A friend of mine decided to shake the dust of the city off his feet last year and migrate to a more rural area. Reflecting on the move, he seemed surprised at how much he’s enjoying the change. My takeaway from our conversation was that his life was fresh and new now that he had left the problems of the city.
Having a community of reasonable people to live among wasn’t so bad either.
Not intending to stay for the long haul, they find themselves still living there—and not only surviving but thriving in their new community.
Those who move say they love the connected feeling that a small community brings. Mentioning a fall festival that Katrina helped organize, the Balls expressed their surprise at how helpful and participatory everyone was.
“‘I just went and walked down to the businesses and everyone was like, “Yeah, we’ll support you. What do you need?’” Katrina said.
James has been amazed at how much work volunteers put into the community; he says in a small town, it can be easier to get things done because you see city officials at the coffee shop, and it seems everyone in town is connected.
“The family, religious association, and local community, these, the conservatives insisted, cannot be regarded as the external products of man’s thought and behavior; they are essentially prior to the individual and are the indispensable supports of belief and conduct,” he wrote.
When such supports are gone, we shouldn’t be surprised to see individuals believe only in their own truth and behave in any depraved way they choose. Nisbet elaborates:
“Release man from the contexts of community and you get not freedom and rights but intolerable aloneness and subjection to demonic fears and passions. Society, Burke wrote in a celebrated line, is a partnership of the dead, the living, and the unborn. Mutilate the roots of society and tradition, and the result must inevitably be the isolation of a generation from its heritage, the isolation of individuals from their fellow men, and the creation of the sprawling, faceless masses.”
Americans are lost, lonely, and adrift. Almost all of us can sense that without even looking at statistics.
But is it possible that such a problem could be reversed by more Americans fleeing the cities and settling in small communities? Here, people can’t blend into the background as much; they’re a name instead of a faceless being, carried along with the crowd of good, upright folks striving to follow God, work hard, raise their family right, and support those around them with care and encouragement.
America won’t survive without turning away from the rootless and toward the rooted. If we’re serious about helping that about-face happen, perhaps it’s time to find a small community, settle down, and start the process of becoming more than a lonely automaton in a massive urban arena.
