The Importance of Place

Place. Got to thinking about it while riding Amtrak’s Empire Builder between Seattle and Chicago. Does a place shape its people?

Are the folks in Wenatchee, Washington (the sign says “Apple Capital of the World”) different from the anglers and loggers in Flathead, Montana (Flathead Lake is the largest fresh water lake west of the Mississippi)?

There is research that seems to say so. Malcolm Gladwell in his bestselling book, Outliers, explains why many American valedictorians have Asian names. Seems it’s due not to race but place. According to Gladwell, the parents of these students raised rice in their countries of origin, an occupation which requires long hours of hard work. Their children simply applied the ethic to academics.

Similarly, in his popular history of Texas, T. R. Fehrenbach argues that place (and the events that occurred there) have shaped the present day psyche of Texans. He says the lone star state remained a frontier (where survival was dependent on using weapons readily and skillfully) much longer than states like Kentucky and Tennessee (where the fighting was just as vicious but shorter—decades shorter).

Thus, Fehrenbach concludes that our somewhat obnoxious fighting spirit (the famous/infamous Texas swagger) is inherited—from our ancestors—from the land.

Place also seems to matter in the Bible. God told Abraham to move to a better place. Lot was warned to escape a bad one, and Jonah was to visit an evil place and make it better.

My take away in all this? We live in a country that gives great freedom to choose both what we do and where we do it. Perhaps, we should pay as much attention to the latter as we do the former.