Intentional Communities
I got an e-mail from a reader (I have a reader! Sweet) regarding my Ave Maria posts. The reader asked whether I thought that there is a rise in people splitting off and forming their own communities of those who agree with them, whether those communities are real or virtual. The first thing that strikes me is that the idea of community has changed. If you think back to previous societies, community was simply the place where you happened to be born, since chances are you were never leaving that particular village. Community, like race or religion or culture, was something you just received in the lottery of life, and you had to make the best of it. Now we can move from one place to another, and so we have the ability to choose which community we wish to associate with, based on whatever criteria we choose. That applies not just to geographic and economic factors, but also to cultural factors. If you want to be a movie star, you probably need to move to LA—but if you just want to han...