ABSTRACT

Put more concretely, unpretentious neighbourliness is good in itself and there is real danger that a society which thinks in terms of social planning may strike at the roots of spontaneous organised neighbourliness. Much of this may be incomplete and incoherent from the national point of view, but it is spontaneous. The well-equipped municipal Neighbourhood Centre may be less civically creative and educative than three half-baked and struggling community associations, of which two die and only one lives. In this country there is a tradition of wanting to help your neighbour and of wanting to join with him for some spontaneously conceived end of service, education, selfprotection, or amusement. On the impersonal scale this want is expressed in a growing measure of socialisation. It is of the greatest importance that, along with its large development on the impersonal scale, its translation into personal terms should continue to be possible. The fact that surveys show that a very large portion of our population belongs to DO voluntary association does not in any way invalidate the importance of the voluntary association for those who do want to join their fellows in some social enterprise.