Conclusion

Our mobile suburban environment has made Americans increasingly concerned with time and movement rather than place and permanence. Multinational corporations and commercialism have spawned an endless movement of workers and their families across borders and boundaries. We no longer gain a feeling of community from where we live or where we assemble but from common work hours, habits, and customs.

"Freedom of choice" has become an ironic mantra since, in reality, most Americans have little control over the larger arena in which they choose their goods and services. Those with the capital and the marketing agenda create the context, the boundaries, and the entire culture in which ordinary folk make their choices. Ironically we are becoming more and more alike as consumer culture and the market forces exert a homogenous uniformity further and further across the land.

At the dawn of the present century, the rising mass-market economy served to divorce Americans further from shared communities. American business did more than strive to inspire a desire for goods and to create a new institutional landscape to sustain it; it also changed the way Americans looked at and understood place.

In the interest of getting the 'new and improved', the American mindset was conditioned to overturn the past and begin again: to disregard all kinds of attachments. The result is a continued splintering of American society into a nation of self-interested individuals perfectly served by a global capitalism that looks pretty much the same all over the world.

Questions
Has the pace of modern life and the freedom of mobility kept us absent from our children's lives, and absent from our communities and country? Has our collective failure to protect and honor the past mislead us into forgetting our spiritual connection to the land on which we live? The mind-numbingly sameness of suburban sprawl across America and ever-increasing ranks disconnected and disillusioned around us sadly seems to indicate yes.

Although we can't turn back to clock, turning inward once again to our communities, neighbors, and gardens would be a sensible place to start.

--END--

Based on the book “Country of Exiles: The Destruction of Place in American Life” by William R. Leach Fair Use Notice