After releasing a video on how the lack of community and connection can affect addictive tendencies, I received a comment that got me thinking. What follows is the video and some thoughts around community.
Of all the communities I have experienced, the ones that, in my opinion, have worked the best, possess the following qualities.
- A meaningful connection to place. Most commonly this is historical and/or cultural. There is some sort of collective identity attached to it. This is the hardest to manufacture and perhaps the most binding.
- A common set of ideas or principles. Ideology is my least favourite. A recognition and appreciation of certain mystical truths would be my favourite. The former is compelled to create rules while the later seems more inclined to be self governing because of the collectives pursuit of the underlying and unifying truths that pervade existence.
- Trusted leadership based on competency and lack of personal interest. This works best when the leader works in service of the principle of seeking truth, as expressed above. The ideal leader, in my mind, has resolved out their personal attachments to life and serves a higher principle. Not an ideal, but something more akin to the search for truth.
In many ways, working with, and creating a virtual community – one that is founded on communication and support of how people might live in ways that benefit life in a broader context – is more appealing than the idea of creating a specific physical community. Not least because of the question of place and land. Personally my connection feels more global than local.
A virtual community that can share ideas about how to help life thrive, that can act as a resource for as many people, across a broad number of areas, is what appeals most. The bigger challenge, as I see it at this time, is avoiding the trap of following leaders that serve personal interest and/or ideologies.