This week in community building — Issue 75

#58 friends > communities

By Sari Azout

In one of the most memorable pieces of writing I read last year, David Brooks writes: If you want to summarize the changes in family structure over the past century, the truest thing to say is this: We’ve made life freer for individuals and more unstable for families.

What led to this departure from community? Essentially, agriculture and industry allowed people to make more individualistic choices about their lives, and those choices diminished group efforts towards a common good.