Community is also under assault because we’ve outsourced care. As Peter Block and John McKnight argue in their book, The Abundant Community, a lot of the roles that used to be done in community have migrated to the marketplace or the state. Mental well-being is now the job of the therapist. Physical health is now the job of the hospital. Education is the job of the school system. The problem with systems, Block and McKnight argue, is that they depersonalize. These organizations have to operate at scale, so everything has to be standardized. Everything has to follow rules. “The purpose of
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