Care, not mere communication, is what ties a resident to a place
Evidence
The kid in front looked up from his clipboard, scrutinizing me. “So would you say…care?” he asked. … I suggested “communication,” but days later, his clarification stayed with me. After all, communication requires us to care enough to make the effort. I thought about how it’s possible to move to a place without caring about who or what is already there (or what was there before), interested in the neighborhood only insofar as it allows one to maintain your existing or ideal lifestyle and social ties. Like Buber’s “I-It” relationship, a newcomer might only register other people and things in the neighborhood to the extent that they seem in some way useful, imagining the remainder as (at best) inert matter or (at worst) a nuisance or inefficiency. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 457
Categorization
- DEFINE: Distinguishes caring about a place’s inhabitants from merely communicating with them, and ties non-caring arrival to instrumentality.
- XREF: connects to: Caring for place and caring for people are mutually dependent — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 607; Attention to neighbors precedes communication, which requires caring. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 457; Having a place requires not being wholly absorbed in that place — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1169 (+3 more)
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Caring for place and caring for people are mutually dependent — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 607; Attention to neighbors precedes communication, which requires caring. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 457; Having a place requires not being wholly absorbed in that place — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1169 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Knowing a place deeply makes people care for and protect it.
#complicates(0.75) — Karla Armbruster, Book Review, 9