The US may be unique in this regard. I don't think something similar applies in any other country I've lived in or visited… partly too you need to have the hometown family connections to have instant social credit among the townspeople.
I know newcomers who have built better reputations than locals in just a few years. And I also don't think it's only a US thing. Localism is more pronounced across Europe, say. There is just less opportunity there because fewer people have/can abandoned their hometown.
Maybe true in Europe.. but you need a functioning hometown as well. I guess I'm particularly thinking of Canada and Australia, and neither have the same population as US or Europe, so there are just not that many places outside of the major cities with affordable houses and a functioning municipality. All the homes are owned by investors and sit empty aside from being used as Airbnbs
I love this essay so much! You put your finger on the pulse of what's missing for men in our culture - the heroic need to put their Sacred Warrior energy into the betterment of the whole (my interpretation of your words). It used to be war that did that - get them riled up about patriotism and they couldn't wait to go prove themselves. Now men and women both see that for what it has become - fodder for rich mens' cannons. I have been watching the placement of radical Islam throughout the world in the past few decades and I wonder/fear if this is going to become the place where it all intersects. I am going to share this and hope that people can connect the dots and learn to honor the archetypes of the Warrior, the Hero and the Humble, and how we are all responsible for energizing a new way of looking at masculine energy.
Thank you for the uplifting essay! Many of the comments in this stream are brilliant, and I can't compete. Written by younger, smarter minds, I guess. My comment is humble.
Monday morning, this line from your essay, “navigate the landscape of possibility as it actually presents itself today,” will be printed in 175 pt. font and turned into a poster-sized reminder for all the middle schoolers who pass my door in the school breezeway. Your essay didn't just resonate with me; I'm putting its message to work.
I came here to argue with you about social media (I think it can be used a tool for meaningful connection and contributions, like you are doing with substack) but this is so poignant and beautifully written that I ended up subscribing instead.
This is a wonderful essay and a nice way to begin my Saturday. I am older, in my third act and wondering exactly what I’m doing upon the stage, and your essay has inspired me. Thank you.
“Pick something somewhere between your own lonely and atomized individual self and these global-scale attention egregores.”
I really agree with the above, and I’m far from agreeing with the vitalist/nihilist side of this issue, but we did this discourse a couple years ago and it turned out the “men, move to small towns” crowd didn’t have enough of a carrot to draw the ambitious young men they hoped for. You yourself decided not to run for mayor, probably for good reasons. Even if a young man and his seven friends did “take over” a small town, I’m not sure the rewards would come close to being commensurate with the effort.
Civil servants in poor areas seem to me like they’re often harried, beholden to budget constrictions, tormented by the vocal and disgruntled minority of their constituency, and the “power” they wield seems mostly to come in the form of being recognized and schmoozed to at the town chili competition and the golf course. Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t think municipal power is such that it would allow those seven young men to do something cool enough to justify putting up with all that. Maybe the idea is they’re all already married with families and can be satisfied with more park benches, Little Free Libraries, and keeping the sidewalk cracks repaired, but I don’t think it’s sexist of me to imagine those issues would be more capably and cheerfully handled by their wives. A small town mayor in the US can’t, say, seize ownership of all the vape shops and slot machines in the area and use those funds to build a cathedral, or mandate that the town now conform to a form of government laid out in Plato’s Republic.
Until the rewards match the effort, no amount of convincing will get these young men to move out of the cities to effect meaningful change. I say this as someone who accompanied her husband back to his tiny hometown. We’re doing our best and I’m optimistic, but (especially Christian) men online have a tendency to exaggerate how much opportunity can really be squeezed out of these places.
This is an excellent consideration of THE problem in America - thé actual problem - versus the myriad putative problems. The only lacuna I could find was that there’s no explicit talk about the mentality - the religion(s ) - that fosters any sense of sacrifice and expectation of final recompense for merits and demerits.
I know that I’m a religious “fanatic” in this regard, but I think it’s reasonably clear to most honest thinkers too: only a few religions promote this authentic self-sacrifice, and if those religions - or a single good:best one - are not promoted in the civil and cultural life of the town, I don’t think this otherwise awesome article is sustainably persuasive.
You have to have that repetitive mantra or “sermon” of a historical religion: otherwise thé “world” wins out…at least it does throughout all of recorded history.
