Local Community

Americans used to live within “place-based networks” of clubs, churches, schools, commerce, and recreation that overlapped, wrapping individuals in social support. Local networks protected individuals from isolation and loneliness.

Those networks have largely disappeared, replaced by networks based outside the local community. We shop and interact... See more

Instead of firing off salvos on social media, find a local problem you’d like to work with other people to help solve. Like most communities, we need trails cleared, litter picked up, funds raised for cheerleading teams and brass bands and animal shelters. In my community, we have programs where residents help elderly neighbors get to medical... See more

There are four systems in a community: one is the family system, one is the business and nonprofit system, one is the faith system, and the other is the school and government system. When those systems are working together well, you have a healthy, cohesive culture.

The first thing is shrinking the service area. We serve four neighborhoods — about 8,000 to 12,000 people. If you have too big of a service area, you can't cover it effectively. We ensure that everybody gets access. Access is a big deal. We're aggressively pursuing clients, versus waiting for them to come to us. Some people don't know how to ask... See more

also think we need to learn to enjoy locality. Culture emerges from the connections between people, and I believe these are always strongest in person. Face-to-face cultural engagement is necessarily participatory, online cultural engagement rarely is. Nearly all of my most fulfilling and exciting experiences, those that have made me feel part of a

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So yes, Americans are materially wealthy and unfulfilled, and the primary problem is cultural—we’ve sacrificed community and meaning to emphasize an archetype built on acquiring as much stuff as possible, but then we have made that unnecessarily hard to do. When you give your citizens a cultural script, built on the material, that promises hard... See more