Real communities are the means by which we actualize our humanity.
Communities provide
individuals with the tools to be
people.
Active members of prototypical communities regularly and repeatedly engage in meaningful ways with manageable numbers of other members, whom they know fairly well, over an extended period of time. They have the bases for assessing the degrees and the dimensions of trustworthiness of enough of their fellow community members that they feel confident in judgments about who to trust, and in what ways, about different matters of importance. The best communities enable hierarchies fluidly, according to the demands of the moment, with the understanding that hierarchical assignments will change as circumstances do. The best communities foster an ethos of equal rights and of duties and obligations. The best communities afford us the ability to deal with people primarily as the people we know them to be, only secondarily as the roles they may happen to fill.
The end product of real community is nothing other than the community itself, its robust continuance as a source of meaning, trust, self-definition and mutual aid.
Real communities aren't driven by production goals or aggrandizement or scores.
Jobs rarely fully affords us the means of real community. Jobs shouldn't be the principal means by which individuals become people.
Loving Your Job Is a Capitalist Trap
Doing work that is fulfilling has become ubiquitous career advice, but no one should depend on a single social institution to define their sense of self.
