When we walk down the street—or more typically today, drive down it—few of the people we encounter know who we are, or what we have to offer.  A small group of co-workers, friends, and family may have a sense of what we're about, but the minute we leave these small enclaves, we plunge back into a vast sea of anonymity.

We've left behind traditional villages and small towns, with their dense networks of personal associations—the kinds of environments where humans have lived for almost all of our existence.  Now we live in endless newly-manufactured “communities” (as we call them) where we live mostly among strangers.

Our primary frame of reference has shifted beyond any physical or geographical entity, to what we think of as the “bigger world” that we see projected on movie and television and computer screens.  Since we never see ourselves there (except for a few trifles we may post about ourselves on social media), it can be hard to escape a certain sense of invisibility.  And if we're invisible, how significant could we be?

It may well be that in today's world, recognition is our scarcest luxury.