Anti-Social Architecture

When I was still in high school, one of my best friends had a dog named Wolf.  He was a Keeshond and really looked like a wolf and my sister Lisa just loved him.  To make matters worse my friend was moving from a house into an apartment and couldn't take Wolf with him and so Wolf needed to find a new home.  Depending on your perspective on medium sized incredibly furry dogs his new home being my home might be considered good or bad.  Lisa was happy and he was a pretty cool dog, but medium sized has only to do with body structure and not size of poop pile! 

It wasn't too long after Wolf moved to his new residence that I began to develop a real aversion to privacy fences, because not too long after Wolf came our first ever privacy fence.  I would like to tell you that the reason I hated it was because we didn't see our neighbors as much, but the real truth was that it confined Wolf to one area and whenever I mowed I had a massive quantity of large sized poop piles from a medium sized dog to navigate.  All joking aside, looking  back it did begin to create a social barrier that we had never known before. 

When we lived in Springfield, Virginia we had a big backyard in a large suburban neighborhood and nobody had fences.  As kids we would play football, soccer, baseball and have massive BB gun fights because the lack of fences created much larger playing areas.  Our parents would have conversations in back yards with neighbors and I can remember lots of cookouts and knowing just about everyone on our block.  I can still name you a bunch of families, the Pedersons, the Dedhams, the Mohlers; but time has let other names slip.  What I can say with certainty is that we knew the people in the house behind us, oh yeah they were the Singers, for a couple of houses on either side of us, and four or five of the houses across the street from us.  Were there social barriers then?  Yes, black and white, boy and girl, civilian and military, divorced and married, drinkers and non drinkers, but all of those were able to be overcome, even if it did create some awkward moments.  What there wasn't is architecture that created social barriers.

In Lake Charles the fence began to change things.  When we moved into the house there was a privacy fence on the house behind us, so the back of our yard had a fence, but the yard was open on both sides.  The Sims lived on one side of us and Beth's family lived on the other.  Our families would talk and interact.  I can remember Beth's dad getting a load of wood and a log splitter one weekend and dad and I spent the day helping him split wood and play with a very cool and manly toy.  On a side note there are a few things every man needs in his masculinity tool box, the first without challenge is a chainsaw, the second should be a Bobcat, but the third I'm thinking should definitely be a log splitter.  Okay back to architecture.  We didn't plan the day as a helping project we were just out and talking and decided to spontaneously help, after all that is what neighbors do, or did back then.  Whether it was raking, or mowing or having a crawfish boil, we were part of each others lives because we were on display to each other and it just didn't seem right to exclude.

One spring the Sims decided to get an above ground pool and there insurance company told them they had to have a privacy fence.  I don't remember which came first the pool install or the fence install, but I do remember them running a hose from our house over the fence to fill it.  I don't recall hundreds of hours spent swimming in the Sims' pool with them.  The fence immediately began to change our relationship with them, but we still had Beth's family on the other side.  It wasn't too long after the pool that Wolf came and since the bulk of our backyard was already fenced by other people's fences the logical choice to keep Wolf from wandering was to finish it off.  I don't remember any spontaneous wood splitting Saturdays after that.  What was a simple architectural solution to a wandering dog problem became a monumental social barrier.

In 1988 mom and dad moved to Mandeville, just north of New Orleans, and the house had a privacy fence before they ever bought it.  I can't tell you the names of any neighbors.  In 1995, they moved back to Lake Charles to the house they were building on their ten acres of land.  On this road an old family farm was divided up into ten acre lots and due to the size there are horse fences but no privacy fences.  Wouldn't you know it that we know the neighbors.  The Nabours are their neighbors on one side, the Davies on the other.  Across from them are the river boat pilot and the fellow who lost over a hundred trees in Hurricane Rita whose name I can't recall.  No social architecture to cause barriers and the neighbors all know each other and help each other.  If mom and dad are traveling to see the twins, a stranger better not pull into their driveway because Pat Davies is going to be out there confronting them from her Gator lickity split.  Funny how something so simple could cause such a social impact.

