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Sometimes you only see the true character of a place when disaster strikes. One thinks of London in the blitz, or New York after 9/11. Or Glasgow this weekend, after a police helicopter smashed into a city centre pub killing at least nine people and injuring many more.
What everybody has remarked upon in the latter case is the amazing way the local community responded to the tragedy, not only in facing the immediate danger with extraordinary courage but in bringing aid and comfort to the victims.
That is not to ignore the outstanding heroism and dedication of the emergency services. But they train specifically for such things. Ordinary people do not.
Disasters present communities with a crucial test of their resilience and their underlying values. As with more everyday examples, what really takes the strain and prevents a tear in the social fabric is what we sometimes call the voluntary sector but whose better name, in my view, is civil society. This is what helps communities stick together in a crisis.
The National Council for Voluntary Organisations, NCVO, has itself adopted that more modern term, civil society, to emphasise that this area of national life is just as important as, or in certain respects even more important than, either the State or the private sector.
Trying to estimate the cash value of what goes on in civil society is not the measure of its importance. But that reservation aside, in a week when there will be much talk about the size of the Gross Domestic Product it's worth remembering that the total contribution of the voluntary sector to the national economy, including unpaid work, has been estimated at about the same as the entire UK defence budget.
Civil society includes trades unions and political parties, so it's vital to democracy. It also includes a lot of what goes on inside families, which are at its very bedrock but whose economic contribution is incalculable. As is also the case with churches, temples, mosques and synagogues. Many of the institutions of civil society have, or have had, a religious basis, and the emphasis that religions put on the importance of community provides a lot of the social cement that civil society needs, to stay healthy or cope with the unexpected.
So whether religious or secular, there is a crucial moral element in building up this social capital. Civil society relies on concepts like serving the common good, loving your neighbour as yourself, doing as you would be done by, or just plain old "making a contribution". That's the very opposite of "everyman for himself and the devil take the hindmost." Civil society in Glasgow faced a severe test on Friday night and passed it, magnificently. It's a strong community spirit like that, not the latest GDP figure, which keeps us human.