More from me in rural WNC: my family of five and I live on an acre and a half in the former paper mill town of Canton, NC. The 100+ year old paper mill closed three years ago—it no longer “smells like money” around here, as the locals used to say. The industrial “park” is now slowly undergoing a dismantling process by Spirtas while those that can stand guard over our waterways, trying to fend off (small) data centers and other ruinous enterprises that threaten to turn the mental and physical landscape into slop fields, while hoping for new industry to give this town a shot in the economic arm. Our town is just under 5,000 strong. When this big employer closed, the option was move or community college. Most folks chose to re-educate. We who moved here with higher education and jobs—at least at the time—already in place cannot get into local jobs in education etc. (I know; I lost my commuter job into the city—Asheville—and I tried). Administrators already have their eyes on the students who pursued their education about an hour away, still in Appalachia, and whose plan was always to return to their hometown to teach the next generation. So, to allow me to stay local to my middle schooler, I work as a freelancer…sometimes. My husband, on the other hand, is not using his degree at all (we’d have to move to find something that fits his education and experience). Instead, he’s taken on a job as a foundation specialist and drives to folks’ homes in about a 90 mile radius in all directions to crawl under their houses and try to sell solutions to their problems. He collapses when he returns—not the type of energy needed to respond to the love offered by this place with love. There are things I love about this place as I watch largely from the outside, but what I hate is that my husband’s and my work will always make us face out, take us out, and apparently keep us out.
It is difficult to plant seeds and nurture them when you are, by nature of your vocation, a tumbleweed who longs for rest and real relationship but seems doomed to pass through. How to find a non-email (preferably local) job that actually allows one to sit long enough in situ to both fall in love with a town enough to sacrifice big dreams for it and see those dreams become better AND realized? I wonder how to find MY “small town” - or whether I will be limited to a hyper-locality: my nuclear family, my mountainous street and the eight families who live here. As I close in on 50, I have begun to wonder if a “tumbleweed life” is all.
Thankful for the good (reasonably scaled) dream and the wholesome challenge you offer in this essay.
Great comment here and lots of real-life texture that you can't fake. This stuff is not always easy.
If I could offer the slightest encouragement, it would be to invest in beauty and never underestimate how much people want it. As I said in another comment, a few young people put on a classical concert in our town of 2,000 last year. It was mind-blowing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWoy5G4iA3g&list=RDxWoy5G4iA3g&start_radio=1
Beauty will save the world, and small towns are some of the very few places where you can put that to the test.
Will be sharing this essay with the Young Guns on the Arcata team, as well as the Manalive Media Group intern alumni cohort. Grateful your experience, heart and mind, prompted you to write this. Thank you. Peace
I too moved back to my hometown (in the southeast corner of Kansas). I find it to be kinda a stick in the mud place, tho. Doesn't to really welcome involvement.
You make a valid point and I almost think that in our saturated culture of computers, AI and armies of programmers, we need young men to return to grass roots living and build small communities again - and I mean by hand. BTW - you speak of young men and you ARE a young man I assume but young women face the same thing. They are no longer awaiting their magic big wedding day but are also trying to build lives from scratch.
How many decades has it been since anyone could afford to "stay home with the kids"and so we have generations of latch key kids - which is both a good and a bad thing. The bottom line is our young people don't see anyway to "get ahead" and build their own lives and that is just so ass backwards!!!
Hopefully, with so many people feeling this way, we WILL remake the country and reach across the lines to make this world a globally supported world again - globally in terms of people not in terms of profit and control
There’s that refrain within the Iliad in which Homer describes a young warrior, speaks of his home, his wealth, and his accomplishments and then says, and this young man was killed and is eating the dirt. That is to say, there is no glory in war, only narratives clipped and forgotten. I think within the daily grind one can feel that sense of a premature death, a life’s momentum suddenly arrested within the nihilistic reality of the everyday. But. To an extent, it is because of a fundamental lack of understanding of the meaning of good work, or that is to say, it comes from good work only being understood within a monthly P&L or a quarterly review, or an end of year analysis. I do not see too many folks pushing back against this with Krishna’s admonishment to Arjuna with the notion of of Right Action, which releases the individual from the torpor of coveting the fruit of the action. Or even Wendell Berry’s notion of good work which will inevitably mean that one will not see its full fruiting within one’s lifetime. Or perhaps even in the Gospel notion of the greatest among us being the servant of all. To an extent, the loneliness epidemic is simply the outcome of the disordered valuation of greatness, and to an extent, the lack of understanding of what the Sabbath has to offer, that sacred time in which the mechanisms of the world no longer possess us. Of course, the war always rages on. We’re always encamped outside the doomed city of Troy, our lives amounting to a repeated sense of doom within an epic poem in which only demigods are heroes, and where journeys home are more than likely to end at the bottom of the sea.
The US may be unique in this regard. I don't think something similar applies in any other country I've lived in or visited… partly too you need to have the hometown family connections to have instant social credit among the townspeople.
But a very interesting and inspiring essay!
I know newcomers who have built better reputations than locals in just a few years. And I also don't think it's only a US thing. Localism is more pronounced across Europe, say. There is just less opportunity there because fewer people have/can abandoned their hometown.
