Conclusion: What’s Next?

Chaos and Community Plans: Spring 2004

            As I said in the winter quarter reflection, I have several more questions now than I did at the beginning of the term. Granted they are different questions, so I suppose I have progressed. But given the autonomy and infinite free time, there are a few things I would be curious to explore in more depth.

            We have entered into a lot of ethical and moral issues within the last few weeks. Many things were addressed about controversial topics ranging from Aids and gay rights, to Jewish death camps and racial discrimination/supremacy. I wonder how the theories we have constructed to define and analyze communities would hold up if the subject were moved to non-political communities. On a smaller scale, how do people interact one with another? How do neighborhood and city governments deal with these types of issues within their own sphere of influence? Does one community have the power to influence one or more other communities to follow its lead concerning communal interaction?

            I would also like to study a few instances of human intervention having survived through a crisis in the community. It would appear that many of the problems we face in communities today are self-inflicted. Unfortunately, it is not always us as members of society that resolve altercations of such magnitude. England didn’t overcome the plague, they just outlasted it. Sheer numbers meant there were more humans than parasites. The Jews and Germans could not settle their differences in the decades proceeding and postdating World War II. Instead it took a war to stop the two from their atrocities. Even the genocide of Rwanda has not completely terminated the racial rivalry in that country. To be completely subjective and unbiased, If the genocide had succeeded and all the Tutsis were massacred, would there be more order in Rwanda ? With no one to fight against, what would become of that unity that drove them to perform so many murders in the name of king and country?

            It’s these types of what ifs that I find myself studying in circles over and over. And they may or may not have precedent and answers that I’m not aware of. These loose ends I intend to be tied up during the next quarter.

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