Many urban settings create conditions for community

Last week we talked about how rugged individualism can turn from ethos to idolatry, from a value to a distortion that renders us isolated and alone. Today, let's consider how true community still erupts in Las Vegas, despite our preferred image of independence and autonomy.

Here in Las Vegas, I enjoy watching people stumble into spontaneous community without having the slightest idea they have negotiated some individualism to do so. And where are those eruptions most likely to happen? In urban settings! In an ironic twist of intention, the urban renewal movements in major American cities have trumped the suburbs and reawakened the possibility of real community.

If you've ever been in or watched a mosh pit at a rock concert, you know the participants tend their own wounded in a way that belies their otherwise reckless behavior. You could wish for this much care and concern when your car is stalled at Decatur and Charleston boulevards.

At UNLV basketball games, you'll find a ton of us eschewing our fierce individualism and all wearing red. Everyone is suddenly family, as we bond around our shared contempt for NCAA officiating. I'm Arizona desert born and raised, so I knew I was family when, last month, I found myself at the Thomas & Mack Center, pulling hard for the Rebels to upset the visiting Arizona Wildcats.

The Rebels lost, and I blame it on a late-game no-call. A Wildcat stole the ball along with Curtis Terry's spleen, right arm and right lung while the ref watched, nodded and smiled. Makes me crazy.

Casinos are a virtual microcosm of the tension between individualism and community. They have games for comfortable suburbanites, such as slots or anything with a video screen. Guaranteed to isolate you. No eye contact. Just keep smoking and pushing the buttons. Or you can play live poker, the ultimate "bad suburban neighbor" game, guaranteed to estrange and antagonize, since the actual goal is to deceive and screw the other players.

But there are two games, at least, where community regularly erupts: craps, where all the players connect around their mutual, ridiculous vulnerability to the blind whimsy of the dice, and blackjack, where players must actually rely on each other to know when to let the dealer bust.

At the piano bar at New York-New York, you can find yourself singing the harmony line to Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" at the top of your lungs into the glass top of your Beck's beer microphone bare inches away from someone you've never met who is singing the lead into his Corona. OK, so you're a little buzzed, too. But there is an abiding safety that allows for shameless revelry. Music invites people to undress, be naked -- naked, that is, as in absent the armor of fierce, separate individualism.

The people who dreamed, planned, funded and then executed the renovation of Fremont Street and the wider downtown area should win the Nobel Peace Prize. The streets and sidewalks south of Charleston are about slowly sludging human beings to and fro. But in the new downtown, people don't move so much as gather. Eyes meet. Strangers talk.

The Downtown Cocktail Room and The Griffin are like no other bars in Las Vegas. They have in common a design conducive to community. A refreshing absence of gaming. Furniture designed not for privacy but for connections. There's not a stranger in the house.

I think Las Vegas is growing up, at least for Las Vegans. (Obviously tourists don't come here to grow up.) Maybe we're sick of being alone. Maybe, instinctively, we see that unexamined individualism is an idol. A bill of goods. A seduction.

I know I feel safer at midnight on Fremont Street listening to a great band than I would hanging out in front of some of our suburban elementary schools after dark. Or at the post office. Or driving on any Las Vegas surface street.

Isn't the whole point of a maturing human being the capacity to recognize cultural values that aren't valuable? To see the distortions in a distorted ethos? We end this discussion where we started.

Rugged individualism has its place -- a positive place -- in American history. But developing the capacity for mutual vulnerability and enduring intimacy is an ever so much more rugged and valuable way of life. Yes, I am an individual. But the only ruggedly individual me ultimately worth knowing is the one you will discover in mutual, reciprocal, interdependent relationship.

With you.

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling and Wellness Center in Las Vegas and the author of "Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing" (Stephens Press). His columns appear on Tuesdays and Sundays. Questions for the Asking Human Matters column or comments can be e-mailed to skalas@reviewjournal.com.