Transitioning Somerville

Many foolish myths are woven through the popular culture that saturates our every waking hour: The future will be richer than the present. This ever-growing wealth will trickle down to uplift the poor. The things we buy will make us as happy as the people in television commercials seem to be, and if they don’t, there must be something wrong with us. Our rugged individualism makes cooperating with neighbors and resolving our conflicts unnecessary.

Yet our own history reveals these myths to be lies that serve the consumption-driven economy that has produced our deepening national distress. My parents suffered during the Great Depression. They knew that things are not always better for the next generation.

Contradicting the myth of individualism, older Somervillians speak wistfully about times when people took the streetcar to local, family-supporting jobs; times when neighbors intervened swiftly to help those devastated by tragedy, rather than sending them to three different agencies for three different “services;” when they sat on their front stoops, visited with each other, and made their own entertainment rather than buying video games.

Contradicting the myth of individualism, older Somervillians speak wistfully about times when neighbors intervened swiftly to help those devastated by tragedy rather than sending them to three different agencies for three different “services;” about times when people took the streetcar to local, family-supporting jobs; about when they sat on their front stoops, visited with each other, and made their own entertainment rather than buying video games.

The Somerville News