Third Places
Let’s rewind the clock a century. People from all walks of life went to work, came home, and then spent time in public at their favorite haunt surrounded by friends and acquaintances. For many people their “third place” was church, a bar, a club, and if you rewind time far enough, the old public squares. In these places, debate and discussion was alive, face to face with people who both agreed with and disagreed with each other. You congregated with your neighbors and local communities and got to know them for better or for worse.
Fast forward to today, and many people have replaced these treasured places with their phones and social media platforms. Instead of seeing the life events, pain, and joy that goes into making each person who they are, we are confronted with an online persona that is easy to dehumanize and think of as an enemy. You forget they are your neighbors in your local community that are just trying to do their damnedest to get by in this crazy world. We become isolated and scared instead of united and strong, and it makes it easy for algorithms designed to divide us to do just that. The algorithms and the people who control them want you to think you have unreconcilable differences with your neighbors. They want us to fight a culture war while they win a class war, and unfortunately, I think it is working.
However, I am here to say that it does not need to be like this, and we can change it if we choose to. Can we as a community here in North Royalton take on the social media companies steering us off a cliff? Unlikely. But we can come together and start to break this trend. I would like to see more opportunities and places in North Royalton where we can come together from all walks of life. One idea I had was a fenced dog park with hookups in the parking lot for food trucks. To offset cost, we could sell a permit to local food trucks to use the infrastructure we set up. We could also maintain a list of all local clubs and social groups and send a welcome packet to all new residents to encourage them to get involved and become part of our community. These are just some examples of things we can start to do locally to fight back against the isolation I think so many people feel these days.
So let’s come together and build a community for everyone. Stop judging people’s situation and start helping them. Stop complaining online and start making reality a place we don’t all need to escape from.
Love your neighbor!
Love,
Your Neighbor.
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