Walk into any contentious city meeting and listen carefully. Behind the debates over setbacks or parking ratios, something deeper hums beneath the surface. People are not fighting about policy. They are defending what they believe gives the city its center.
This is the sound of a sacred, human instinct without a home.
We are all wired with a deep need to belong to something larger than ourselves, to serve what we believe is good, and to build a meaningful world. For most of history, this drive was grounded in the tangible world. It was channeled into the physical craft of a home, the shared story of a community, and the rituals that marked time. Meaning was something you could build and touch.
Modern life has left this instinct homeless.
This happened for two reasons. First, our physical world no longer reflects the dignity we hunger for. It has become artless, disposable, and built for speed, not permanence. Second, many of our institutional containers—the very places meant to hold this fire—fractured, hardened, or began to feel hollow for many.
This sacred impulse did not vanish. It is a world-building energy, and it had to go somewhere. It seeks a grand story, a clear division between good and what threatens it, and a sense of righteous purpose.
Politics, in its modern, totalizing form, was the only container left that mimicked that sacred shape.
It offers a clear story of “us” versus “them.” It provides a “transcendent” cause—the saving of the nation. And it gives a sense of belonging to a tribe in a holy war.
This is the great misapplication of our time. We are pouring our sacred fire onto a false altar. We fight holy wars in comment threads and mistake outrage for agency, but the arguments never resolve. The result is exhaustion, not creation.
Our task is not to scold this impulse. It is to redirect it back toward the world that can bear it.
A city becomes healthy when its sacred instinct is embodied, not just argued about. When people can see their highest values reflected in the neighborhoods they live in, the buildings they gather in, and the shared spaces that shape their daily life, politics regains its proper, limited scale.
Boise Rising exists to help restore that grounding.
This work begins with the physical. A dignified home. A neighborhood designed to strengthen community. A civic realm that honors the human need for beauty and coherence. These are not luxuries. They are the essential structures that prevent cynicism, resentment, and stagnation from taking root.
A community that builds together remembers itself. It remembers what deserves protection. It remembers that disagreement is not a holy war, but a necessary part of shaping a shared world.
The future of Boise will not be decided in comment threads. It will be decided in the tangible, more consequential work of building places that people can trust with their lives.
This is the path out of the noise. We turn away from the false altar and return to the foundations. In doing so, we give our sacred fire a home again.
