The Society I Want for the Country I Love

It is based on interconnectivity of communities --

• “The Community of the Future” published by The Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Non Profit Organization in 1998 advanced a proposition that the “The global community of the future will be at its best a series of communities that are interdependent and diverse, embracing differences, releasing energy, and building cohesion.”

• This philosophy was written before the onset of online communities and the new diaspora described by Bob Johansen which is creating millions of virtual communities with common interests and passion. Unfortunately, these communities, while connectible and connected, have short life span.

• Community is more ‘substantial and attractive than society,’ according to William Outhwaite, who also writes that community and civil society have a common origin in the late and medieval and early modern reception of Aristotle’s thought.

• Outhwaite also suggests that unity in a society or community is directly realized by its own elements because these elements are themselves conscious and synthesizing units.

Its source of strength are the individual community members

• “The Community of the Future also suggests that “The broader global community will be enhanced by the health of the many smaller communities that constitute the whole. Those living within each community define all community.”

It is more focused on values, less on material accomplishments

• More of communities, less of towns and regions

• Borrowing from John C. Bogle –

More value, less cost
More investment, less speculation
More simplicity, less complexity
More trust, less of counting
More professional conduct, less of business conduct
More stewardship, less of salesmanship
More of leadership, less of much management
More focus on commitment, less focus on things
More 18th century values, less of the 21st century values
More character, less of success.