Reflecting on Habits of the Heart

The most recent chapter of Habits of the Heart forced some fairly deep reflection of our public sphere on me. In fact, I think it's safe to say I enjoyed this chapter more than most in this book. Most striking, this chapter addressed the increasing growth rate of urban communities, and its impact on small town rural and suburban communities. Surprisingly, different moral values seem to be attributed to different living conditions. Small town values were more traditional, while big city values tended to be more loose. Small town communities also tend to view urban communities as threats to their own moral values.

In the wake of this, small exclusive gated communities have popped up across heavily populated areas like California in an attempt to protect this way of life. Technology, however, has done little to ease this congestion, or its effects on the community. It would be easy to state that social tools like Facebook would allow more like-minded people to gather in larger cities, but the fact of the matter is our physical communities are being eroded. Facebook, hosting small lifestyle enclaves, may serve to sugarcoat this reality, but in the end, in my opinion, it doesn't do much to counteract this change.

If I took anything significant towards the goals of this class out of this chapter, it's this: the worldwide change in community structures growing due to an increasing population cannot be sidestepped using technology. This brings up more difficult issues, such as population control measures. Should the USA instate the One-Child Policy that China has enacted? Once we start asking these questions, however, we stray from the topic of technology and its religious potential.