In Seven Shapes of Community Life Andrew Silver evaluates the ‘pod community’, which he describes as ‘life among people who share our views and socio-economic status’. This subcategory of a community has a distinctly negative connotation as it loosely describes people who internalize their community and take it with them wherever they go.
‘Closed-minded’, and ‘willfully ignorant’ were words that came to my mind as I read about pod communities. Reading this rather short passage, I thought about my own experiences adjusting to pod communities. Moving from a large, relatively diverse city to a small homogenous town exposed me to a reality different from the one I was accustomed to. Often, I concluded that the people of the town needed a reality check. They lived in one county their whole life, and my family
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When we mistake our own experiences for the ultimate reality, we often misjudge situations and are culture-shocked when peers do not share our view. In some elaborate instances, such as gentrification, we may think we are doing a common good, when in actuality we are harming more than helping. However, I wonder, are there no positive attributes to the pod community mentality. Is there no benefit in coming into a community with your own ideas of what a community is, or should be? Living in enormously different pod communities I noticed that both have rather traditional views and expectations. Sometimes these views seem a little stale and restricting, but can seem enticing when one has had little exposure in the world. What if there was someone who came into your life who was raised completely different from you and your peers, and they help you grow in any capacity, as was the case in The Lesson? That would be a positive change right? Perhaps the community, in its isolation leads to shortcomings, but having a mindset towards the enrichment of people cannot be