I hate privacy fences today with a passion for all of the reasons I just described and none of the dog defecating issues that created the earlier aversion.  It makes me sad to see what our world is becoming.  At Bible study last night, Maxine who is a Mary Kay consultant commented how the most difficult sales objection to overcome for them now is "I don't have any friends," but if you think about it through architecture we have engineered ourselves into social isolation.  No longer do we have front porches to sit on in the evening and visit with the neighbors as they walk past.  No longer do we have carports or detached garages, we have a two car garage connected to the house that we can pull into our castle, shut the gate behind and walk into our abode without anyone ever speaking to us.  Add to those two changes privacy fences and we now have an existence where we can live our entire lives without ever knowing the people living on either side of us.  Architecture has become a self imposed social barrier and privacy fences have slowly begun to decay the fabric of our communities as we live with this false illusion that we don't need each other.

I am here to tell you that we do!  Jesus will tell you that we do!  First we need God; love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.  Second, love your neighbor as yourself.  That is hard to do through a privacy fence.  When we lived in Nicholasville while I was going to seminary we lived one house from the corner.  The corner house was owned by Ronnie and Connie Scearce.  We met in our backyard because neither of us had fences.  Over the first two years we developed a very close and supportive relationship.  Our kids played with their grand kids, Connie would play with Sarah and teach her how to "drop it like its hot," that's a dance move for those of you who don't know.  I knew their adult children and their grandchildren, I hid Christmas presents and birthday presents that I didn't want Angie or the kids to know about at their house.  I made them Cajun food, they fed me chitlins; but that all changed when the fence went up.  I didn't see much of Connie and Ronnie the last year we lived there because their front door was on a different street than ours.  We would talk occasionally, but things were just different.  The only thing that had changed was eight foot sections of cedar boards. 

This anti-social architecture is creating pockets of isolation in our societies that are creating pockets of isolation within ourselves.  We need other people, we need Jesus with flesh on, we need to know that we are not alone in this world.  Scientist want to travel to Mars, but one of the concerns of a Mars trip is social isolation for as long as that kind of trip would take, so they study it in places like Antarctica, but really they could look no further than our back yards and our social networking sites.  We were never created to be alone and isolated no matter how many fences we create.  We have an inherent need for connection with others.  Our architecture has cut us off from our neighbors which has reduced us to having very few if any intimate relationships with those around us, but that doesn't change our need for that kind of social interaction. 

While I would like to tell you that people are starting to tear down their fences and get to know their neighbors that is simply not the case.  I would be even more excited to report to you that they are turning to church to make those kind of connections in record numbers, but also not the case.  Where they are turning is social networking sites like Facebook.  Thoughts we used to share with our neighbors we now put out there for the world to see.  Things we would only tell a trusted few before we place on our wall as if it is graffiti for any passer by to see.  We have traded real relationships built in backyards and on front porches for the illusion of Internet intimacy.  No longer do we measure our friends by how many folks join us at a back yard BBQ, not we just look at this telling number on our Facebook page which tells us just how many friends we have.  It is a number by which kids start to measure each other, "how many Facebook friends do you have?  Oh, I've got a lot more than that." 

This post is getting way way way too long and I could keep rambling on.  I may pick this up tomorrow or later today, but let me finish with this.  I hope I have made a case for the negative impact of privacy fences, garages and the lack of front porches on our social lives, but equally a strong case for our need for intimate social interaction through the evidence of how we turn to social networking.  In all of that I hope you can see what a gift we have to offer people as Christians who are part of a church family.  As children of God who are part of a family that is always there for each other.  When we are sick, or hurting, or feeling lonely, or just need to talk we have numerous people from our church that we can pick up the phone and talk to, or jump in the car and go see.  The one thing we all have in common is our belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Salvation of the World.  Other than that we are like a Whitman's Sampler, lots of different candies with little in common brought together in one box.  That is the testimony of the power of Jesus Christ, that many so different can become one.  That people who are be definition self focused can become other focused.  That the very people who have spent much of their lives walking around with a tattoo on their foreheads that says, "make me feel important," can replace with a tattoo that says, "how can I make you feel important?"  The beauty of small churches is that there are no privacy fences.  When we walk through the doors we are all right there warts and all with nothing to hide behind, but the Body loves us anyway.  Let us in offering the love of Christ to people, offer the hope of intimate, trusting, joy filled, selfless relationships here on earth!

Your brother in Christ,
Faron