What makes community

Hi everyone. I'm reading an older book by M. Scott Peck "The Different Drum". It's about community and peacemaking. I'm not understanding too easily so far - he uses a lot of words, I mean a LOT.

So I thought I'd put it out here, for those of you who want to share your thoughts and ideas on the following questions:

1. Define community: a community is ...
2. What creates a community?
3. What is needed to keep a community together?
4. What are some of the threats to a community?
5. What can a community do to protect itself from these threats?

Is it okay if I start, just to get the energy flowing?
1. A community is a group of beings living together in a relatively cooperative way.
2. A community is created by those seeking to connect to others who have the same needs/interests in common.
3. A community needs open honest communication, caring and effective leadership, rules, roles, and a common uniting mission to stay together.
4. Loss of leadership and unfairness.
5. A process in place to ensure continued leadership with one of the rules being commonwealth, meaning all resources are shared equally.

Thank you for sharing! I really look forward to reading some of my community's wisdom!

1. Define community: a community is ...

A community is a group of people living or being within communicable proximity or space.

2. What creates a community?

The willingness to communicate.

3. What is needed to keep a community together?

Acceptance of differences and openness to learning and discovering what such differences are/mean, communication and respect of personal boundaries.

4. What are some of the threats to a community?

Lack of acceptance or openness to learning about differences and lack of communication or respect of personal boundaries.

5. What can a community do to protect itself from these threats?

As individuals we can take responsibility for ourselves within the community. As a community we have a responsibility to talk about issues as they arise for people and to create and nurture fluid solutions, rather than hard rules.

Some general thoughts on this question though, community is a concept and in that way it is very open to individual interpretation. However, it is individual interpretation of what community is that is perhaps the very downfall of human community. Community has so many aspects that are supportive and healing - and yet it's shadow is to create a divide between people within the community and people outside of it and within this divide fear thrives and grows. Thus, since the beginning of records and even in our study of our primate origins, communities have warred with other communities rather than expanded into them.

I think, to create a community is needed first to define respect and understand it, than those questions will not be needed anymore.

What makes community?

The shared orientations of its members. It'll be threatened when someone (a member or an outsider) expect change at a rate that to which the remainder can't adapt.

♀