There’s a Way Out of Our Global Desert : Los Angeles: Just five hours a month helping others would be a big step toward rebuilding and reuniting.

People who predict we will soon live in a global village should cross their fingers and pray that they are wrong.

Years ago I lived in a small jungle village as a Peace Corps volunteer. It was a beautiful little place, nothing more than two streets that twisted and meandered along the bank of a river.

At one end was a store and cacao shed owned by Carlos Ruiz; at the other end, about a mile away, was another store, sort of a combination restaurant, dance hall and convenience store owned by Dona Melba Munoz.

Dona Melba was 60 years old when I met her and had never set foot at the other end of the village. She knew Ruiz only by reputation (which apparently suffered as it traveled the mile up river) and had never spent the night away from the village. Because of a recently purchased television set, she did know, however, the names of all the sons on “Bonanza,” and that I looked like Dick Van Dyke.

Whenever I hear the mention of a global village, I think, my God, they’re probably right, and we’re in danger of becoming Dona Melba.

The metaphor of global village for Southern California, at least, is not very apt. We live in a global desert, dotted with nomadic tribes who sit huddled, frightened and suspicious around a campfire with a fax machine and a cellular phone.

Most of us in Los Angeles rub shoulders, but never touch. Curiously, every technological innovation in communications provides us the tools to enhance our isolation. We buy computers, modems and fax machines, and many of us find we don’t actually have to physically come to the office any more. We order flowers, books, clothes and food by phone, chatting with a dislocated voice in a home (or prison) hundreds or thousands of miles away.

VCRs and cable television mean we don’t have to go to the movies any more. Narrow-casting radio and cable allow us to hear only country music or ‘60s music or religious music or ‘60s country/religious music. We can watch nothing but sports or stand-up comics or the weather, or we can become latter-day Dona Melbas, freezing ourselves both in time and space with daily doses of “Bonanza” and Dick Van Dyke.

Even as we’re doing this, there’s a gnawing feeling that something is wrong. We try to make our isolation chic by calling it cocooning, but it’s not working. We don’t understand the people at the other campfires, and we are afraid.

Poet Octavio Paz understood our isolation and our deep desire to break free of it when he wrote that isolation is “a wound that never heals. It is the unfathomable depth of every man; all our ventures and exploits, all our acts and dreams are bridges designed to overcome the separation and reunite us with the world and our fellow beings.”

We know we’ll never be reunited by clicking our TV remote. We’ll never touch another heart by downlinking with it. We’ll never know how our neighbor feels by having those feelings filtered through Geraldo’s microphone.

But here’s what we can do. Join me in a venture called Our Village Cares. This venture has no office, no staff, no phones, no letterhead. What it has is a premise. You and I silently pledge to spend at least five hours every month volunteering our time to help others. We do this not by sending a check or making calls out of our home. We promise to stand arm in arm with someone else, someone from another campfire, and work together for a common purpose. Five hours a month, that’s all.

Rebuilding Los Angeles is a good idea. Reuniting it is even better. I’m going to get up and start walking to the other end of the village. Will you come with me or meet me there?