Principle 7

A New Agrarian embraces "neighborliness" as a practical and informal balance between individualism and communitarianism.

"You never have to bother to get people to help you move," according to an old Pennsylvania Dutch saying. "If you were a good neighbor, they were always happy to help. If you were a bad neighbor, they help to be rid of you."
      New Agrarians recognize the need to help and be helped by their fellow human beings, but they may not necessarily be happy about it. They are inclined to individualism, to crankiness, to going their own way. As a result they reject overly communitarian notions of society or government—and anyone else who thinks to tell them what to do. This has often been a tendency among farmers, particularly in the United States; but among New Agrarians it is even stronger, because they are dissenters, minority voices insisting that their society is misguided but that they know the way.
      Yet committed agrarians must see the need for some glue to hold a community together (see principle 5). In place of welfare or charity the agrarian substitutes neighborliness, an informal willingness to help someone in need with the unspoken assumption that help will be received in the future. In an agrarian context, time and not money is the common currency, and gifts of work not of cash are the basis of neighborliness.
      There is no quid pro quo in neighborliness, no careful accounting of debits and credits in a ledger of favors; neighborliness is informal, voluntary, enforced only by community disapproval and, perhaps, by karma. Such a system is easily abused and requires great care to maintain. At its best, however, it creates a practical and flexible balance between the needs of the individual and the needs of the community. And being voluntary as well as necessary, it fosters a bond among members of a community that is both economic and spiritual.

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