Man, this piece ends with an ouch. I feel this tension between convenience and feeling untethered regularly, and sometimes I find I make decision to purposely be a Luddite and sometimes I give in and try to take in the firehose that is modern life. There's just so much stuff to enjoy (and much of it worthwhile, though obviously much that's not)!
This plays out a little differently in rural communities like the one I live in. Folks are still interconnected and more and more are being disconnected from each other, but currently there's still an okay sense of community. I'm finding that it's shrinking, though, and mostly is made up of family (if your family lives around you) or people that might as well be family because you've known them forever. There are also tribes that pop up with non-family members (usually around kids/school/sports), but I don't find them as close as they were in the past. In most cases, I know a lot less about my neighbors (the ones that aren't family) if I know them at all - there's a lot less porch/yard culture than I remember growing up.
I find I am always dancing with the tools and perspectives of modernity to strike a balance between what it gives and what modernity takes. Andy Crouch's The Tech-Wise Family has a great perspective on this as it pertains to our use of technological devices.
I hear you about it playing out differently in rural communities. I set this post on among strangers on a train for a reason. I wanted to highlight certain aspects of life that we all accept as normal, but are actually a sign that important ground has been lost in terms of our communal lives together. Modernity takes different forms in rural and urban contexts, but I wonder if it amounts to a real difference? Going with the flow of life in both settings will get you to a similar place. If you want to mount a real resistance to the dehumanizing forces within modernity, you have to swim upstream. That resistance will also have differences in rural and urban contexts, but, I would argue, would largely need to look similar.
Man, this piece ends with an ouch. I feel this tension between convenience and feeling untethered regularly, and sometimes I find I make decision to purposely be a Luddite and sometimes I give in and try to take in the firehose that is modern life. There's just so much stuff to enjoy (and much of it worthwhile, though obviously much that's not)!
This plays out a little differently in rural communities like the one I live in. Folks are still interconnected and more and more are being disconnected from each other, but currently there's still an okay sense of community. I'm finding that it's shrinking, though, and mostly is made up of family (if your family lives around you) or people that might as well be family because you've known them forever. There are also tribes that pop up with non-family members (usually around kids/school/sports), but I don't find them as close as they were in the past. In most cases, I know a lot less about my neighbors (the ones that aren't family) if I know them at all - there's a lot less porch/yard culture than I remember growing up.
I find I am always dancing with the tools and perspectives of modernity to strike a balance between what it gives and what modernity takes. Andy Crouch's The Tech-Wise Family has a great perspective on this as it pertains to our use of technological devices.
I hear you about it playing out differently in rural communities. I set this post on among strangers on a train for a reason. I wanted to highlight certain aspects of life that we all accept as normal, but are actually a sign that important ground has been lost in terms of our communal lives together. Modernity takes different forms in rural and urban contexts, but I wonder if it amounts to a real difference? Going with the flow of life in both settings will get you to a similar place. If you want to mount a real resistance to the dehumanizing forces within modernity, you have to swim upstream. That resistance will also have differences in rural and urban contexts, but, I would argue, would largely need to look similar.