A healthy community is a thick system of relationships. It is irregular, dynamic, organic, and personal. Neighbors show up to help out when your workload is heavy, and you show up when theirs is. In a rich community, people are up in one another’s business, know each other’s secrets, walk with each other in times of grief, and celebrate together in times of joy. In a rich community, people help raise one another’s kids. In these kinds of communities, which were typical in all human history until the last sixty years or so, people extended to neighbors the sorts of devotion that today we extend
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