Dictionary Online defines community as the following:
com·mu·ni·ty
[kuh-myoo-ni-tee]–noun, plural -ties.
1.
a social group of any size whose members reside in a
specific locality, share government, and often have a
common cultural and historical heritage.
specific locality, share government, and often have a
common cultural and historical heritage.
2.
a locality inhabited by such a group.
3.
Seems sort of cut and dried doesn't it? To me, the word community involves so much more - it is the heart and soul of a group of people, banded together, to grow and learn together, sharing experiences – both happy and sad – and knowing that if the need is there, help will be on the way.
In a way, I guess "community" really means family to me. The community of people – my "tribe" if you will – that I love and care about, that I share life's joys and sorrows with, that I share my faith and beliefs with.
Without community, we're isolated and adrift. With community, we have a strong base of friends and like-minded individuals who offer support, comfort and compassion.
What does community mean to you?
a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing
common characteristics or interests and perceived or
perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger
society within which it exists (usually prec. by the ): the
business community; the community of scholars.
common characteristics or interests and perceived or
perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger
society within which it exists (usually prec. by the ): the
business community; the community of scholars.
Seems sort of cut and dried doesn't it? To me, the word community involves so much more - it is the heart and soul of a group of people, banded together, to grow and learn together, sharing experiences – both happy and sad – and knowing that if the need is there, help will be on the way.
In a way, I guess "community" really means family to me. The community of people – my "tribe" if you will – that I love and care about, that I share life's joys and sorrows with, that I share my faith and beliefs with.
Without community, we're isolated and adrift. With community, we have a strong base of friends and like-minded individuals who offer support, comfort and compassion.
What does community mean to you?
4 comments:
Your post excites me, very much. I have been for a time in thought regarding the nature of mankind. In that we are a whole organism, made up of smaller organisms, made up of individuals. Each organism moves and grows and feeds invisibly, shapeless, made up only by common ideas, these thoughts we share are the interconnectivity that bands people together to a certain end, the lifespan of an organism starts with an idea, grows into other peoples brains with communication, once it reaches a certain size it begins to move about, feeding on other ideas and causing physical change, not just meta (thought). The organism can easily be seen when viewing groups or 3-4 people walking, in a city or urban area, perhaps downtown whatever the nearest town you live by. I have been in Chicago and have seen many organisms, usually two or three people walking, same confidence level, similar facial expressions, you can see mimicry in some, aligning the individual to the group. These small sets I like to call "Loops" being that organisms are defined by thoughts and shared ideas, one can be purposely 'left out of the loop'. It's hard to see organisms if you're presented with only one loop, it's easier to see when you have many loops of varying ideas/looks.
My favorite view of organisms is from space, NASA has all these photos they've taken from satellites of different cities at night, Chicago is a personal favorite of mine but London is pretty awesome since it doesn't have a large body of water next to it, it looks like a big snowflake. The example of organism is illustrated because if you view a city like tokyo at night, it shines green because they use a different type of energy - some gas lamp or something - to light their streets, London and US cities are a more gold color, what you'd expect, the Japanese people have decided to power their lights using another idea different from ours, so they look different from us, the same way that a group of teenagers walking down a street would look very different from a group of old men, or a loop of scientists would look different from a loop of alcoholics.
How does this apply to your post? I had tried to apply "community" as a term to this thought, I like organism though, since I view community as it refers to a place or location rather than a shared set of ideas. Also another organism I see on this planet is an octopus, which has 9 brains, a main brain and then 8 smaller brains, one for each of its 8 arms, I wouldn't call an octopus a 'community' but I can compare an octopus to the organism I speak of easily.
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