Defining "Communities"

So… I guess I have a hard time understanding this board. What are the borders of community? How do you define it? Are there multiple communities that you are a part of? Do they overlap? Is viewing community as a specific group with borders something you do? If so, why? If not, why? I want to explore this so that I can describe what I think of when I think of my “community of rewilding” and do it justice. Thoughts? Experiences? Please share your stories, ask more questions. :smiley:

Personally I want to know everyone in a community, if not friends then at least be acquainted with them. Must one know everyone in a group to make it a community? That said there are other forms of community through the web or our neighborhoods, our schools etc. These aren’t fully functioning communities in my mind as they are generally on a scale or basis that doesn’t promote enough face-to-face interaction, but can still lead to good things in the example of this forum providing people with opportunities to meet one another as I hope to do :slight_smile:

Oh boy…family community, work community, school community, neighborhood community, spiritual community, rewilding community. All different with little or no overlap. Such a drag. I don’t really count online groups as real communities, but in the lack of alternatives, I can see it still being better than nothing. How much simpler it must have been in older times, when family, work, school, and neighborhood were all one community? Or when there was no distinction between such categories? When we were all just people living and working and learning and celebrating together? I am always so incredibly grateful when I find a friend who can cross any of the “boundaries” between my different “communities”.

There are communities the way they are now, in this modern world, these are not absolute as any individual among such would be in more than one community, and many having quite a few communities, and these communities consisting of other members with almost all of those having different communities each. But the natural arrangement of humanity was with communities which were absolute, an individual had a place in a community among others, and there was important value on doing things preserving the community, over one providing for oneself, and such individual would not belong to any other community. There individuals of a community lived in a common location where they saw each other, and indeed probably all knew each other, to greater or lesser extent. But with everything done for preserving the community there was stability in how they were living. These are the kind of communities we need now, and any such there would be would need sustainable living in how they live for the stability, providing for needs among them without lessening the wellbeing of the local environments and no dependence on any others.

1 Like

I agree. One of my frustrations is that I talk to a lot of people here on this forum, yet don’t know many of them in person!