The rootlessness of modern industrialized culture is something I see as very much an artifact of the endless-growth economic model. And while giving various benefits to some individuals, it has had a deeply destructive impact on people, communities, cultures, ecosystems, and biosphere.
Here are two books. One of which has become very popular in recent years so you may have read it. The other one may not be as familiar but you may also have read that one.
Two books. One published in 1972; the other in 2001. Very much overlapping themes.
1) A Nation of Strangers, by Vance Packard. Published 1972.
2) Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community, by Robert Putnam. Published 2001.
I found the older book while shopping in my public library’s bookstore the other day to replenish my Little Free Library. Putnam’s book I read a couple years back. Good stuff.
I like how Packard sums up his idea of what an authentic community is:
“My own view is that an authentic community is a social network of people of various kinds, ranks, and ages who encounter each other on the streets, in the stores, at sports parks, at communal gatherings. A good deal of personal interaction occurs. There are elected leaders or spokesman whom almost all the people know at least by reputation. Some may not like their community but all recognize it as a special place with an ongoing character. It has a central core and well-understood limits. Most members base most of their daily activities in or near the community. And most are interested in cooperating to make it a place they can be proud of.”
Packard’s description very much squares with what I have found in my adopted hometown of Daytona Beach, Florida, USA. I have experienced glimpses of it in previous places where I lived, but more of it here than anywhere else before.
Another quote that grabbed me came from a novel I read yesterday, that I had purchased for my LittleFreeLibrary. The novel is Fishing in the Yemen, by Paul Torday. (The Yemeni Sheikh is speaking to the British protagonist, a mild-mannered fisheries scientist):
“‘This house was first built in the year 942 according to your calendar, and in the year 320 according to ours, and my family have lived here ever since, here and in Sana’a. It always interests me when European people come here, that they have no idea how old our civilisation is. Do you not think we have learned how to live and conduct our lives according to God, in that time? That is why some of our people hate the West so much. They wonder what the West has to offer that is so compelling that it must be imposed upon us, replacing our religion of God with the religion of money, replacing our piety and our poverty with consumer goods that we do not need, forcing money upon us that we cannot spend or if we do, cannot repay, loosening the ties that hold together families and tribes, corroding our faith, corroding our morality.'”
Mic drop. If that doesn’t just say it all.