Love's braided dance
Plus, our nation of homebodies, how individualism leads to conformity, and government's role in strengthening associational life
In a mist of light falling with the rain, I walk this ground of which dead men and women I have loved are part, as they are part of me. In earth, in blood, in mind, the dead and living into each other pass, as the living pass in and out of loves as stepping to a song. The way I go is marriage to this place, grace beyond chance, love's braided dance, covering the world.
- From “In Rain” by Wendell Berry
Forgive us: we couldn’t help but open this newsletter up with another Wendell Berry poem. That’s because one of our listens for this week, an interview with Duke Theologian Norman Wirzba on the For the Life of the World podcast, is inspired by this very poem. Taking a page out of Berry’s book, Wirzba movingly describes how the agrarian principles of interdependence, stewardship, rootedness, and thinking in “generational time” can reconnect us to hope in an age of crisis. It’s a beautiful listen, with echoes of our conversation with
from earlier this year, and we highly encourage you to check both out.Beyond Wendell and Norm, we also have several other highlights in this week’s newsletter — ranging from the social sciences, to cultural criticism, to public policy — including:
How new data from the American Time Use Survey shows America is becoming “a nation of homebodies”
Why cultural individualism fails to create independently-minded individuals
How policy can help strengthen civic infrastructure and associational life in American communities
Thanks, as always, for reading — and for being a part of what we’re building. We don’t take it for granted.
Forever dancing,
Sam + David
PS: For the hundreds of new subscribers who joined us in the last month, we post these “Curated Lists” on a monthly basis alongside our “Originals” and “Q&As.” We are always looking for good reads, listens, research, and practical examples, so feel free to send things our way as you come across them!
The Reads (& Listens)
The New York Times - “A Nation of Homebodies” by Ronda Kaysen and Alicia Parlapiano (Oct. 2024)
“Almost every part of our lives is more likely to take place at home.”
According to new research from Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at Princeton, time spent at home among Americans increased by 1 hour 39 minutes a day, or 10 percent, from 2003 through 2022. Notably, the largest shift in time spent at home was for religious and spiritual activities: 59 percent occurred at home in 2022, up from 24 percent in 2003. And, among all groups, “Those ages 15 to 34 have had the greatest increase in time at home, spending roughly two more hours there on a typical day in 2022 compared with 2003.” Reflecting on these changes, NYU Professor Niobe Way implicates our culture: “If you live in a culture that doesn’t value connection, and I mean meaningful connection … What’s the point of leaving the house?”
→ Read the full piece here and the full study here.
For The Life of the World - “Love’s Braided Dance” podcast interview with Norman Wirzba (Sept. 2024)
“Insofar as we deny the fact that we need each other, we don't put ourselves in a position to recognize the needs in others … It's not about solutions. It's not that you express your need and I can say, ‘Oh yeah, I'll take care of that’ … It's this experience of knowing that you're not alone, that you're in a context where you are going to be cared for, you'll be nurtured, and you'll be forgiven when you make mistakes means that you can carry on together. And that's often enough.”
In this moving interview, Duke Theologian and agrarian Norman Wirzba discusses his new book, Love’s Braided Dance, about finding hope in our “interwoven relatedness” during our time of crisis. This conversation truly covers so much fruitful ground — from the importance of covenant and commitment in our relationships, to the “sympathetic attunement” that emerges from being loved by a community and a land, to the recognition that we’re embedded in lifelong contexts of care that defy transactionality. As Wirzba powerfully puts it in the conversation, “The illusion that we could ever be alone or stand alone or survive alone is so dishonest about our living.” The goodness and wisdom of this interview can’t be captured in a three sentence write-up, so I highly encourage you to listen to the whole thing.
The Hedgehog Review - “Why Individualism Fails to Create Individuals” by Matthew Crawford (Oct. 2024)
“If I have to stand on my own two feet, epistemically, how can I be sure that my knowledge really is knowledge? … Tocqueville’s great observation is that the way Americans resolve the anxiety that comes from a lack of settled authority is to look around to see what their contemporaries think. The individualist turns out to be a conformist.”
In this provocative essay, author
makes the case that liberal democracies must “protect the zones of intellectual and moral formation — in particular, the family, the school and the university” through some aristocratic elements, such as rank and authority, if they are to create “citizens capable of self-governance.” This involves learning through what Michael Polanyi terms “affiliation” — that is, when the learner “entrusts herself to education within a community.” The alternative, Crawford proposes, is conformity and the potential for mob rule: we cannot be self-sufficient in our cultivation of knowledge and values, so we turn to our contemporaries for validation. To Crawford, this is how individualism — in families, in civic life, in education — paradoxically fails to create real, independently-minded individuals.The Chronicle of Philanthropy - “Can Ordinary Citizens Solve our Toughest Problems?” by George Anders (Oct. 2024)
“People want to be directly involved in decision-making. They recognize the value of expertise, but they don’t want to delegate decision-making to experts.”
Bend, OR is leveraging a novel approach to address complex local issues: the "citizens’ assembly." These citizens’ assemblies enable a diverse group of everyday people to gather, engage with, and propose solutions for pressing local challenges. Participants are selected through a process called sortition, which ensures the group reflects the community's demographics and viewpoints. They then engage in structured sessions with experts, participate in small group discussions with those directly affected by the issue, and collaborate on problem-solving. The ultimate goal is to generate recommendations for local elected officials that can lead to meaningful policy changes. Claudia Chwalisz, CEO of DemocracyNext and an advocate for assemblies worldwide, emphasizes that they “bring out the collective intelligence of society” and can “create the conditions to overcome polarization and strengthen societal cohesion.”
The Work
Government’s role in helping to strengthen America’s civic infrastructure and associational life
“The answer is more local stuff. If you participate in a local organization and you participate in local government, you might develop … a sense that you can understand your community and government and influence their direction. This stands in contrast to the way society feels right now, which is like me as an individual and then the national government, and we don’t feel embedded in any institutions in between.” - Aaron Horvath in the Connective Tissue Policy Framework (p. 70)
We’re approaching the end of the initial launch phase for the Connective Tissue Policy Framework, and we’re closing it with two events near and dear to the focus of this newsletter. The first, on 10/23, is with Main Street America and Reimagining the Civic Commons, and will focus on government’s role in revitalizing America’s civic infrastructure. The second, on 10/29, is with Stanford’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, and will explore what it will take to regenerate associational life within communities. So, in this week’s “The Work” section, we wanted to spotlight two government programs that will be featured in the launch events:
Kendal Smith, the Director of Policy for Vermont Governor Phil Scott, will speak about their Better Places Program during our Civic Infrastructure event. Better Places is a community matching grant program for Vermonters to create vibrant public places serving Vermont’s designated downtowns, village centers, new town centers, or neighborhood development areas. Better Places leverages a “crowdgranting” method, which combines crowdfunding with a matching grant from the state, thereby facilitating a participatory approach to placemaking.
Josh Fryday, California’s Chief Service Officer, will introduce California’s new Neighbor-to-Neighbor Network during our Associational Life event. Through the network, municipal partners receive funding and support focused on empowering locals to work on neighborhood improvement projects and gathering community members to build connections with one another.
If you’re interested in either of these programs — or civic infrastructure and associational life more broadly — we encourage you to consider joining each of these final two launch events. You can RSVP here for the Civic Infrastructure event and RSVP here for the Associational Life event.