It is valuable to be a member of a small world.
1) It helps to be able to edit one’s exposure, so as not to be swallowed up by churning of the big world: http://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/magazine/jonathan-franzen-is-fine-with-all-of-it.html
2) It helps to be able to say “that’s not how we do things here,” to have an alternative world with its own culture and rules. Not a whole alternative world that is necessarily in active battle with other worlds over culture and rules, but a clear and unapologetic alternative. (This is what I appreciate about my institution– particularly, that I can speak as a member of a small world, and not just as an individual. It’s not that this isn’t how *I* do things, but that I, as another voluntary member of this institution, follow its practices. Despite how you may operate elsewhere, we don’t do things that way here. This is what is meant by the concept of “The Third,” that thing which situates and stabilizes the dyad.)