Some people believe the panacea to solving the worlds problems is community and somehow community will save us.
Community, my ass.
In this site there is a video of a community burning someone alive because they are gay or witches or some such. These kinds of videos are equally prevalent whether its gays or witches being burned alive on the internet & all horrific for 'crimes' that the community had decided to shun. Most civilized 'big government' societies would neither shun homosexuals or witches, and the punishment of burning someone alive would be considered a totally barbaric and repellent murder, whereas the crime not so much. While I am the first to say indigenous communities have been the utterly corrupted by the impact of western societies, the people burning people alive are indigenous communities, without big government and the closest to living in indigenous societies.
People who bemoan the loss of community are the first to shun their friends, and yet first to embrace 'enemies' as a testament of their even handedness. No doubt amusing to enemies and definitely bemusing to friends.
While those friends who are shut out of communities feel despondent at first, are often quick to breath a sigh of relief from the burdens of the horrors of the community.
But of course, community can be a blessing. It gives us access to peoples influence, perhaps. Using the influence of friends in Jane Austen's society was necessary if one wanted to advance either in the armed forced or in society. However it was deemed unfair. Those with genuine merit were passed over for those with no particular merit because they were well connected.
Yet while I have been part of a community, the request for help has been hinted at but not really forthcoming. Community can be the cement that stops us going insane, but it can be the glue that forces us into insanity because we are taught by small towns that we have to belong, and having to belong, in turn, forces us into miserable holes we don't really fit into in a desperate need to belong.
We all want to belong, but when our friends overstep their boundaries, what do we do? When they don't respect our need for privacy, or our need for space and turn around and shun/or belittle overtures of friendship? Removing ourselves from their community seems little short of paradise, and thankfully, big government society permits us to remove ourselves from the families/towns/countries whence we originated.
Community may work well in certain circumstances, but it is definitely no panacea. There is definitely a dark side to community, especially when dominant personalities decide to shun certain individuals or those with particular characteristics. Most do not want to be shunned by the community and go along with the community's mainstream thought, even fitting into holes they don't fit into, just so they belong. Community can be the death trap of living down to expectations that we are all too eager to escape from.
One of the greatest accomplishments of big government is that it can control the community, the vagaries of fitting into a society directed by the vagaries of strong personality or some male chosen merely by physical strength and their whims of what may or may not be acceptable, such as with the burning of gays or witches. Thank God for Big Government.
Big government doesn't stop communities from forming. And perhaps our best way of wrestling government back from the corporations is the formation of community.
Community, my ass.
In this site there is a video of a community burning someone alive because they are gay or witches or some such. These kinds of videos are equally prevalent whether its gays or witches being burned alive on the internet & all horrific for 'crimes' that the community had decided to shun. Most civilized 'big government' societies would neither shun homosexuals or witches, and the punishment of burning someone alive would be considered a totally barbaric and repellent murder, whereas the crime not so much. While I am the first to say indigenous communities have been the utterly corrupted by the impact of western societies, the people burning people alive are indigenous communities, without big government and the closest to living in indigenous societies.
People who bemoan the loss of community are the first to shun their friends, and yet first to embrace 'enemies' as a testament of their even handedness. No doubt amusing to enemies and definitely bemusing to friends.
While those friends who are shut out of communities feel despondent at first, are often quick to breath a sigh of relief from the burdens of the horrors of the community.
But of course, community can be a blessing. It gives us access to peoples influence, perhaps. Using the influence of friends in Jane Austen's society was necessary if one wanted to advance either in the armed forced or in society. However it was deemed unfair. Those with genuine merit were passed over for those with no particular merit because they were well connected.
Yet while I have been part of a community, the request for help has been hinted at but not really forthcoming. Community can be the cement that stops us going insane, but it can be the glue that forces us into insanity because we are taught by small towns that we have to belong, and having to belong, in turn, forces us into miserable holes we don't really fit into in a desperate need to belong.
We all want to belong, but when our friends overstep their boundaries, what do we do? When they don't respect our need for privacy, or our need for space and turn around and shun/or belittle overtures of friendship? Removing ourselves from their community seems little short of paradise, and thankfully, big government society permits us to remove ourselves from the families/towns/countries whence we originated.
Community may work well in certain circumstances, but it is definitely no panacea. There is definitely a dark side to community, especially when dominant personalities decide to shun certain individuals or those with particular characteristics. Most do not want to be shunned by the community and go along with the community's mainstream thought, even fitting into holes they don't fit into, just so they belong. Community can be the death trap of living down to expectations that we are all too eager to escape from.
One of the greatest accomplishments of big government is that it can control the community, the vagaries of fitting into a society directed by the vagaries of strong personality or some male chosen merely by physical strength and their whims of what may or may not be acceptable, such as with the burning of gays or witches. Thank God for Big Government.
Big government doesn't stop communities from forming. And perhaps our best way of wrestling government back from the corporations is the formation of community.
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