Sublime

By 1956, the sociologist William H. Whyte saw a “decline of the Protestant ethic” and the rise of “the organization man,” for whom conformity was prized over initiative.

Scott Heiferman, co-founder of Meetup, told us during a workshop, “people show up for the meetup but they come back for the people.”

Assuming Weber’s central insight to have been correct, then in the face of the dramatic transformation in the forms of contemporary capitalism, some new ethos ought to be unfolding right before our eyes.

I know of no society in which family doesn’t exist, and it carries with it obligations. It is unpredictable what sorts of families will emerge and what the obligations will be, but the purpose of the family aside from raising children, caring for the ill, and creating a division of labor is to satisfy a human hunger for companionship.

Hitherto,

The first thing to understand is that the public peace—the sidewalk and street peace—of cities is not kept primarily by the police, necessary as police are. It is kept primarily by an intricate, almost unconscious, network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves. In some city areas—olde

We find deep meaning in the act of serving.