Essays From West of 98: Needing to Want to be From Here, Part 2
On being from a place and being willing to fight for it
If you have not read Part 1 of this essay, I encourage you to do so here.
There’s an episode of the great sitcom Parks and Recreation called “Born and Raised.” In it, the champion of Pawnee, Indiana, Leslie Knope, discovers a disturbing fact: she wasn’t actually born in Pawnee. Even worse, she was born in the hideous neighboring town of Eagleton. This is something of a technicality. Her parents lived in Pawnee and she has lived there her entire life. She was only born in Eagleton due to a raccoon infestation at Pawnee’s hospital. It doesn’t matter. She was running for Pawnee City Council on a “born and raised” platform. The citizens are incensed by this scandal. She is dejected until perpetually peppy City Manager Chris Traeger tells her:
“Where you’re born is a piece of trivia. Where you’re from, that’s what makes you who you are.”
There is an important tie between being from a place and loving a place. Not everyone from a place will love the place, for reasons both internal and external, but truly loving a place usually requires a certain connection. There are exceptions. Magnificent wonders of the world like the Grand Canyon, Great Sand Dunes, and Denali can elicit love from all but the coldest of humans. When it comes to other places, connection is important to build love. I have an affinity for rural America at large, but I am from Stamford and I love Stamford above other similarly-situated rural towns.
Why does this matter? There is an adage that I have used before, that people will not fight for something they don’t love. Conversely, people WILL fight for what they DO love. We see this every day. Parents fight to protect their children. Spouses will fight for one another and for their relationship. Indigenous tribes fight to defend their sacred lands. A people who are rooted in place and community will fight to ensure that the place is preserved for generations to come.
Perhaps the most damaging aspect of uprooting the rural economy is the destruction of this connection between people and place. When a people who are unable to prosper in a place and are set adrift by forces beyond their control, there is a breaking of the tie between people and place that creates a love for place and a willingness to fight for it.
Caesar Augustus knew the value of love for place. He oversaw a vast Roman Empire that stretched across Europe and North Africa. No level of military occupation could force such a diverse people to be glad to participate in the Roman Empire. Not even a Caesar could impose virtue and dignity of a shared life. Similarly, we cannot force pride upon our own citizens. Forced pride always fails spectacularly and it sometimes leads a culture through some dark places before the failure.
It is far more important and far more difficult to create real pride and real love. This is what Caesar Augustus sought to do. It does not require a poet as skilled as Virgil to pen a transcendent local mythology, although if any aspirants are interested, hit me up. It requires a community’s leaders to recognize and value the dignity and honor of every one of our people. It requires all our local institutions—governmental, cultural, economic, and recreational—to serve and uplift both people and place. It requires us to ask ourselves tough questions like: why would someone want to move here if they aren’t like us? What about our friends and neighbors who grew up with different experiences? What makes them want to be from here?
These are difficult questions without easy answers, but that is where good and meaningful work happens. Tough questions with easy solutions exist only in the fantasyland of political discourse and we see how successful that is.
As our high school seniors embark on their next phase of life, I hope that some of them want to be from here with the same manner of enthusiasm that Leslie Knope was from Pawnee. I hope that our community leaders look both inward and outward and ask ourselves how we can create an environment where our people want to be from here and are willing to fight to make our place better for generations to come.
📷: Stamford’s Oliver Elementary School, built by the WPA in 1939.
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and podcast. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to West of 98 wherever podcasts are found.
This essay reminded me of the work of Roger Scruton and his term oikophila (love of home), which you might have already encountered - A wonderful quote from him: “…human beings, in their settled condition, are animated by an attitude of oikophilia: the love of the oikos, which means not only the home but the people contained in it, and the surrounding settlements that endow that home with lasting contours and an enduring smile. The oikos is the place that is not just mine and yours but ours. (227) - Really enjoyed your piece. You might be interested in my publication Dwelling. Regardless, you have another reader and subscriber! Thanks.