Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

by A.J. Swoboda

Cultural philosopher Zygmunt Bauman has discussed the two kinds of community people often enter into in this modern world: “peg communities” and “ethical communities.” Peg communities, Bauman writes, are communities forged by disconnected spectators around a mutually loved experience like a rock concert or a sporting match. Their participation is a feeling or a sense around something shared. Ethical communities, in stark contrast, are long-term commitments that are marked by the giving up of rights and service. In short, ethical communities are built on relationships of responsibilities.7 These are relationships formed by commitment, love, covenant, and even familial fidelity. One of the fundamental shifts in our social matrix is that our relationships are increasingly made up of the peg communities rather than ethical communities. The latter, Bauman articulates, do not play the role they used to in the making of human society. Let me contrast these two kinds of community. A book club is a peg community. In this community, we gather with others around a shared commitment to something we all enjoy. As long as we like books and feel that the book club is delivering something beneficial to each of us, then the community will continue. A marriage, however, is an ethical community. I am in it “till death do us part.” If my wife were dying of cancer, I would stay. When things are hard, we work them out. We continue even when it is not the best emotional option. In peg community,...