antipattern

I live in bedroom community in Silicon Valley. It is quite lively but really not much happens here. Little crime, not much to report really.

My home owners association is probably much like the most. We try to keep things going but in in reality running the place is a bit of a burden, and most folks have too much going on to seriously pay attention to what needs to be done. Some folks do volunteer on the HOA and do get things done but slowly.

I have sporadic spurts of community spirit. Every now and then I have a movie night on our community lawn, where we get together and watch a fun movie we pick together. Some of my neighbors show up regularly, and we have a lot of fun. I show funny cartoons beforehand, sometimes we have a fire going with marshmallows and crackers and sometimes we dance a bit. Over the years I've been adding more fun activities, like corn hole games and a good sound system.

It is a lot of work and it takes a lot of time to prepare for the event and clean up afterwards.

But it is rewarding. I get neighbors asking me when the next movie night is going to be – its a lot of fun and I enjoy organizing it.

But even though we do make an effort to include all of our neighbors, we find that many people don't show up and participate. Everyone has their own life, and you can't expect too much. That's life I guess.

A recent event I organized for a 4th of July party was particularly badly attended. So I start wondering how to get more community folks involved.

Community starts somewhere. It is a feeling that is hard to pin down. How do you get people to attend?

Clearly just having a movie night was not enough. People don't really know and trust each other, so it was clearly a bit of optimistic thinking on our part.

The idea of a community library was suggested to me. You know those little bookshelves you sometimes see in well-to-do neighborhoods.

I thought it might be easiest to start with a simple implementation. A community book basket, just hanging from a tree with some books in it.

So I spent a 30 minutes creating one, with a small note with “the rules” – take a book and leave one – plus a few of my favorite books that I most likely won't read again. I added a note that maybe people could contribute some money to get a real book shelf made out of wood etc.

So what happened?

I can't believe it myself.

Literally within a few hours the whole book basket was STOLEN.

Gone. Less than three hours passed since I hung it up.

This was just a pretty nice basket with a bunch of books in it. Mostly on esoteric topics of philosophy and the climate crisis.

WTF? How do you explain that? Is my little community that fucked up?

It is a fucking book basket for Christ sake.

I can't explain it. It just boggles the mind.

What should I think of humanity?

Do you just give up?

What is wrong here?