Re: "The Spirit of Community"
From: Collaborative Housing Society (cohosocweb.apc.org)
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 1995 09:04:23 -0600
JPCOACH, I'm someone who beleives that almost everything is worth reading,
and this book certainly has some good ideas in it.

I'll leave the capsule summary to someone else, since mine would be tainted
by my reaction to the book.  Perhaps it's my Canadian point of view, but I
found it to be a bit heavy-handed in the moralizing department - he spends a
lot of time trying to reassure people that this isn't a Puritan, protestant
backlash, but it sure looks like one to me.

I guess it's that I think that we lost responsibility to others along the
way for many reasons, and just trying to impose it from above doesn't really
seem to be much of a fix.  The Communitiarian agenda seems to prefer to
overlook the elements of Western/North American way of life that led to the
collapse of community - in other (overly simplified) words, they want the
cars, nice suburban homes, consumer paradise and all that, but want "nice"
people too.

Just *my* point of view from a cold place that somehow seems "warmer"

Russell Mawby
Toronto
cohosoc [at] web.apc.org


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