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We have much cause to worry but neither comfort nor clarity will come if we fixate on widening polarization, Constitutional crises, or warring cultures. Those maladies are symptoms of a more profound distress.

Cobb Hill isn’t the only way to find these six things, thank goodness. You’ll find them in smaller groups and larger ones, in cities, in the tropics, on the coast. In this time of transition and reflection in my own family, I hope that knowing they exist in one place might make it easier for you to imagine (or create) them elsewhere, too.

I think of the motto of the French revolution: liberté, égalité, fraternité, but especially the word fraternity—which meant that everyone was united, everyone was together in the struggle. The best possible interactions with neighbors, or with the government, are predicated on the understanding that we are all in this together.

Ours is a relational world, not a world of billiard balls knocking into one another trying to gain advantage. The space between things or people isn’t empty, it’s full of something invisible to the eye, yet viscous and buoyant, a carrier wave that we can sweeten with our thoughts and feelings.

Indeed, we speak of our planet, our environment, and even our wildlife. That’s what mythology looks like: not facts, but an interpretive wrapping.

The mythology of “Mother Culture” [modernity] will become ever-present. It will be harder to interact with and tolerate the people around you who drink in this tale without awareness. In their eyes, you’ll be an unrelatable weirdo: isolated and alone.