Striving for a Better Future? Community is the Answer

in life •  7 years ago 

Community is a major sources of resilience as it is within community that we, as the people, have the possibility of being nurtured and cared for. Let's unpack this notion of community here to gain a better understanding of the precise ways in which strong community can support the building and maintenance of a better future.

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(Image: bulmerfoundation.org.uk)

Firstly, community itself is a source of resilience as when people come together, there is an inherent sense of always having someone with the skills, abilities or the desire to help when it is needed. This is obviously a valuable resource.

As a response to globalisation and commercialisation, community has strengthened in recent years, not in the same way as previously, but through a number of interesting initiatives. We can see this through the development of community hubs of various kinds. Some of these have been created around work, particularly for consultants and people running their own businesses (particularly creative businesses), while others have been centred on co-creation efforts. Either way, they bring people together and offer collective resources, and collectivised assistance for people who wish to create something of value.
The key here is that people are starting to organise into collectivities as a response to a number of social tendencies over the last 40 or so years – individualisation, corporatisation, privatisation, globalisation, and so on. These tendencies act against collectivities, as can be seen with the complete destruction of the trade union movement over the last 30 years.

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Community Garden (Image: localharvest.org.au)

Other examples of collective organisation in the 21st century are often facilitated through the internet. Messages are passed among members who then meet face-to-face to carry out their activities. For example, many community gardens are organised in this manner, as are a great number of arts events. Furthermore, many of these types of activities are being organised on a micro-basis. In some areas, people are pulling down their fences to create collective spaces for miniature community gardens which are shared among those who have participated in creating the space. In my neighbourhood, my wife has actually initiated an email exchange of people around the area to advise each other of our whereabouts on dangerously high fire danger days (we live in a high danger area for bushfires). This is a collective activity for the benefit of the members which is facilitated through electronic means.

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(Image: redefineschool.com)

Other wider collectivities include activities/platforms/programs, such as Shareable (https://www.shareable.net), the Post-Carbon Institute (http://www.postcarbon.org), the P2P Foundation (https://p2pfoundation.net), and so on that are actually undermining the traditional corporate methods of organising society and, in some cases, becoming major players. These are all collective activities based around communities of followers and users.

In essence, community is the cradle of the human being in which one can be carried through life receiving and providing help BECAUSE one is part of that community.

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This is a wonderful post that is near and dear to my heart!! I grew up in a very close neighborhood where if you needed a band-aid you just went to the nearest house and asked the "Mom" there for one.

We are loosing so much by not interacting with the people around us. Makes me very sad.

Agree totally @snook. It's basically the only way we're going to get back to what actually makes us human.

Have you noticed that lot's of younger people do not know how to have a face to face conversation? The art of just talking is getting lost.

Many a day a friend and I would spend it sitting under a tree just talking...... I wonder how many people could do that for a whole afternoon now with no phones!

Hmmm, I actually believe strongly that the millenial generation is THE most connected generation in terms of face-to-face interaction since the immediate post-war generation. They have VERY strong friendship ties and are not interested in the same old consumerist neoliberal tripe that's been served up for the last 40 years. I actually think that it's the baby-boomer generation (of which I'm one) that is narcissistic, pathologically individualised, mentally sick (as a population), and complacent, and who have just given up on all their old idealism and who have become the Trumps and Clintons of today's world. It is only the millenials who give me hope for a better world because they oppose traditional capitalism so much.

I guess the only way I can answer this is to say I'm happy you feel there is hope for the future.

I'm a baby boomer too tho at the end of it......and find people my parent's age fall into more what you're talking about then people I am friends with.

I think a lot of it is the environment you have to work and live in that changes how we see what is going on around us, good or bad.

I think you're right here @snook. It really is about our social environment. It just seems to me that the most conservative people I meet these days are baby boomers (and yes, I'm 1960s!) who are always complaining about what they've lost and yet it's people of they're own age who have taken it away from them (because they voted them in). We really do live in VERY strange times.

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Thank you.

Yes yes and a thousand times YES!!! Lovely work dude :)

Thanks so much for your positive comment - creating community is the essence of my work, so it';s very heartfelt. Thanks again.

It seems you and I are in the same field then.

Okay, that is interesting - I am currently putting together a "person-friendly" project management system for people who want to design, implement, and maintain small-scale community projects, but don't know how to get started. The first pilot of the system is happening as we speak into a small mountain village in northern Greece. After this, we will streamline the system and then launch it in Adelaide (South Australia) and in Greece. What do you do?

I help people build YouTube channels and online businesses (because no one in Johannesburg is doing that)... And I'm about four months into a ten-year project which is a traveling carnival that aims to take light, joy and life into the darkest and most treacherous parts of the world. So, I'm a bit of a crazy person, who thinks that a Carnival in a War-Zone is a good idea. But then again - hope is always a good idea ;) It's also the reason I have a mask. Because I have a tendency to find trouble and get stuck in.

Wow! Okay, you have your "bread and butter", so that's great, but this 10 year project is crazy but oh so worthwhile. Have you actually written a post about this? I'd love to know more.

Oh I'll definitely be posting things about it as it develops :p I'm still very fresh to Steemit, so I'm focusing on learning the platform first. I've learned the hard way to be strategic about ideas that are close to my heart :) Trust is the foundation of every strong community, and trust can only be truly created and tested over time. To me that's the only way to demonstrably prove that I'm not just another snake-oil salesman and soapbox preacher.

So what I'm saying is, don't trust a damn thing I say until I earn it. This is the Internet, and I am a man in a mask.

Intriguing and ha ha at the same time!!! Cheers.