There's a curious notion that often floats around, especially in our fast-paced world, suggesting that anything small or local is inherently insignificant. We tend to equate bigness with importance, don't we? From that perspective, a community, by its very nature being small, might seem like a minor detail in the grand scheme of things. It's where the everyday happens, the nitty-gritty, the particulars of life.
But here's the thing: it's precisely in those details and particulars that we often find the most profound truths about life itself. As Arthur E. Morgan, a figure deeply involved in community development, pointed out, the universal is profoundly different from the cosmopolitan. He echoed a sentiment that has resonated through literature and thought for ages: 'Only the local is universal.' Think about it – the concrete, specific, local thing often holds a value far surpassing the abstract and general. Wendell Holmes Jr. put it beautifully, suggesting that identifying with a locality is a surer path to immortality than cosmopolitanism.
It's in the nooks and crannies of the map and the calendar that true interest lies. In fact, the only thing of universal interest is the universe itself. A friend of Goethe's, Johann Heinrich Merck, wrote that for the ancients, everything was local, momentary, and that's precisely why it became eternal. This isn't to say the local and particular are only interesting in themselves. Their real power comes when they represent something much larger than themselves. As Emerson wisely put it, believing your own thought, believing that what's true for you in your private heart is true for everyone – that's genius. Speaking your latest conviction, he suggested, will make it the universal sense.
The community, then, is important because it holds within it that essence of the particular which is also eternal and universal. It's the crucible where individual experiences, when deeply understood, can reflect broader human truths. When a culture severs its connection with community, it risks losing touch with this vital source of renewal and understanding. It's in the shared spaces, the common struggles, and the collective joys of community that we often find the deepest reflections of our shared humanity, proving that the small and local are, in fact, the bedrock of the universal.
