For and against local community
A civic parade in Charlottesville, Virginia
A civic parade in Charlottesville, Virginia
Several arguments can be offered in favor of local community. Responsibilities forge our purpose in life. . . . Local community can take advantage of the weightiness and reality that come from a web of personal contact. All of the electronic modes of modern telecommunications put together do not equal the complexity and weight of a personal encounter. . . . Face to face encounters not only add weight to interactions, they take time, and some argue that time is important in developing a sense of responsibility and an understanding of the consequences of our actions. . . .
Virtually every argument in support of local community can be turned around and used against it. . . . that local communities smother their members in traditional obligations; that they stifle change; that though they foster responsibility and purpose, they make these moral precepts so narrow and provincial that everyone who is not a member is a stranger to whom the community has few obligations. . . . local community interferes with the dynamism of modern life and with the expansion of moral responsibility to include all human beings and even all of nature. The two viewpoints are more dialectical than antithetical; they share some common ground.Sack 1992, 190f