Community

A community is an amalgamation of living things that share an environment. The individual living beings can be plant or animal; any species; any size. What characterizes a community is sharing and interaction in any number of ways. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs and a multitude of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the degree of adhesion within the mixture, but the definitive driver of community is that all individual subjects in the mix have something in common. This is even true in biological communities.

The context of community

From the days of the hunter-gatherer culture, individual humans have learned that there is strength in numbers and that sharing work and resources can be a good thing. The Latin root munus or gift, brings into the meaning of community the aspect of giving of one's self to others. The balance between self-interest and shared-interests within and among members of a group is the crucial factor in community formation. When enough participants in a group develop an attitude of caring for the well-being of the whole, or the common good, the prospect of community is present.

Related Topics:
Latin - Gift - Whole - Common good

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Whatever drives people to cooperate and collaborate in the first place, is not quite as important in the context of community as what makes them continue to associate. Resilient connections between and among people are what is important in the formation of viable communities. Successful efforts by a mix of participants tend to attract the attention of other less connected individuals who may seek to join the group that is succeeding. This tendency, akin to herd behavior in animals, is called Self-organization.

Related Topics:
Join - Herd behavior - Self-organization

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Over time, some parts of humanity have progressed steadily toward more complex forms of organization and control. Hunter/gatherer tribes settled around seasonal foodstocks to become agrarian villages. Villages grew to become towns and cities. Cities turned into city-states and nation-states. The fact that commerce, industry, government and human institutions become ever larger and more complex suggests that humans, particularly those who are conversant with the rules that drive these complexes are themselves driven toward aggregation, amalgamation, and consolidation. When this increase in social capital reaches critical mass, innovations in social networks can begin to work toward a higher context through an inescapable cultural awareness of others. This phenomenon is generally called the emergence of collective consciousness.

Related Topics:
Organization - Hunter/gatherer - Agrarian - Village - Towns - Cities - City-state - Nation-states - Commerce - Industry - Government - Institution - Rules - Aggregation - Amalgamation - Consolidation - Social capital - Critical mass - Innovation - Social networks - Context - Awareness - Phenomenon - Emergence - Collective consciousness

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