Troubling signs that our social fabric is tearing
A decade ago, I had the privilege of serving on the Project DTO task force, a group of downtown leaders who came together to form a 10-year vision plan for downtown. I was asked to chair the Social Fabric committee, one tasked with thinking about how to make our community more relationally connective and cohesive. We said, “You can tell the strength of a community’s social fabric by the ways in which it cares for one another, including the least and the lost.”
It was hopeful and aspirational. We wanted to diminish hate and grow love, so now a decade later it makes sense to ask, “How have we done?” On the one hand, we’ve strengthened our fabric through the efforts of people like Eric Gray and The Christian Service Center, including the city’s recent $6 million commitment to upgrade the facility into a complete day center, a single place where our homeless brothers and sisters can go to find all the services they need in one location.
As helpful as that will be for many, I still see troubling signs that our social fabric is fraying, even torn. We have a state law, lobbied for by our local tourist powerhouses, that will not allow tourist-tax development dollars to be spent on the less fortunate in our community or others around the state. As a result, $740 million will be spent upgrading various venues which I wholly support. It’s needed, but not at that number while so many suffer all around us. It’s a spot where our fabric has torn, so while some at Disney and Universal have said they would support a change in that law, it’s time for action. Step up. Call your legislators. It will take time, but it’s never too late to do the right thing.
Another sign of fraying is what’s happening on the UCF campus in light of the Hamas attacks on Israel Oct. 7. Both Palestinian and Israeli students have reported increases in hatred being shown towards them, a reality that has seeped into our community at large. When I stopped to express my concern to a Jewish neighbor recently, she said, “I am so scared. We live in fear.” That should not be the case in Central Florida, so a group of leaders from every religion and every community sector have met, and I will lead, along with Archbishop Allen Wiggins, a gathering of faith leaders for the sole purpose of deeper understanding and shared friendship across all those cultural boundaries.
What has brought us here? David Brooks points out in his new book “How to Know A Person,” “As a society, we have failed to teach the skills and cultivate the inclination to treat each other with kindness, generosity and respect.” Yes, we “ought” to care for others. We ought to do more than only think of ourselves, but that’s not how we educate anymore. James Davidson Hunter, a leading scholar on education adds, “American culture is defined more by an absence…we provide children with no moral horizons beyond the self and it’s well-being.” Even more telling, the Pew Research Center asked Americans in 2018, “What gives meaning in life?” Only 7% said helping other people.
When a culture no longer inculcates a standard for moral behavior, a shared understanding of “we before me,” we tear the fabric which holds us as one. Instead, we devolve into loneliness and isolation, attributes which then create unfulfilling identity groups where the isolated go to find missing connection. In turn, that encourages the very thing now so rampant: hate. Unchecked hate becomes violence, and here we are. Google’s Ngram Viewer measures how often words are used in published books. Are we surprised that morality-related words have plummeted since 2000? Bravery is down 66%, generosity down 49%, and humbleness down 52%.
You don’t have to be a PhD sociologist to know our social fabric is tearing, but we can stop that trend. We’ve created the culture that is producing these outcomes, so the solution is to start changing that system by changing ourselves first. Don’t look at what’s wrong. Look inside yourself. We are all made in the image of God, and therefore worthy of respect and love. Let’s re-form into a community where the moral “oughts” — to love and care for others, especially the least and lost — become our way of life so that Central Florida will never be a place of hate, but one of mutual respect and love.