Seth Kaplan (Part 1): How Our Neighborhoods Impact Our Souls

Seth Kaplan Part 1

Segment 1

What’s up, y’all? I’m so pumped to be back. This week we have a real humdinger of an episode, talking about something that you might not think about, but affects you every single day: place. 

Our guest today is Seth Kaplan, who wrote the book Fragile Neighborhoods. He’s an expert on fragile states but took his knowledge and expertise that is usually applied to volatile nations and examined the social decay in modern America. 

Place is a concept we think about a lot on some level and NEVER on another. Like, we consider where we are and where we want to go pretty often. Probably on a daily basis. But we rarely consider how our environments: homes, workplaces, schools, parks, common spaces and churches, shape our relationships. Whether we know it or not, we are profoundly impacted by the design of where we live, work, eat, shop, and worship. And that design has changed dramatically over the last few decades… whether it’s good for us or not.

Listen to Seth talk about this.

Segment 2

I really enjoyed talking to my dude, Seth. We joked around that we practically recorded an entire podcast before I hit record. I definitely want to talk to him again.

In his book, Seth spends a lot of time talking about the difference between place-based community and network-based community. He’ll define it well in this segment, but it’s important to note that network-based community is VERY new and has been enabled by technology. Up until very recently, all humans have been dramatically limited by our place. Our ancestors lived almost their entire lives in a bubble of a few miles. Think about that! Even our grandparents were constrained by where they happened to be born. But, that’s not the world our kids live in now. And that matters. How? Listen to Seth.

Segment 3

I love the concept of THICK and THIN relationships. That’s really good terminology for us to adopt that I think could bring more clarity to how we define community. I know that it’s MUCH easier to have a lot of THIN relationships than even just a few THICK ones. That’s something to think about this week.

Part 2 drops next week, where Seth and I dive deeper into the role churches and places of worship can play in healthy community. 

In the meantime, pick up his book Fragile Neighborhoods by Seth Kaplan wherever books are sold. Love y’all and I’ll see you next week!

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