🧶 Communities
Why don't we see them everywhere?
🍃 Some Invitations Before We start 🍃
Before getting into this weeks musing on communities, I want to share Find Enlight’s upcoming gatherings this Tuesday, freshly curated list of events around town (both in the first link below) & for those who have been to Find Enlight events in the past it would mean a great deal if you could fill out these 3 quick questions on your experience.
🕯In Light of. . .(Book a space for the next gathering This Tuesday)
🎑 Please Complete these 3 Quick questions on your past find enlight event experience
Communities Communities Communities. By now it’s likely you’ve heard people, organisations or governments all claiming that they want to create more communities. I mean this project (find enlight) might also be guilty of wanting to create community. I mean who could argue with that. The evidence now clearly shows that being part of a community has numerous personal and social benefits from quality of life to social cohesion, innovation and much more. From this logic we (myself included) might jump to the next question how dow we create vibrant communities, whats the right principles to instil, criteria to follow, platforms or colour of text to use etc. However before we get into the details of creating communities a question that is rarely asked is this - why don’t they already exists? Or why does it seem so that so few communities exists. Did more exist before & if so why don’t they exists anymore. I find these preliminary questions open up a whole new field of enquiry. Rather than simply trying to grow a plant in an inhospitable environment, these questions might invite us to consider what are the broader socio economic contexts that make it soo difficult & even hostile towards natural communities forming.
This predicament of community building reminds me of a story I once heard which stated that the idea of an art gallery in some indigenous cultures sounded so ridiculous because why would you create a separate place for art when it is embedded in everyday life. When I initially heard this sentiment I was thrown of course because I love art spaces, music venues and so on... but when I thought about it a bit longer I realised that you can only have a world of bottled water when the previously abundant waterways have now been absolutely polluted and turned into a private commodity. Don't get me wrong I think its beautiful that we are now recognising the wonders of community, nature and art but this fetishisation is also a sad reflection of the scarce nature of these once ubiquitous qualities in our life's.
All of these beautiful experiences of community, art, and healthy ecosystems, should be an essential and primary outcome of our socio economic cultures and how we measure our systems success, not a mere after thought, that is then further commodified as a luxury for the few. I could go on with a long list of things that have now somehow become a luxury like a home, healthy food, thriving ecosystems, lack of war and now communities or the ability to hug someone without the fear of a global pandemic.
Despite all of these systematic factors that inhibit communities from naturally emerging I don’t want to give the impression that I believe we should hold our breathes until the system changes before we can engage in developing communities. In some ways in order for us to create long term structures that cultivate communities we have to engage in practices that make communities more likely. It’s a funny kind of chicken and egg situation.
At this point I could go on to list a number of factors underpinning a communities ability to flourish. I could state easily found buzzwords online like aligning values, group chemistry, connection, communication or in some cases looking at the neurophysiological compatibility between people as a predictor of a group, organisation or communities success. In fact as an exercise in the process of writing this article I also came up with three ingredients as a foundation for a healthy and vibrant community. The ingredients are Time, Space & Care.
⏳ Time in the deep sense of both financially affording to engage in activities that don’t make money and having the mental/ emotional bandwidth to engage with others.
🎑 Space deals with the thoughtful, life affirming and non extractive design of both physical and virtual spaces for connection discovery and such.
🫂 Care has to do with being intimately invested in the long term success of a group because you are bound up in it, rater than the current day version of groups where you both benefit and lose from the ability to drop people and block them as soon as things become difficult. Care also has to do with being considerate of both your internal psycho social dynamics and the power literacy of groups as a whole.
However, despite all of these nice sounding words, models and no matter how useful I find it to consider all of these factors mentioned above when developing a community, organisation or broader social cohesion. I cant shake the feeling that these lists of factors, traits and guidelines for building communities are too narrow and myopic in their assessment. It feels like there is something more fundamental to consider, something around the broader axiomatics of the system that preceded these factors. If we can start to look at these broader factors, while we build communities with what we have, I think we will be more on track to creating long lasting bonds, connections and solidarity between people.