‘At the crossroads’ By Carl Böker
[I]nhabitants become sensitive to a place and develop natural preferences for the setting where they were born or raised: its panorama, land, climate, or foods. They come to prefer their own region even over other places with better resources.
Accordingly, they come to understand that their region is made for them and they for their region. For them, the region has a wide variety of supreme delights that no other place can offer. Regions come to have indefinite possibilities of development for those who make the effort to discover their hidden potential.
Returning to the Castle after the hunt. Painting by Alexander von Bensa
The region is like a tower that provides inhabitants with a perspective to see the things of this world better and, by comparison, estimate their value. Such a vision does not exclude the appreciation, use, or esteem of things outside the region. Nevertheless, the natural preference for one’s own leads a person not to covet the excellent products of other regions even if they be greater.
John Horvat, Return to Order: From a Frenzied Economy to an Organic Christian Society—Where We’ve Been, How We Got Here, and Where We Need to Go (York, Penn.: York Press, 2013), 274-5.
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