> I'm also a little confused as to the notion of people desiring independence from community. While I know many people that desired independence from local community microcosms, such as church, small rural towns, or disagreeable family, many of those people still want community.
Right I think the author correctly identifies some of the causes and contours of the decline of certain traditional community modes, but she has a massive blindspot for new models of community that have IMO risen in the last decades. For people in my milleu "found family" or other forms of less-local but equally-supportive community have become very popular.
She says:
> But there is a trade off. At a societal level, we can be rich, or we can be communitarian. I don’t think we can be both – at least, not for long.
But this seems too clean to me. I see the dynamic she's pointing out, but her account is only one strand in a larger cultural pattern.
> But there is a trade off. At a societal level, we can be rich, or we can be communitarian. I don’t think we can be both – at least, not for long.
This in particularly strikes me as something I’d expect from a certain Jordan Balthazar Peterson: he often frames things like wealth inequality or patriarchy as immovable hierarchies; pitting left and right, rich and poor, gay and straight, as dichotomies that cannot coexist for long without one (guess which one) eventually becoming the dominant.
It’s a very defeatist attitude, and suggests “but what can be done?” and rarely offers solutions beyond sticking with the status quo. I think it’s absolutely possible to be rich and communitarian.
Right I think the author correctly identifies some of the causes and contours of the decline of certain traditional community modes, but she has a massive blindspot for new models of community that have IMO risen in the last decades. For people in my milleu "found family" or other forms of less-local but equally-supportive community have become very popular.
She says:
> But there is a trade off. At a societal level, we can be rich, or we can be communitarian. I don’t think we can be both – at least, not for long.
But this seems too clean to me. I see the dynamic she's pointing out, but her account is only one strand in a larger cultural pattern.