Community

person

I've been thinking about community lately. What is it exactly, what are the pros and cons, who's included, who says, etc.?

For now I just want to share a good article and open it up for others to share what it means to them.

https://medium.com/centre-for-public-impact/what-is-community-2e895219a205

Jeroen

I view these things as a series of concentric circles of decreasing involvement, at the center there is you, your children and partner, your parents and siblings, your extended family, friends, acquaintances, community.

It’s interesting to see what binds the community together, often in the past here in the Netherlands this was a belief and a church.

person

A different approach than I've seen on homelessness, as being due to a lack of community. The idea being brought in is that of being an intentional neighbor and creation of community support.

Notably this is something other than a naturally formed community or government programs. I hear it saying that its not just difficult times that cause people to become homeless but a lack of community support to help them weather difficult circumstance until they can get back on their feet. And I also hear it being different than soulless, faceless government support in that there are people mixed in their lives bringing life and connection.

Relating it to the thread on community I wonder about its sustainability and scalability as it relies on altruism rather than organic community bonds. This distinction between intentional and natural community, and how it fits into what is community.

P.S. just want to also promote the channel Straight Arrow News as a good place to sus out partisan bias in media.

Vastmind

The community groups I’m currently a part of (about 3 or 4) ….were started and have been held up by the favor economy concept…. Or some say the Benjamin Franklin theory/effect.

https://dailyutahchronicle.com/2024/08/31/opinion-choose-community-not-capitalism/

I’ll give specific examples later… I’m at work… gotta go

person

@Vastmind said:
The community groups I’m currently a part of (about 3 or 4) ….were started and have been held up by the favor economy concept…. Or some say the Benjamin Franklin theory/effect.

https://dailyutahchronicle.com/2024/08/31/opinion-choose-community-not-capitalism/

I’ll give specific examples later… I’m at work… gotta go

I wonder how much of my world is too narrow, this is kind of how my everyday life is. My major social connections are my extended family who lives in a rural part of the country and helping each other out is sort of the norm. People ask friends and family to help them reroof their house or get a ride to the airport. In my professional life I've been independent most of my life and in dealing with my customers they're largely generous and helpful and I try to do good work for them, not cutting corners and going the extra step.

But this is all in a capitalist society. So when I hear about people feeling the need to take this sort of action I don't really connect. Like I said, perhaps I'm not really plugged into the larger society in the same way as most.

Maybe its something like @Jeroen mentioned with concentric circles of concern. There's a greater level of anonymity and lack of community in larger cities, I don't know my neighbors very well. There's a saying, something like communist with family, socialist with friends, democratic at the local level and libertarian at the national or global level.

More specifically to the idea of a sharing economy. I have doubts about its viability on a large scale, it feels more like charity than an economy, generosity than reciprocity or a shared commitment. Helping disadvantaged people without community to lean on is a positive activity, but would I be able to go down to the Home Depot and pick up a hammer on social credit? Then there are relative values of things, will the brain surgeon (and the team around them) trade their services for my mowing their lawn? What about free riders and cheats? Will people give their best if someone down the street can get the same stuff with half the effort or act honestly if cheating doesn't have costs? With community ties there is a reciprocity and enforceable social consequences that break down in a fragmented world.

Jeroen

Hmm. The kind of community you mention @person where people work on social credit is rare here, from what I’ve seen. The Netherlands has some socialist aspects, like housing for the disadvantaged is organised by the government and there is a fairly comprehensive benefits system, but it also has a trading mentality, “voor wat hoort wat” or “if you get something, you should give something in return”. This means that a lot of people here are either independent or pay their way.

The places where this doesn’t hold true are in volunteering, there is a big group of elderly and disadvantaged people who volunteer their time for all sorts of non-paid jobs. Circular shops which find a second home for used items are often part of this system.

Linc

@person said:
I've been thinking about community lately. What is it exactly, what are the pros and cons, who's included, who says, etc.?

I've been wrestling with this question for 20 years and wrote about it in 2020.

The word is unfortunately "loaded" — it means many things to many people. Whenever I've tried to create a tight definition, I've gotten vehement pushback from people that believe their model counts as community too, even though I disagree. The digital world has challenged us by creating so many novel ways of interacting but not giving us the words to capture the nuance.

More recently, I've written down five beliefs I have about community. They're not meant to say "your definition isn't real", but rather to draw a line in the sand about what I'm pursuing when I talk about it in the context of software.

person

@Jeroen said:
Hmm. The kind of community you mention @person where people work on social credit is rare here, from what I’ve seen. The Netherlands has some socialist aspects, like housing for the disadvantaged is organised by the government and there is a fairly comprehensive benefits system, but it also has a trading mentality, “voor wat hoort wat” or “if you get something, you should give something in return”. This means that a lot of people here are either independent or pay their way.

The places where this doesn’t hold true are in volunteering, there is a big group of elderly and disadvantaged people who volunteer their time for all sorts of non-paid jobs. Circular shops which find a second home for used items are often part of this system.

This is what I thought @Vastmind was proposing in the article she linked. Yes, this "trading mentality" I think is what I'm talking about in terms of my experience of the world. But lots of people say that isn't the way things work in the US, so I'm thinking maybe I'm living in a sort of bubble of my own, largely divorced from a more transactional attitude.

person

@Linc said:

@person said:
I've been thinking about community lately. What is it exactly, what are the pros and cons, who's included, who says, etc.?

