"We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbor... Precisely because he may be anybody he is everybody." -- G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
The world down the street and up the block is larger and more varied than the big, wide world we imagine is outside of our neighborhood. There may be more geographical space and square footage outside our city block, but what we would seek out there are those of a similar mind or station to ourselves. We would select from society those with whom we would commune and would find a smaller world, not a larger one. We don't flee from our families or our neighborhoods in search of more variety, but less. What could be less diverse the Coachella?
We don't leave home because it is too oppressively stale, but because it is so relentlessly diverse. It won't stop insisting on things we don't care about. It won't stop bringing up topics we're not interested in. We are too weak for family and neighborhoods, so we seek the comfort of clubs and mutual congratulation societies and refer to them as being outside and open-minded when in reality they are a retreat into a gated community of closed-mindedness.
"It is a good thing for a man to live in a family for the same reason it is a good thing for a man to be besieged in a city.... They all force him to realize that life is not a thing from outside, but a thing from inside." -- G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
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