Sense of Place

Source/Excerpts: North West Earth Institute’s Course: Discovering A Sense of Place

If you don’t know where you are, says Wendell Berry, you don’t know who you are. Wendell Berry, a writer, considers himself a “placed” person, living where he grew up and where his family has lived for many generations. But if every American is several different people, and one of them is or would like to be a placed person; another is the opposite, the displaced person, cousin not to Thoreau but to Daniel Boone, dreamer not of Walden Ponds (Thoreau) but of far horizons, traveler not in Concord but in wild unsettled places, explorer not inward but outward. He exists in all of us to some extent, the inevitable by-product of our history: the New World transient. He is commoner to new places to explore and discover. To the placed person he seems hasty, shallow, and restless. Culturally, he is a discarder or transplanter, not a builder or conserver.

How many of you have never stayed in one place long enough to learn all about it? Who has lived there, worked it, experienced it and shaped it, as individuals, families, neighborhoods, and communities, over more than one generation. Where children know their grandparents, and stay in touch with their siblings.

We believe that family stability is formed out of ethical responsibility to the community; whether that community is the individual family or includes neighbors, the township, the land (bioregion). The ethics of the Golden Rule tries to integrate the individual to one another in the society; democracy to integrate social organization to the individual. There is as yet no ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals, and plants which grow upon it. In short, a land ethic changes the role of humans from conqueror (explorer/discoverer) of the land-community to being member and citizen of it, wanting to cooperate rather than compete with others so that one might find a place to live, love, and grow in it.

If everyone in the world realized that one's small family community is a microcosm of a larger community in terms of communication, works, recreation; then one would be more careful to cultivate that relationship more intensely, and understand that every neighbor is another microcosmic portion of the greater global scene. If you pray for global peace, then make your specialization your home and family. Make a career out of the place in which you live; bring others of the community into the same understanding by supporting one another, and see how a community is transformed, not only seeing the "unity" in community, but also local economies growing.

To sincerely understand your own place, a bioregional mapping of your local surroundings will enhance the creative opportunities you will find for yourself and your community. We invite you to join us for this activity and more toward building your sense of place in your local community, join our *discussion course, Discovering a Sense of Place from North West Earth Institute.

*Can be held in a community at one another's homes or online, depending on circumstances best suited for your purposes.