A Commitment To One Place Enriches Community & Democracy
A Commitment to One Place Enriches Community & Democracy
Gary Snyder, writer - poet
‘Wild Earth’
What holds people together long enough to discover their power as citizens is their common inhabiting of a single place. Being so placed, people volunteer for community projects, join committees, serve and accept appointments. Good minds make notable contributions to the neighborhood if they are allowed to stay put.
One can learn and live deeply in the natural systems of any sort of neighborhood -from the big city to a farm. The birds are migrating, the wild plants are looking for a way to slip in, the insects live an untrammeled life, the raccoons are padding the crosswalks at 2 a.m., and the trees in the commercial nurseries are trying to figure out who they are.
Such a non-nationalistic idea of community, in which commitment of pure place is paramount, cannot be ethnic or racist. This sort of community is available to anyone who makes the choice, regardless of their background. People need not drop their Buddhist, Sikh, Jewish or Lutheran beliefs, but simply add to their spiritual faith or philosophy an acknowledgment of the deep value of the natural world. A commitment to place is not just good environmentalism, not just a move towards resolving social and economic problems, but also a means for us to become good citizens in both the natural and the social worlds.
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"I believe that human creative capacity is the real engine of progress and that the society that is most successful in helping its people - all its people - realize their creative potential is the society that will progress the fastest. In the economics, another name for that creativity is entrepreneurship. In psychology, achievement captures the same idea. Excellence is yet another formulation."
Lawrence E. Harrison
Who Prospers -
How Cultural Values Shape Economic & Political Success