A World Without Community

Society at large has the power to encourage or discourage behavior. Laws are passed to protect individual rights, individual freedoms. On the other hand, a society at large has very loose moral rules. In the United States, the constitution does not address our morality, just our rights. It speaks to the value of human life, but not to the character of a man or woman.

A small community, on the other hand, is able to hand stories down from generation to generation. It is able to teach moral behaviors, and is concerned with character. It respects the individual rights outlined by the laws of the land, but also is able to uphold and encourage a moral code.

A community knows itself and knows its place in a way that is impossible for a public (a nation, say, or a state). A community does not come together by a covenant, by a conscientious granting of trust. It exists by proximity, by neighborhood; it knows face to face, and it trusts as it knows. It learns, in the course of time and experience, what and who can be trusted.

Wendell Berry uses "public" and community in opposition to each other often, but really they are not separate. The important thing I think is to realize the role that a community plays as a part of the larger public. It provides the moral code. It establishes how a person behaves, and how men and women relate to one another.