town.

Communal living is the first aspect of community that has degraded. In Shirakawa-go, an extended family of 30 to 40 would all live in one of these houses. The men would work together in the rice fields, while the women would perform all the silk worm related work. Most likely in addition to traditional gender role tasks of cooking and cleaning. I’m sure this many people in one house would not always be a great experience, but I would argue that if nothing else it would build a real sense of community at the family level. You would be expected to do your bit for your family, and expect them to do the same.

At a slightly wider level, there is the sense of community within the village or local neighbourhood. In my experience, and no doubt the experience of many modern people, this level of community barely exists anymore. In such a centralised system as the one we live in, you need only rely on your own labour and can exchange this with the faceless system for things you can’t produce on your own. The village community really appeals to me, and I think it is probably the best way for human beings to live. A system where you rely on your neighbour and they rely on you is ideal. The blacksmith needs the miner and the farmer needs the blacksmith and everyone needs the farmer but to make use of the farmer’s products they need the miller.

The historical video showed this sort of community at work through the traditional practice of the village working together on roof thatching. The thatched rooves of the gaacho style houses need replacing every 30 to 50 years and it is a big job that would probably take one person weeks. To avoid this, all houses are re-thatched on a rotation by the whole community. This means about 250 people all working together to get one house done in one day. There’s the physical aspect of actually doing the thatching up on the roof, but there’s also a lot of supporting work like creating the thatch bundles, providing lunch and refreshments etc. It really changes something that would be an arduous task alone into a fun community event for everyone to gather around and work together on. All the farmers would collectively grow the thatch as well.

I think one of the draws of multiplayer Minecraft servers, and other multiplayer sandbox games of that ilk (Valheim etc.), is that they simulate community.