Maybe true in Europe.. but you need a functioning hometown as well. I guess I'm particularly thinking of Canada and Australia, and neither have the same population as US or Europe, so there are just not that many places outside of the major cities with affordable houses and a functioning municipality. All the homes are owned by investors and sit empty aside from being used as Airbnbs
Sad state indeed. But, always a way forward if you’re willing to find it.
A good and hopeful attitude indeed!
I love this essay so much! You put your finger on the pulse of what's missing for men in our culture - the heroic need to put their Sacred Warrior energy into the betterment of the whole (my interpretation of your words). It used to be war that did that - get them riled up about patriotism and they couldn't wait to go prove themselves. Now men and women both see that for what it has become - fodder for rich mens' cannons. I have been watching the placement of radical Islam throughout the world in the past few decades and I wonder/fear if this is going to become the place where it all intersects. I am going to share this and hope that people can connect the dots and learn to honor the archetypes of the Warrior, the Hero and the Humble, and how we are all responsible for energizing a new way of looking at masculine energy.
Thank you for the uplifting essay! Many of the comments in this stream are brilliant, and I can't compete. Written by younger, smarter minds, I guess. My comment is humble.
Monday morning, this line from your essay, “navigate the landscape of possibility as it actually presents itself today,” will be printed in 175 pt. font and turned into a poster-sized reminder for all the middle schoolers who pass my door in the school breezeway. Your essay didn't just resonate with me; I'm putting its message to work.
Good Man. Godspeed.
This is fire.
And yes, speaking as a single woman: this is the type of men we want.
I came here to argue with you about social media (I think it can be used a tool for meaningful connection and contributions, like you are doing with substack) but this is so poignant and beautifully written that I ended up subscribing instead.
My favorite comment.
This is a wonderful essay and a nice way to begin my Saturday. I am older, in my third act and wondering exactly what I’m doing upon the stage, and your essay has inspired me. Thank you.
“Pick something somewhere between your own lonely and atomized individual self and these global-scale attention egregores.”
I really agree with the above, and I’m far from agreeing with the vitalist/nihilist side of this issue, but we did this discourse a couple years ago and it turned out the “men, move to small towns” crowd didn’t have enough of a carrot to draw the ambitious young men they hoped for. You yourself decided not to run for mayor, probably for good reasons. Even if a young man and his seven friends did “take over” a small town, I’m not sure the rewards would come close to being commensurate with the effort.
Civil servants in poor areas seem to me like they’re often harried, beholden to budget constrictions, tormented by the vocal and disgruntled minority of their constituency, and the “power” they wield seems mostly to come in the form of being recognized and schmoozed to at the town chili competition and the golf course. Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t think municipal power is such that it would allow those seven young men to do something cool enough to justify putting up with all that. Maybe the idea is they’re all already married with families and can be satisfied with more park benches, Little Free Libraries, and keeping the sidewalk cracks repaired, but I don’t think it’s sexist of me to imagine those issues would be more capably and cheerfully handled by their wives. A small town mayor in the US can’t, say, seize ownership of all the vape shops and slot machines in the area and use those funds to build a cathedral, or mandate that the town now conform to a form of government laid out in Plato’s Republic.
Until the rewards match the effort, no amount of convincing will get these young men to move out of the cities to effect meaningful change. I say this as someone who accompanied her husband back to his tiny hometown. We’re doing our best and I’m optimistic, but (especially Christian) men online have a tendency to exaggerate how much opportunity can really be squeezed out of these places.
Look, the struggles you point out are real, but often it comes down to a lack of vision.
Just a handful of young people in my town of less that 2,000 put on this classical concert last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWoy5G4iA3g&list=RDxWoy5G4iA3g&start_radio=1
Donors came out of the woodwork and there is growing interest for theatre, comedy, literature readings, and more coming.
If you don't like the vape shops and the slot machines, give people something else to believe in. Get them to believe in beauty. It works.
Well stated.
This is an excellent consideration of THE problem in America - thé actual problem - versus the myriad putative problems. The only lacuna I could find was that there’s no explicit talk about the mentality - the religion(s ) - that fosters any sense of sacrifice and expectation of final recompense for merits and demerits.
I know that I’m a religious “fanatic” in this regard, but I think it’s reasonably clear to most honest thinkers too: only a few religions promote this authentic self-sacrifice, and if those religions - or a single good:best one - are not promoted in the civil and cultural life of the town, I don’t think this otherwise awesome article is sustainably persuasive.
You have to have that repetitive mantra or “sermon” of a historical religion: otherwise thé “world” wins out…at least it does throughout all of recorded history.
