Community is a condition of mind, not of place. Until modern times, community depended so much on face-to-face communication that most of us still think of a community as a town, city, or neighborhood. But the sense of community comes from repeated interactions within a group over time. Historically, communities grew from family to clan to tribe to nation. Religions spread as groups with a shared understanding of truth, of how the world came to be, and how members of the community should behave.
We get along and get ahead via politics. For the most part, we do politics in our communities. We politic when we communicate, socialize, organize, and express our expectations. We shape our friends' mental models, accommodate their worldviews, and meet their needs while talking about shared priorities.
We politic in many different communities, some geographic, some specialized, some social, some online. A community is any group with which you communicate regularly and share priorities. In your town or city, you share a desire for good roads, schools, and trash collection. You may work to pass a bond issue, or elect a member of the school board. In a neighborhood, you share a desire for personal safety and green space. You may lobby for more street lights or participate in neighborhood watch. In a faith community, you share priorites for adequate facilities and sympathetic outreach. In all these settings, a positive problem-solving approach with kindness bears fruit in strengthened communities.
Today with modern media and competing voices shaping our view of reality, communities are larger, more fractured and overlapping. Through social media, we see community develop among those who share values and understandings but not location. Now we find ourselves communicating more frequently with colleagues at work or friends at play, not only in our hometown, but also in distant places. Likewise, we know that some who live near each other may not communicate and therefore not belong to the same community; for example, a Jewish family and a Palestinian family may belong to very different communities even while they live on the same street.
Most of us find ourselves in a bewildering amalgam of overlapping and hierarchical communities associated with our family, neighborhood, age, hobbies, ethnicity, religion, sports, and more. As we communicate with one another, we share our "mental model" which gradually becomes a working picture of reality for the group. This shared view of reality becomes a foundation for the group to choose collective actions and build institutions.
To describe community this way does not mean that the community is any more rational than the individuals within it. Collective mental models are as subject to being incomplete and biased as is a single person's model. While a community can take "the edge" off some misperception of reality, an individual leader may sway a group to serve or disserve the group's "real" interests.
A sense of community and community activities live in a circular relationship. Community values affect what activates a community and community activities affect those within the community. Community activity may secure a playground for children or elect a candidate to public office. National and international communities may form around an idea, the way Optimists did, or an issue, as the League of Women Voters did, or a special interest group the way the AARP did. Not all members of a community have the same attitude toward community pursuits, but community members are willing to share their opinions and are willing to listen. Through such conversations and agreeing on how to disagree, communities grow.
