The State of the Porch

As Jason’s tribute yesterday to Mark Mitchell indicates, FPR has gone through a season of transition in the past few months. It’s quite remarkable that this duct-tape-and-baling-wire organization has continued promoting a localist vision over the past sixteen years even as much has changed, both on the Porch and in the broader culture. To start with the latter, FPR began in the aftermath of the Great Recession and the discovery that large financial institutions were deemed “too big to fail.” Perhaps, Porchers suggested, if a corporation is too big to fail, it is, quite simply, too big.

Yet dangerously behemothic corporations have only centralized more power in the intervening years. From Facebook to Amazon to Microsoft to OpenAI to SpaceX/Tesla/X/Muskville, large corporations wield immense power. In the government, executive power has increased unchecked regardless of which party happens to be in charge. The populist backlash often veers between lone-ranger individualism and efforts to seize more power in order to punish perceived enemies. Through it all, big tech, big government, and big business grow unabated. Nevertheless, FPR continues to host a conversation about how to foster genuine local, communal alternatives to centralized power—whether that power be economic, political, technological, or informational.

Consider, for instance, the way that Substack promises freedom from media gatekeepers but does so by promoting a model that rewards “content producers” who build individual “platforms.” FPR, however, offers an opportunity to engage other humans in conversation around a set of shared commitments. We read and respond to all submissions, and we give substantive edits to the essays we publish. We publish review essays that respond to the apparently archaic and passé technology known as the book. We do our best to cultivate good-faith discussions about localism, neighborliness, place, and humane cultures. This is all increasingly bizarre and rare in a culture awash in AI-slop and influencers vying for attention.

As has been the case from our founding, our commitments to place, limits, and liberty set us outside the typical battles that mark today’s public discourse. Commentators from Christopher Lasch to Paul Kingsnorth have noted how the culture war between left and right, progressive and conservative, tends to involve tussling over scraps while the real problems metastasize apace.

In recent months, for instance, I’ve been struck by the way in which most people have a visceral, almost aesthetic response to various AI technologies, yet this doesn’t map directly onto the partisan landscape. Those who marvel at the latest gadget can be found on both the political left and right. And those who are horrified by generative AI’s reach into ever-new corners of our lives can also be found across the political and cultural spectrum. An increasingly important divide today, as Wendell Berry (the patron saint of the Porch) observed in 2001, is between those who wish to live as creatures and those who wish to live as machines. FPR aims to gather and encourage those who aspire to a creaturely life even in a machine age. The creaturely coalition may be less organized and underfunded, but it’s way more fun than the machine coalition—the jokes are better, the friendships last, the food tastes much better.

The absurd ways in which AI is being deployed—machine friends, machine séances, machine artists, machine education, machine intelligence—are revelatory: more people are now recognizing the flawed assumptions underpinning a culture that seeks to replace humans with machines. That, I think, is why FPR is growing. There is hunger for sanity. 

Our website received a total redesign this spring thanks to the generous and skilled work of Dan Beltechi. Since then, our online readership has continued to grow, and we average well over twenty thousand views per week. We had a wonderful gathering at Baylor this fall (with the best BBQ ever enjoyed at an FPR conference), and we will be announcing the dates (Oct. 9-10, if you want to put it on your calendar now) and initial slate of speakers for next year’s conference in Indianapolis shortly.

Prompted in part by Mark Mitchell stepping down as president of FPR, we’ve done a bit of reorganizing. Some things won’t change: Jeff Polet remains as treasurer, I am still the lead editor for the essays we publish on our website, and Nina Tarpley is still our managing editor. Jason will continue editing Local Culture, but he’s handed FPR Books over to Matt Stewart’s capable hands. Matt Miller, Adam Smith, and Elizabeth Stice are assisting with our publishing imprint, and we have some very promising books in the works. John Murdock continues hosting the Brass Spittoon podcast, and Michial Farmer has launched a weekly Porcher-style music show.

We’ve been able to continue and grow because of the incredible generosity of people who have given money to support this mission. Adam Smith is now stepping up our fundraising efforts (the bar was quite low), and we’d greatly appreciate any support you might be able to send our way, either in the form of a one-time gift or a recurring donation. If you have questions or want more details on that front, feel free to contact Adam.

We’re grateful for all the Porchers who read and share our essays, subscribe to Local Culture, attend our conferences, and—most importantly—seek to imagine and practice creaturely modes of life in their own places and communities. The challenges confronting such healthy, local efforts are substantial, but as Berry reminds us, it is the impeded stream that sings.

Image Credit: Georg Heinrich Crola, Bachlauf bei Ilsenburg (1841)