More from me in rural WNC: my family of five and I live on an acre and a half in the former paper mill town of Canton, NC. The 100+ year old paper mill closed three years ago—it no longer “smells like money” around here, as the locals used to say. The industrial “park” is now slowly undergoing a dismantling process by Spirtas while those that can stand guard over our waterways, trying to fend off (small) data centers and other ruinous enterprises that threaten to turn the mental and physical landscape into slop fields, while hoping for new industry to give this town a shot in the economic arm. Our town is just under 5,000 strong. When this big employer closed, the option was move or community college. Most folks chose to re-educate. We who moved here with higher education and jobs—at least at the time—already in place cannot get into local jobs in education etc. (I know; I lost my commuter job into the city—Asheville—and I tried). Administrators already have their eyes on the students who pursued their education about an hour away, still in Appalachia, and whose plan was always to return to their hometown to teach the next generation. So, to allow me to stay local to my middle schooler, I work as a freelancer…sometimes. My husband, on the other hand, is not using his degree at all (we’d have to move to find something that fits his education and experience). Instead, he’s taken on a job as a foundation specialist and drives to folks’ homes in about a 90 mile radius in all directions to crawl under their houses and try to sell solutions to their problems. He collapses when he returns—not the type of energy needed to respond to the love offered by this place with love. There are things I love about this place as I watch largely from the outside, but what I hate is that my husband’s and my work will always make us face out, take us out, and apparently keep us out.
It is difficult to plant seeds and nurture them when you are, by nature of your vocation, a tumbleweed who longs for rest and real relationship but seems doomed to pass through. How to find a non-email (preferably local) job that actually allows one to sit long enough in situ to both fall in love with a town enough to sacrifice big dreams for it and see those dreams become better AND realized? I wonder how to find MY “small town” - or whether I will be limited to a hyper-locality: my nuclear family, my mountainous street and the eight families who live here. As I close in on 50, I have begun to wonder if a “tumbleweed life” is all.
Thankful for the good (reasonably scaled) dream and the wholesome challenge you offer in this essay.
Great comment here and lots of real-life texture that you can't fake. This stuff is not always easy.
If I could offer the slightest encouragement, it would be to invest in beauty and never underestimate how much people want it. As I said in another comment, a few young people put on a classical concert in our town of 2,000 last year. It was mind-blowing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWoy5G4iA3g&list=RDxWoy5G4iA3g&start_radio=1
Beauty will save the world, and small towns are some of the very few places where you can put that to the test.
Keen insight. Keep up the good work, excited to follow along.
This was very nourishing to read.
I deeply appreciate your ability to write allusive ideas into visual stories. It makes ideas tangible.
Will be sharing this essay with the Young Guns on the Arcata team, as well as the Manalive Media Group intern alumni cohort. Grateful your experience, heart and mind, prompted you to write this. Thank you. Peace
I too moved back to my hometown (in the southeast corner of Kansas). I find it to be kinda a stick in the mud place, tho. Doesn't to really welcome involvement.
But IDK this is something to think about.
In our experience, focus on ideas that bring beauty, if you can.
You make a valid point and I almost think that in our saturated culture of computers, AI and armies of programmers, we need young men to return to grass roots living and build small communities again - and I mean by hand. BTW - you speak of young men and you ARE a young man I assume but young women face the same thing. They are no longer awaiting their magic big wedding day but are also trying to build lives from scratch.
How many decades has it been since anyone could afford to "stay home with the kids"and so we have generations of latch key kids - which is both a good and a bad thing. The bottom line is our young people don't see anyway to "get ahead" and build their own lives and that is just so ass backwards!!!
Hopefully, with so many people feeling this way, we WILL remake the country and reach across the lines to make this world a globally supported world again - globally in terms of people not in terms of profit and control
There’s that refrain within the Iliad in which Homer describes a young warrior, speaks of his home, his wealth, and his accomplishments and then says, and this young man was killed and is eating the dirt. That is to say, there is no glory in war, only narratives clipped and forgotten. I think within the daily grind one can feel that sense of a premature death, a life’s momentum suddenly arrested within the nihilistic reality of the everyday. But. To an extent, it is because of a fundamental lack of understanding of the meaning of good work, or that is to say, it comes from good work only being understood within a monthly P&L or a quarterly review, or an end of year analysis. I do not see too many folks pushing back against this with Krishna’s admonishment to Arjuna with the notion of of Right Action, which releases the individual from the torpor of coveting the fruit of the action. Or even Wendell Berry’s notion of good work which will inevitably mean that one will not see its full fruiting within one’s lifetime. Or perhaps even in the Gospel notion of the greatest among us being the servant of all. To an extent, the loneliness epidemic is simply the outcome of the disordered valuation of greatness, and to an extent, the lack of understanding of what the Sabbath has to offer, that sacred time in which the mechanisms of the world no longer possess us. Of course, the war always rages on. We’re always encamped outside the doomed city of Troy, our lives amounting to a repeated sense of doom within an epic poem in which only demigods are heroes, and where journeys home are more than likely to end at the bottom of the sea.