Becoming Human - Chapter 18 - Belonging That Closes Up

By Brian Smith

By Jean Vanier

I think the answer lies in the way we might redefine the place of the individual in the group and the place of the group among other groups. As a society, we cannot fail to recognize certain difficulties when the individual is place at the centre. A certain type of selfishness predominates, a selfishness that ill-serves the needs of the larger whole.

We also need to find some way around the problem of the group itself, the problem of competition that groups, by their nature, seem to engender. It is easy to fall into idealizing one’s group and all its certitudes. It is easy, in our weakness, to devolve individual moral responsibility to the collective...

But here and there, there are, I believe, clues as to how we may reformulate the notion of the group in ways that will allow for the development of personal consciousness and inner freedom. In this way, we become more fully human, more fully alive: the healthy individual within the healthy group.

The history of civilization shows how men and women who want to commit themselves to a religious, cultural, or social ideal bond together to live out that vision, to find the structures that are necessary for what they want to do, and to give mutual support and care for each other. Such small groups have generally occurred within the world’s great religions, where people come together with a common purpose. This is what we are trying to do in L’Arche as we build up small, family sized communities. It is what many in our Western cultures sought to build during the 60's and 70's.

Let me give you some examples of what I consider healthy groups living in a deliberately chosen spirit of risk, adventure, courage and openness. They live in what I call a spirit of insecurity, the embracing of an unknown future in an attitude of honest questioning.

In France, I regularly visit an enclosed convent where there are twenty-three women, young and old. They have come together to seek God, to give their lives to God, and to pray for all who suffer in the world. They live very poorly and word hard and the rule of life is quite fixed but they are very happy. They laugh and sing with ease. I find them very free and open in their hearts and minds, even though their convent is enclosed. They have found security in their life together but each one lives a personal insecurity. It is never easy to seek God, to be true in community life, and to accept others as they are - to forgive unceasingly, not hiding behind inner barriers.

A few years ago, I was invited to visit a group of "Jesus People" living in a depressed area of an American city. When I arrived in the large former hotel in which all the members live, I found them to be a community about two hundred men and women, simply and poorly clothed, quite a few of them "punks" with coloured hair. As I spent time with them, I discovered that they gave free meals each day to some three hundred people who were down-and-out. I also realized that many of the members had suffered much, some through drugs and some through time spent in prison. I asked one of the leaders what their relations were with the mainstream churches of the city. He told me that, basically, no one wanted to accept them.

I found that group, which some might call a sect, quite beautiful. I was surprised by their openness. I was touched by how they were helping so many men and women to become more human.

That community functioned as a group, with common ideals and goals, but they welcome the insecurity of their position as they embraced the insecurity of the down-and-out people they served. They were constantly remaking themselves. And its probable that their embracing of change and their openness was actually fostered by the opposition they faced.

In some ways, these two groups, the convent in France and the "Jesus People" in the United States, are closed groups. Even though they are so different, one group facing in to the life of contemplation and the other facing out to the life of service, they are closed enough to give sufficient security to their members so that those people can live in insecurity and grow in love, openness, and compassion for others.

But communities that start out as healthy places of belonging can become too closed, rich, and elitist. What is the hunger for power that groups so readily acquire? Members come together to confirm each other’s values. Communities can become like clubs for self-congratulation and flattery, status symbols of mediocrity. Rather than opening up to others, such groups close in on themselves. They lead to the death of the spirit.

Sometimes closedness is necessary, paritcularly in the initial stages. Some L’Arche communities, for example, were closed, to begin with, because they welcomed people with disabilities whose lives were totally unstructured and fragmented, people were filled with such anguish, darkness, and confusion that it was impossible to have dialogue with them. At first they needed to be told firmly what to do and sometimes they needed sanctions. Since they had never been respected or trusted, how could they, in turn, be expected to have respect and trust in themselves and in others?

Closed groups are found not only in religious and therapeutic circles but also in the political world, the military, multinational companies, hospitals, schools - all those places where people work together. In many organizations, individuals are expected to toe a certain line; there are norms governing behaviour. Every successful grouping of people in a common purpose has an articulated set of principles, a vision, a mission statement. An ideology, sometimes. Under such systems, individuals are encouraged not to think to much for themselves. Such systems encourage total obedience, cohesion, and efficiency; they are geared to obtaining, harnessing, and maintaining power in order to fulfill the mission, a mission which may be either philanthropic or commercial. Such groups, which have become a kind of basic unit in our society, insist more on belong, cohesion, and the unity of the group than on the growth of individual members to inner freedom or service to others. Those who leave are seen as unfaithful; those who question authority, as rebels.

The most extreme example, perhaps, of closed groups, are what we call sects. Sects are initially seductive and attractive to very lonely and insecure people but, once they surrender their personal freedom and conscience, such people suffer terrible fear of leaving the group. Outside they could fall into even greater loneliness, insecurity, and anguish.

I bring up sects because, whole most of us abhor the more extreme and obvious manifestations of sects, we can be blind to the innocuous sects that are a part of our society. Our places of work, for example, can become like sects, where we have to sacrifice our personal consciences in order to keep our jobs, have a good salary, gain a measure of security. We need to be vigilant in any situation where it is necessary to obey blindly. Rigidity, a demand for ideological conformity within the group, is rarely necessary; it is not, I think, the sign of a healthy group. Not only that, but the price that we pay, as a society, in the repression of individual growth and the denigration of individual creativity, is too high.