Summer is here! Hooray!
In honor of these glorious solar months, Civic Fields is going to slow down a bit. I am going to be focusing my energies on speeding up my progress on the book on the history of liberalism that I am writing. My plan is to limit Civic Fields posts to the third Thursday of each summer month, resuming with a more regular schedule in the Fall
So, it's a good moment to ask: what have we wrought so far, and what’s next?
Civic Fields was started as a kind of outpost on the internet for thinking about civic life and its repair. In writing it, I have tried to walk a fine line between engaging current events and stepping back from the headlines to reflect on the deeper things that are at stake in our political life together. I am trying to not just join the conversation, but think about the conversation itself as it is currently structured, particularly with regard to its blind spots, limits, and abuses.
I have also been trying to think about roots, not so as to return to them but rather so as to reinvent them. In this regard, I have been trying to remind myself and others of the curious “republican” project of prior centuries (echoed, for example, in the phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance, “and to the republic for which it stands”). What was it all about? How would it see our own moment? And what kind of renewed republicanism could we imagine that takes seriously the economic, technological, and political challenges and dangers before us?
In all of this, I have been trying to make a case for the important role that both political structures and cultural commitments in civic renewal. Yes, I have expressed strong doubts about reducing everything to culture. But I am not deaf to the importance of culture. I think we need to be re-educating ourselves on the civic, as well as civility, moving the discourse past “rights” and toward “goods.”
I have been doing this on Substack with modest hopes for the fostering of a weak form of community that, unlike the books I write, can engage more directly and immediately with readers. I have tried to ride the fine line between social media and a community newsletter Substack presents. Substack is not your typical social media platform, but it is social media nevertheless. Every time I log in, it confronts me with a bunch of metrics, exhorting me to try to get more, more, more. I have learned the tricky skill of closing my eyes just enough to allow me to ignore the metrics and quickly click on the menu item that gets me to the writing platform. I want to take my exhortations instead from you in your notes to me, not head counts.
This all said, I do want feedback and am so very grateful for the notes of encouragement and exhortation along the way these past few months. Thank you. You can always reach out via ned@civicfields.org. Please do. What was most helpful, least helpful? What do you want more of? What have I not done that you think is missing? As I have said here in the past, I do hope to get some other writers involved. And maybe move into other media forms. Your suggestions can help guide me.
For now, then, I will see your inbox again on Juneteenth.
As one of the readers of this newsletter signed off in an email to me, see you in the Civic Fields!
Ned