I've been wrestling with this question for 20 years and wrote about it in 2020.

The word is unfortunately "loaded" — it means many things to many people. Whenever I've tried to create a tight definition, I've gotten vehement pushback from people that believe their model counts as community too, even though I disagree. The digital world has challenged us by creating so many novel ways of interacting but not giving us the words to capture the nuance.

More recently, I've written down five beliefs I have about community. They're not meant to say "your definition isn't real", but rather to draw a line in the sand about what I'm pursuing when I talk about it in the context of software.

I recommend Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion to a lot of people. He talks quite a bit about what binds groups together. An excerpt from an Medium piece about the book.

Moral reasoning serves social agendas. Moral reasoning is a skill that evolved to justify our actions and to defend our teams. Haidt argues that morality evolved to help humans function in groups. While our moral instincts foster cooperation and cohesion within a group, they also make us hostile to outsiders. This dual effect — morality as both a binding and blinding force — is one of the book’s central ideas. Once a group makes something sacred for example, the members of the group lose the ability to think clearly about it. “The true believers produce pious fantasies that don’t match reality, and at some point someone comes along to knock the idol off the pedestal.” Haidt cites studies on group selection, which suggest that communities with strong internal cohesion often outcompete those that lack it. For example, moral systems like those found in religions help enforce norms and build trust within groups. However, this same mechanism blinds us to the moral reasoning of other groups, which makes conflicts between groups likely. Haidt illustrates this with examples from modern politics, where partisans see their opponents as morally corrupt or irrational rather than as people operating from a different moral framework. This “us vs. them” mindset can lead to entrenched divisions and a breakdown in communication. This is why it’s so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth (such as an intelligence agency or a community of scientists) or to produce good public policy (such as a legislature or advisory board). Practical Applications: In a political or workplace debate, make a conscious effort to step back and consider how the other side’s moral reasoning might make sense within their context. This builds empathy and reduces blind hostility.
https://medium.com/@RationalBadger/my-7-takeaways-from-the-righteous-mind-by-jonathan-haidt-086fd0e8369d

I liked your pieces you linked to and found them thought provoking. I think I'd say that since you'd like to avoid a sort of classic top down authoritarianism, its also possible for a bottom up sort of authoritarianism to develop, a sort of mob mentality. I feel like this bottom up element gets missed because historically its mainly the top down variety that has been such a problem, but the internet world presents new possibilities.

Shoshin1

Community

Thus is my experience

When social groups form close-knit communities they all have something in common...a communistic goal

My experience is as follows. In every genuine community I have been part of, whether a family, a sports team, or a neighbourhood, I have seen the same principle at work. There is an unwritten, communistic logic where people contribute what they can and support each other based on need, not on keeping a ledger. This is not the grand political ideology of Communism, but the practical, small "c" communism that is the essential glue of any group. It shows that the words community and communism are not just linguistic cousins. They describe the same fundamental human impulse to create and protect what is common.of community is as follows.

Bearing in mind, both terms come from the same old Latin root word, communis, which just means "common" or "shared by all".

If we dig a little deeper, we find that as a community, we are all, on some level, small-"c" communists....

I know that to call some Americans the "C" word is seen as blasphemous

lobster

As a community of One (many persona and voices) I am not a team player

BUT I thought @Linc was on the right track. It is compliance with diversity and allowing of differences.

I'll join but...
I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/04/18/groucho-resigns/

person

@lobster said:
It is compliance with diversity and allowing of differences.

This is the tension that I find interesting. A study that I believe was also in The Righteous Mind on small, intentional communities (like religious or hippish communities, for example) the greater the number of shared behaviors like wearing the same clothes, required attendance at religious meetings the longer the community lasted. Which I think is pointing at solidarity and group cohesion. I think some of the left gets that these days too the DSA does things like including pronouns in bios and introductions, land acknowledgements, and snapping instead of clapping.

But self expression and diversity are also valuable strengths, so how to balance those things?

I think the Greek word Telos is helpful. Its about ultimate purpose or aim, a main telos of a university is knowledge production.

lobster

Telos is a good word. New to me.
Most of the eldlings (seniors) here have a vast range of knowledge and experience.

It is something we share in different ways. Just as we welcome questions from noobs and varied quarters:

• Experts may be too advanced for some of us.

• There are strange aspects to Buddhism and science and well...
  sea slugs that incorporates photosynthesis
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysia_chlorotica

• Knowledge is an acquired empowerment

Linc

@person said:
its also possible for a bottom up sort of authoritarianism to develop, a sort of mob mentality.

This is the type I was most concerned about in my first decade or so of moderation & group organizing. It was the primary reason for accepting that Brian and I were "benevolent dictators" and the underlying rationale was that these aren't civic spaces, they are opt-in, and so little of tangible value is lost (to you) if you choose to leave, so why be concerned so much with its governance?

I now think it was a useful but overly-convenient perspective that allowed me to ignore some of the tensions therein.

(This is not an invitation to rebellion lol)

lobster

@Linc said:
(This is not an invitation to rebellion lol)

Oh well. Was looking forward to the rebellion.
Will have to look elsewhere or just enjoy some free time...