I think of the first as personal community (your friends / family / etc.) and the second as social ecosystem (the general norms and broad characteristics of the people in the place you live).
Having lived in several different places in the US, I have to say that there are distinct differences in social ecosystems even regionally and that these differences affected me. They also had a direct effect on the amount of effort necessary to build a solid personal community. And unlike your personal community, which you do control, the social ecosystem is largely outside of your control.
So what do you do about an incompatible social ecosystem? In the long term, you can work to change it, but from a personal standpoint, you have to move.
But where do you move? This is the tricky part because most advice is based on very practical items like access to jobs, cost of living, etc. Social compatibility is very personal and more difficult to research. If you never live anyplace but where you grew up, you may never know how different, different places can be.
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Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-25 04:29 pm (UTC)I think of the first as personal community (your friends / family / etc.) and the second as social ecosystem (the general norms and broad characteristics of the people in the place you live).
Having lived in several different places in the US, I have to say that there are distinct differences in social ecosystems even regionally and that these differences affected me. They also had a direct effect on the amount of effort necessary to build a solid personal community. And unlike your personal community, which you do control, the social ecosystem is largely outside of your control.
So what do you do about an incompatible social ecosystem? In the long term, you can work to change it, but from a personal standpoint, you have to move.
But where do you move? This is the tricky part because most advice is based on very practical items like access to jobs, cost of living, etc. Social compatibility is very personal and more difficult to research. If you never live anyplace but where you grew up, you may never know how different, different places can be.