"Community, of course, has fallen on hard times in the modern world. First, all modern people live with a greatly weakened sense of community compared with traditional people - due to modern travel, modern mobility, modern media, modern work and lifestyles, and the saturation of modern relationships.
To be sure, our nostalgia - literally homesickness - for a lost world tempts us to romanticize community in the traditional world. Doubtless it was often rigid and claustrophobic rather that liberating. To be sure too the benefits of the modern world are staggering. But there is a huge cost in the shift from involuntary community to voluntary groupings. An no amount of talk of 'virtual community' can overlook the fact that communication that is person-to-person but not face-to-face amounts to a severe loss. The plain fact is that for most modern people, community is either a rare experience or a distant, even mocking, ideal."
What book is that from?
ReplyDeleteI'm reading a book on a similar topic called "The Wisdom of Stability" by Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove.
You should check it out. I think you would like it.