“It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting evil in the fields that we know so that those who come after may have clean earth to till.”
These beautiful lines from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Fellowship of the Ring” give us both hope and a sense of direction in hard times. It’s easy to become overwhelmed by evil in the world, baffled and bombarded by global problems. We want to see change. We may wish we had the power to heal what plagues the world, but we often feel powerless.
Tolkien’s quote highlights two important truths. First, we can’t take on the burden of the whole world. We can’t try to “master all the tides.” But, at the same time, we’re not powerless. We might not be able to solve geopolitical problems, but we can turn our gaze to “the fields that we know”—our local communities—and fix the problems we find there.
This offers us a light to follow when the days become dark. Putting our hands to the tasks immediately around us provides a path toward cultural transformation that isn’t out of reach. Little by little, if enough people invested their time, energy, and wealth into improving and restoring their local communities, the whole world could be changed for the better.
A Conscious Effort
It may well be time for the average American to pivot from a national or international focus to a local one. “Normal people want to take responsibility for their own lives,” Dale Ahlquist wrote in the introduction to the 2024 book “Localism,” “and they are increasingly frustrated and alienated by the fact that everything is out of their control and they cannot really say who is in control. …Localism means having a say in what happens to you.”
We have the greatest impact at the local scale. It also affects us and our families most directly. The common man and woman’s power is strongest in their own community. It’s up to them whether they choose to wield it.
This is one of the basic tenets of “localism.” It’s the belief that a person’s economic, cultural, social, and religious focus ought to be on their nearby communities and regions, and that larger institutions and forms of government ought to respect and develop the local elements. In some ways, these local structures build resiliency and play a key role in preserving and renewing society.
As G.K. Chesterton wrote in a July 21, 1928 article for his paper G.K.’s Weekly:
“It often happens in history that things intensely small and local, or even backward and barbaric, defend themselves with great success against empires and combines, simply because they are too remote to have been overawed by mere cosmopolitan rumour and reputation. There are some fortunate communities that are too ignorant to be bullied, too superstitious to be frightened, too poor to be bribed, and too small to be destroyed. It is probably in these minute and secret places that the seed of civilization will be preserved for future ages, through the blundering anarchy of big things which seems to be coming upon us.”
What does localism look like in practice? A few general features can be sketched here. Ahlquist helps us understand some of the principles at play: “By localism, we mean an economy and a political system based on the family.” The family is the most immediate and local type of society, and localism should focus on creating a social and economic environment that favors the family. He wrote:
“If we begin with the dignity of providing for and protecting and loving our own families, the next natural step is to treat our neighbors with the same respect and charity so that their families can enjoy what we enjoy.”
When families are happy and secure, the foundations of a strong society are laid.
The Village Needs Villagers
The familial aspect of localism encourages parents to pay attention to the influences on their children. For instance, education “localist style” might involve a community of parents coming together to start their own school or micro-school. It would seek to educate children using local resources and respecting local values, history, and customs.
Perhaps the most challenging but also most transformative part of a localist vision pertains to economics. In the globalized economy, money typically flows out of local communities and into the coffers of distant companies. Rarely does that money stay in the local community, strengthening it and sustaining its inhabitants. One goal of localism is to create stronger local economies—where we do business is a big part of our lives.
The collapse of local culture, as Wendell Berry noted in his essay “The Work of Local Culture,” is partially because few people can make a living in their local communities anymore due to our global economic model. Dale Ahlquist saw the restoration of the local economy as central to the project: “[Localism] means keeping your dollars in your community, buying from your neighbor, and thereby supporting your neighbor. It means owning your own piece of the community. It means being your own boss.”
The localist model encourages a plethora of small business owners, farmers, and local manufacturers to do business with one another. As a result, they create a self-sufficient and self-investing community.
Of course, central to the whole endeavor is the local community and culture itself. Localism seeks to reconnect neighbors with one another, to re-form local clubs, sports teams, religious communities, and charitable organizations—in a word, to reweave the social fabric from the ground up. Localism prizes genuine face-to-face connections between human beings. Human relationships form the heart of localism.
The localist ideal sounds a bit outdated in our time, but it isn’t so far from the original ideals of independence, neighborliness, entrepreneurialism, resilience, and respect for tradition that helped make our nation great in the first place.
There was a time in America when a man could walk through the streets of his town and feel a sense of pride and contentment that everything he needed was right here, right beneath his feet, both economically and socially. He didn’t feel beholden to distant, impersonal financial or industrial forces. He knew the faces and the names of the men and women who made many of the things he used in daily life. He knew both the people and the philosophy of the people who were teaching his children. Their philosophy was his own.
He could walk to his church, where he saw the same faces that he did business or played baseball with. He was familiar with the fellows involved in governing his city and his county; he had helped them and they had helped him. He knew the history of his town and the families in it, and he could trace the branch of his family back to the trunk of the community rooted in the soil. He was part of something living and whole.
It could be that way again.
