Careless Society

The Careless Society: Community and Its Counterfeits by John McKnight, 179 pages

In this book, McKnight takes on a social service establishment that "converts citizens to clients", spawning "sick-producing medicine, stupidifying education, and criminalizing justice".  He describes a decline in the reality of care through increased professionalization, which necessarily puts distance between helper and helped in the name of objectivity.  The professional helper becomes a technician, secure in his expertise, ready to "fix" the client's "problems".  Simultaneously, and most disastrously, the presence of professional help discourages unprofessional, neighborly assistance.  The result is a mass of buffered, dependent individuals rather than a real community, which only exacerbates problems which, in turn, require more professional "help" to combat.

This short book follows in the tradition of Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful, half reasoned discussion and half angry challenge.  McKnight's belief in local creativity as the best source for local solutions necessarily limits the amount of concrete positive advice he can offer.  It shines, however, as a step towards identifying the problems that sometimes lie behind even sincere promises.