It's time for less spending and more giving
By Denis Moriarty, Group Managing Director, Our Community
It used to be so simple: your neighbourhood was your village, that tiny clear patch in the wilderness where people knew your name, your family, and your worth. Then cities came along, and things got fraught.
What is a neighbourhood now? And who, now, is our neighbour? Back in the day, Jesus came up with the parable of the good Samaritan, in which the answer is 'the person who's willing to pitch in and help those who need it'. In our time, that'd be the not-for-profit volunteer.
Back then, mind, they didn't have advertising to speak of. And what advertising does is to encrust everything you can see, and most of the things you can't, with brand names, prices, and transactionalism until the underlying altruistic impulse becomes overlaid and forgotten.
That's why Christmas is generally so unsatisfying. A cheerful feast with the family has been switched in front of our eyes for a pointless spending competition. We're all with greater or less enthusiasm indulging in paroxysms of generally misdirected spending, peaking with the exchange under the tree of a large number of items which long experience has told us do not make us happy.
Kicking the cash out of Christmas would be quite an exercise, mind you, and we probably need to warm up to it gradually. We could begin by trying harder to see the underlying altruism that's around us all the time, making things happen and pushing against dog-eat-dog everyone-for-themselves I'm-all-right-Jack commercialism. The cash nexus doesn't have to be the baseline assumption.
At Our Community House, it's remarkable how fast the users are building neighbourhood spirit - bringing in marmalade for the communal dining-room, for example, and collecting breadbag ties for recycling, and using the free library. It's sensitised me to the ways our environments build or displace community spirit.
One of our tenants is Wise Employment, which finds jobs for people with disability, very successfully. Each month it places more than 750 people with disability into employment. In the lobby, we drink not-for-profit coffee from The Mission Caters. Our Community itself, by the way, isn't a not-for-profit - we're a social enterprise, which lets us progress the general good without having to shoehorn our operations into the poorly fitting and archaic formwork of Australian charities law.
Our Community's Denis Moriarty
One of the reasons why community solidarity is hard to pick out from the background signage is that it's nobody's job to compile a list of community-building organisations. If you want to know who's doing what in your local area, where do you look? Your local government website will have a community directory; that's a start. It's not exhaustive, though, and social enterprises still miss out. In this country, charities employ about one worker in every ten, but if you want to see not-for-profits at work in your community you've still got to keep your eyes open.
Now's a good time to start looking, though, what with Christmas and all. The Australian Retailers Association says we'll spend about $7.3 billion online over peak present season, enough to buy nearly half a Gina Rinehart. Do the people you love really want another jokey pair of socks? Let's face it, the word 'gift', as in 'gift shop', means 'something you wouldn't in a pink fit want to own yourself'.
Wouldn't your friends and family prefer you to spread the load around a little, to make a gift on their behalf to people who have less and aren't quite as overwhelmed by excess?
Not-for-profits are the glue that holds society together. Money actually isn't everything. Sometimes we need to pull back the curtain and find the human feelings it's concealing. Christmas isn't a bad place to start.
Still set on buying gifts this Christmas? Make it a gift that gives twice. For a range of gift ideas that support not-for-profits and social enterprises - and the people they help - check out the Our Community Christmas Gift Guide.
What Our Community thinks about other big issues
This commentary also appeared as part of a monthly column that's published in 160 rural and regional titles across Australia, from daily newspapers such as the Bendigo Advertiser and the Illwawarra Mercury, to weekly publications such as the Goulburn Post, the Cootamundra Herald and the Jimboomba Times.
We're proud to take a stand on progressive issues, which we're able to do as a social enterprise that's not tied to the purse strings of any government or corporate organisation.
Here's a taste of some other recent commentaries as they've appeared in some of those publications, as well as our own.
November 2019: The Joy of Giving - on Tuesday
October 2019: Ignoring the data is an invitation to disaster
September 2019: What is the Catholic Church teaching us about love?
August 2019: The Uluru statement: Why it’s time for the Commonwealth to show some heart
July 2019: Why homelessness is worth this gamble
June 2019: After election, life and advocacy must go on
May 2019: Pokies reliance is a risk to RSLs
April 2019: Kids are teaching us the power of protest
March 2019: Work-life balance pulls us in three directions
Feb 2019: Australia Day honours: Why being rewarded for doing your job is un-Australian
Jan 2019: Why 2019 gives me reason for optimism
December 2018: It’s time to stop blaming pollies and start getting active
November 2018: Community connection is an antidote to loneliness
September 2018: Good culture is the key to good communities
August 2018: Drought sees groups suffering in a sunburnt country
July 2018: Thai cave rescue shows that community bonds are our best insurance