Postmodern, Post-Christendom…Postcommuter?

Our culture has once again begun to realize the significance of the local, of place, of being rooted. In contrast,

Enlightenment thinkers subsumed particular “place” to universal “space.” At least this is the argument made by phenomenologists like Martin Heidegger, who believed that Truth could be revealed only by carefully attending to the things and people nearest to us. The philosophical recovery of particularity converged nicely with a late-modern cultural nostalgia for the local, a concept lost amid the big box stores and MacDonaldized franchises now homogenizing every square inch of the United States.[1]

There is increasing evidence in our communities of this “late-modern cultural nostalgia for the local” which I believe is much more than nostalgia, even as we wrestle with conflicting values and structures in its pursuit.[2] As one couple in our Neighbourhood Life missional community reflected, “We’ve learned the importance of proximity especially with our move. It’s really hard to keep up with former neighbours. We need a neighbourhood where you can go for coffee at your neighbours’ in your pajamas.” 

Read more at http://thev3movement.org/2015/07/postcommuter-neighbourhood-life/?utm_content=buffer44b58&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer