American Common

I am in love with the word ‘commonplace’ and I wish for more of it. In the 1950s this word slipped into the pejorative, as an antonym to ‘remarkable’ or ‘extraordinary,’ but that was never its intent. The commonplace is what we share in common and sometimes it is an actual place. The village common typically found in the center of many old New England towns is a good example. The common is where we can come together socially or politically and somehow the place holds us all together and keeps our diversity from tearing us apart.

The commonplace is also what keeps fear away from every individual doorstep. This is where we become no longer strange to one another, but familiar. In time, by instruction from our elders and from our own experience, we begin to understand our diverse eccentricities, realize where each individual is coming from; acknowledge not only their fears and concerns, but also their beliefs and hopes. We don’t mind hearing from people different than us. We may smile, shake our heads and even grimace but we would never do without each other. These diverse individuals enlarge us and we are grateful for it. This, anyway, is why I love the word. We are much closer to one another when we appreciate the commonplace.

Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery” casts the village common in a particularly bad light and with it, the commonplace. The story, and the masterful way she tells it, moves the reader’s empathy through fear away from the commonplace and toward the extraordinary. I don’t know how it is today, but in my day her tale was almost universally studied by high school and college students and, I believe, had the effect of disparaging what is common in my generation, and perhaps others.

My criticism of Ms. Jackson and her story is not intended to be disrespectful. "The Lottery" has a valid historical and psychological point of view and we benefit from reading it. Like "The Crucible" it was written during a period of American history when Americans were withdrawing into individual homes and, more and more, homes were seen in the image of a fortress. The notion of a common place in American history was being covered up by the village elders and their betrayal, packaged as patriotism, was being broadcast into these singular units we were then calling “home.”

The effect of this betrayal—known as the McCarthy hearings—was to turn the American attention away from what we held in common, toward the singularities of diversity and to baptize us in fear. It is not a coincidence that the monster Americans were told to fear was Communism—the idea of holding some things, perhaps all things in common.

Joe McCarthy and others wanted to attach an adjective to an idea and the adjective that was chosen was ‘alien.’ The idea was to proclaim an idea to be somehow foreign and its adherents, by implication, alien as well—no matter how deeply and historically American they once had been. All of this had the chilling effect of removing the citizenry from the common place, on one hand, isolating them in their individual homes and, on the other hand, creating a powerful distaste for the word ‘commonplace’ among those who were eccentric enough to hold to that idea and were now seen as foreign themselves. In time, isolated in family fortresses, Americans lost familiarity with one another and became distrustful of other voices, a nation that focused on our eccentricities rather than shared common values and interests. Exalt or damn differences, the result were the same. Americans lost interest in the commonplace. Arthur Miller and Shirley Jackson represent those artists and eccentrics who, returning the national compliment, began to view the village common with suspicion, unable any longer to distinguish congress and the media from the thoroughly American idea of the common.

In the long run, however, you cannot divorce people from ideas. History will not let you. In many small towns, the village common still exists as an American relic. Christian scripture still describes the founders of our religion as those who held all things in common. Sooner or later, people wake up to what is happening. They realize that alienation is a social and psychological process rather than a natural reality, and that their own spiritual forefathers were communists, not totalitarians, concerned with the particulars of a Christian society. When the hearts of the children are turned toward the fathers, the walls of partition crumble between the children as well. Ideas once again become less threatening and there is hope that we may yet again meet in a common place and renew our appreciation of all that is commonplace.

We need to make our towns and churches welcoming places again. We must both find and rebuild the common. That, to me, would be Zion. My church does not own it, but is a part of it. Zion is to be a people who love what is common and treasure what is not; people who reach out from their location and invite others in, wanting them to bring with them the best of their cultures, the best of their faiths, the best of their perceptions and the best of their love. It is a place that holds these things in common for the good of all. That sounds to me like the old and the new American dream.