Community

I generally don't like it when someone starts to rant about a problem they are willing to offer no solution to. Having said that, I'll try my very best not to actually 'rant' about this - more sort of 'ponder all over my keyboard'!

I love it when old people talk about the war. I could quite happily sit there for hours and listen to them going on - and often have done - about rationing, Churchill's great speeches and the Blackout. But the bit that most fascinates me - I mean really, really draws me in - is this spirit of community which they all talk about. It doesn't seem to matter where in the country you were at the time of the war, the Brits were just struck by a feeling of 'togetherness'.

And here's where the ranty bit starts.... I don't think we've got that any more. I honestly don't know what happened to it, but it seems to have gone, faded away into the same oblivion that swallowed up home-gardening, beef dripping and 'make-do-or-mend'. Perhaps it fell victim to the post-war economic optimism that seduced America in the 50's: work harder so you can buy more 'stuff'. Perhaps we lost our sense of focus and got so carried away with the after-parties that we forgot those values and practices that brought us through the conflict in the first place.

Whatever the cause may prove to be, I'm starting to feel optimistic that it's not beyond repair. I rejoice - and I do use that word deliberately - to see events like the Bush Moot being organised again this year, where hundreds of wilderness lovers gather from around the globe to share their skills and crafts with each other. Academics such as Andy Munzer are using their influence to rekindle the flames of story-telling, sharing messages, morals and histories with future generations. I'm heartened to see the number of people doing extraordinary things to raise money and awareness for issues that would otherwise have gone unheard. Children in Need, for example, raised what I consider to be a staggering amount of money in their annual appeal last year, a total of £36million. (And bear in mind that this is all against a backdrop of credit-crunching and petrol pirates).

I feel really chuffed to see the astronomic growth of social networking sites such as Facebook.com, where communities of friends and strangers are able to share common interests, keep in touch in easy and entertaining ways, and build whole new communities, based not on geographical proximity, but on common interest and shared values. Add to this the enormous and wonderfully inspiring progeny of Linus Torvalds and the whole Open Source movement, and you really start to sense that community spirit only appears to be out for the count.

What is actually happening, is that borders, barriers and limitations are being torn down everywhere we look. I feel that it is culturally comparable to the Berlin Wall coming down. International communities are enhancing and complementing local, geographical ones. Data and culture sharing are becoming regular, everyday occurrences in so many people's lives. We are no longer merely citizens of the land we happen to live in today, but citizens of Planet Earth, connected to and interacting with millions of un-met compatriots, each of us concerned with and affected by the systematic rape and pillage of the earth's finite resources.

I feel that our generation owes a tremendous debt to our forebears, not only to continue their fight for freedom - and indeed to exercise and benefit from the freedoms for which they gave so much - but also to carry that torch of community spirit and 'togetherness' onwards. I'm reminded very much of the Olympic torch, being passed from one neighbour to another, year after year, its flame never being allowed to be blown out. Perhaps we would all do well to embrace the same concept: to burn as brightly in our own circles of influence as we can, and to teach others to do the same.