I talk a lot about communitarian ideas on this blog; I think that would have surprised the 2003 version of myself. Maybe not.
At any rate, if I am to go on talking in such a fashion, I ought at least to give some tolerable definitions of what I mean. Now, I don't wholly endorse really any of these definitions; but each one contains what I consider a good starting point. The first is from Kentuckian, farmer, novelist, philosopher, and activist Wendell Berry (for whom I am indebted to my good friend, one Chuzzleby, of the Hudson Valley).
At any rate, if I am to go on talking in such a fashion, I ought at least to give some tolerable definitions of what I mean. Now, I don't wholly endorse really any of these definitions; but each one contains what I consider a good starting point. The first is from Kentuckian, farmer, novelist, philosopher, and activist Wendell Berry (for whom I am indebted to my good friend, one Chuzzleby, of the Hudson Valley).
Berry writes:
"The indispensable form that can intervene between public and private interests is that of community. The concerns of public and private, republic and citizen, necessary as they are, are not adequate for the shaping of human life. Community alone, as principle and as fact, can raise the standards of local health (ecological, economic, social, and spiritual) without which the other two interests will destroy one another.
"The indispensable form that can intervene between public and private interests is that of community. The concerns of public and private, republic and citizen, necessary as they are, are not adequate for the shaping of human life. Community alone, as principle and as fact, can raise the standards of local health (ecological, economic, social, and spiritual) without which the other two interests will destroy one another.
By community, I mean the commonwealth and common interests, commonly understood, of people living together in a place and wishing to continue to do so. To put it another way, community is a locally understood interdependence of local people, local culture, local economy, and local nature. (Community, of course, is an idea that can extend itself beyond the local, but it only does so metaphorically. The idea of a national or global community is meaningless apart from the realization of local communities). Lacking the interest of or in such a community, private life becomes merely a sort of reserve in which individuals defend their 'right' to act as they please and attempt to limit or destroy the 'rights' of other individuals to act as they please."
(Wendell Berry, "Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community", p. 120, in Berry, W., Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, Pantheon Books, 1992).
Berry reminds me of the fact, that, most viscerally, I feel "at home" in the place I have -- not always, but for most of my life -- lived. It feels right, the way your own parents' home smells right, when people don't pronounce most of their "r"s, when they use the long flat nasal vowels of New England, so that "orange" and "foreign" become "awwrunge" and "fawrin'", "worry" is pronounced "wuhrry", "four" and "sure" become "fow-ah" and "show-ah".
But I do wonder where this leaves not only national and global communities, but even regional ones -- my own New England, or Berry's own Bluegrass Country, Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta? Much to think about here.
But what Berry gets truly, absolutely, just spot-on correct is his assessment of where our neoliberals leave us when they have at last realized their mad dream: that "there is no such thing as society" (Maggie T). Berry describes Paul Ryan's and Mittens Romney's vision of the country perfectly when he writes that, in the absence of "interest ... in such a community, private life becomes merely a sort of reserve in which individuals defend their 'right' to act as they please and attempt to limit or destroy the 'rights' of other individuals to act as they please."
Against all this, we are still, as the Mayflower Compact held, "a civil body politick"; and that which was wrought over centuries shall not be undone by corrupt Reaganists in the space of decades.
But I do wonder where this leaves not only national and global communities, but even regional ones -- my own New England, or Berry's own Bluegrass Country, Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta? Much to think about here.
But what Berry gets truly, absolutely, just spot-on correct is his assessment of where our neoliberals leave us when they have at last realized their mad dream: that "there is no such thing as society" (Maggie T). Berry describes Paul Ryan's and Mittens Romney's vision of the country perfectly when he writes that, in the absence of "interest ... in such a community, private life becomes merely a sort of reserve in which individuals defend their 'right' to act as they please and attempt to limit or destroy the 'rights' of other individuals to act as they please."
Against all this, we are still, as the Mayflower Compact held, "a civil body politick"; and that which was wrought over centuries shall not be undone by corrupt Reaganists in the space of decades.
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