We are in control when we have our health and yet we let noise disrupt us. It always happens in our connections and relationships -- work, family, life ... every aspect of it. It used to be that as soon as we left the front door, the big world was out there. We would get messages inside with TV, radio and telephone calls. But now, the whole world is in our house. I remember in the 1990s Faith Popcorn wrote a book about cocooning (The need to find a safe space to protect oneself from the harsh, unpredictable realities of the outside world) ... it was a revolutionary concept. If she only knew where we were headed. And, did she?
Here is what she is predicting for 2010?
Remember at the end of “The Wizard of Oz” when Judy Garland says “There’s no place like home?”
Well in 2010 we’ll all be Wizard of Oz-ing, as a world turned upside down drives us inward. which is why, we predict the year of living local. Rejecting a war in Afghanistan we don’t understand, and welfare for Wall Street we can’t accept, we’ll be living like our 19th and early 20th-century forbearers: Focusing on our neighborhoods and communities, supporting those who support us. We’re tightening up, pulling in, reducing our radius.
Local Cocooning is an outgrowth of the dominant Trend of Icon Toppling. Despite signs of economic recovery, unprecedented unemployment and the continuing prosperity predictions from of our biggest financial institutions in the face of such suffering drive high levels of consumer skepticism.
Tweets, blogs, memberships and searches are all about finding community, predicated on common interest. Physical distance doesn’t matter—connections to the like minded does—why do you think we refer to those groups that aggregate online as “communities”. And even though it’s the “worldwide web”, it too, is looking local, as is much of media."
It's all becoming local ... and yet, the whole movement from individualism to community has yet to happen. We need to bring down the white picket fences.
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