The question of scale (16)

I want to suggest that the reason we are unable to begin to formulate a vision lies in the simple problem that we don’t know what scale to imagine on. The nation, the province, the metropolis are all too big. My repeated insistence that we focus on the immediate conditions of everyday life is meant to free us from the need to think so big. But, on the other hand, the individual is too small.

 

If a new form of life is to come into being in the world, it must begin at the individual level. We are all drowning in bad habits and bad philosophy. We must begin to free ourselves from them, and this is long and difficult work—for they press themselves on us ever more forcefully and more deviously. But when we say that we want to live differently, we mean of course that we want changes in our surroundings, not just in our inner lives and habits.

 

The scale that most people I know look to—long for, dream of, at times even scheme on—is that of the community. But this is still too small—too small and too uniform.