Any hope of achieving awareness of civil society depends on our ability to make it strikingly visible and manifestly consequential.

Civil society represents the balance between the rights granted to individuals in free societies and the responsibilities required of citizens to maintain those rights.

1. The individual. Civil society begins with self, the individual, and our private lives. We as individuals must understand the enormous personal benefits derived from a healthy civil society.

2. The community. Almost every element of our private lives depends on the equality of our immediate surroundings—including neighborhoods, congregations, associations, clubs, parks, museums, hospitals, and local government—and the quality of those interconnections depends on collective obligation and performance.

In community, civility becomes an essential aspect of interrelationships and behavior. Civility is to behave as a fellow citizen sharing space, rights, and responsibilities, and reflecting mutual dependence on one another for the preservation of our rights. In sum, it is to be civilized.

3. Government. Most of what government does is not central to civil society—for example, the military, foreign policy, and interstate commerce—but even those functions are ultimately related to freedom and opportunity.

4. Business. The business sector is another valued partner in civil society. Those that accept and fulfill social responsibility greatly contribute to the quality of community and civil society.

5. Voluntary participation. The voluntary, nonprofit, independent sector is central to the function of civil society.

Civil society exists at the intersection where the various elements of society come together to protect and nurture the individual and where the individual provides those same protections and opportunities for others.

The Native Americans believed in responsibility to the “seventh generation,” meaning that every major act of communal life was to be measured for its impact on the seventh generation.

Consider how much we owe to our founding fathers, of whom we are their seventh generation. Consider too that the freedoms they fought for are far less likely to be lost in an apocalypse than through our indifference. PE

Brian O'Connell is the author of Civil Society (University Press of New England), and a Professor of Public Service at Tufts University.

ACTION: Consider some of the things that you can do now to maintain a balanced civil society.