One of our greatest needs as humans as long as we have walked the earth is Being together with others.. We are social animals. While there is also a need for solitude at times, most of our lives are lived with others. For our entire history and prehistory and history, people have largely lived in community. Yet living in community is not without its pitfalls. Community can be a tremendous source of conflict, internal as well as external. It can also breed conformity and loss of individuality. On the other hand, loss of community, which we often experience in today’s fragmented, atomized world, leads to isolation and alienation.
For countless generations before what we call civilization came into being and absorbed most of the human population into its fold, we lived in communities. Small groups of hunter gatherers lived together, meeting their physical and psychological needs, whether for food, protection or emotional support. The social sphere was cemented through strong bonds which ensured that nearly everyone was looked after throughout life to the extent possible given the circumstances. The sense of bonding and belonging was strong. These were backed up by a rich cultural life, which carried processes of identity, beliefs, values and meaning-making processes that were deeply internalized by members of a community. Decisions were largely by consensus, with shared responsibility for implementation.
Whatever simple tools that were available were accessible to the whole community and resources were shared equitably. Above all these groups established an equilibrium with the environments they lived in, with close ties to the land. Many of these practices carried forward to a more settled way of life when farming emerged and people began to live in small villages. At this time, land was still held as a community managed commons.
Then began the long story of civilization, with increasing population and consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of a few. This was accompanied by growing conflicts over land and resources. Community became increasingly aimed at exclusiveness, of seeking to protect one’s identity by strengthening the boundaries with others. They crystallized around shared but limited identities such as race religion, caste, native language and so on. It became about keeping the Other at a safe distance while squelching the individuality of members within the community itself.
Then, with the onset of the Industrial Era, began great movements of people, from rural to urban areas and across borders. Families and communities wer split up as people moved in search of work. With this came changing lifestyles and in many cases, increases in income. New communities began to form around economic levels, work organizations, professions, political and other interests. But, while these some specific needs and interests of individuals, did not have the quality of living communities.
So people try desperately for a sense of community. We find a dangerous regression to violent fundamentalism and charismatic cults on the one hand and technology–based pseudo-communities on the Internet where people can meet without ever really meeting at all.
However, community as an escape from loneliness can lead to an unhealthy dependence by individuals which, in turn lends itself to conformity and factional infighting. Only individuals who are emotional strong enough to be alone, if necessary can initiate and maintain the ongoing dialogue which is the backbone of true community. While a community needs certain natural boundaries, it embraces substantial individual diversity and benefits from their expression and deployment in action. It has its cycles of close contact and solitude, of expression and silence. It develops its own ways of celebrating happy moments and condoling sorrowful events, of resolving conflicts, redressing grievances, reviewing and refining its ways of action. A convivial and resilient community constantly learns from the actual process of living together and never sets into a rigid mould.
It is heartening to see that, in the midst of all chaos and conflict, we also find seeds of real community sprouting. From large but brief gatherings such as the Rainbow Gatherings and Occupy movements, which involve multitudes who do not know one another individually but are united by common values or vision. At the other end of the scale there are the small groups and teams whether engaged in playing sports, making music or some other creative activity where people enjoy the unique and uplifting experience of being more than oneself.
And in between, you have a growing number of ecovillages and other intentional communities around the world where the essence of community is once again beginning to flower, where giving and sharing is more important than getting and accumulating, where the uniqueness of each individual is valued without competition and conflict taking over, where a slower pace of life, not entirely dominated by the drive to earn more money, can be lived in harmony with nature and ourselves. Our challenge is to nurture these seedlings, these experiments in whatever way we can. The decades ahead pose many challenges, from over-population, resource depletion and environmental destruction, to name a few. Strong communities, more than high technology, high finance and security-oriented structures may be what enables the human race to survive and succeed in these times.
– Chandran