Building Communities - Intro
Five years ago (maybe earlier–just going by the last revision date to get five years), I was working on a comprehensive mission statement for my company. I think it has some things of interest to bloggers, and I welcome your feedback. What follows here is a truncated version of the introduction.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
–Margaret Mead
The greatest of all human endeavors is not the buildings we build, the inventions we invent, or the monuments we create. Instead, it is the communities we build.
We build giant skyscrapers, but then we fill them with communities–communities of entrepreneurs, communities of apartment dwellers, communities of co-workers. Without those communities, the buildings would be of little use.
We invent great things, but then build communities around them–communities of users, communities of fellow inventors, communities of enthusiasts. Without these communities, these great inventions would rust away with hardly a footnote.
We create great monuments, but monuments have a prerequisite of community. Without communities sharing a common hero, a common ideology or a common will, few monuments would ever be built.
Whereever we go, whatever we do, we build communities.
Rich or poor, warrior or philosopher, homesteader or wanderer, we all build or join communities. No matter our faith or lack thereof, no matter our ideology, no matter our race, no matter our color, no matter our age, no matter our sex, no matter our condition, no matter the place, no matter the time, the universal human trait is to build communities.
Make no mistake about it–the Internet represents another effort at community building. It is another step in our evolution and understanding of what it is to be a community. For, even with all our experience in community building, we still haven’t quite gotten it right. Communities are our greatest asset and a great peril. They can serve to unite us, or to divide us. While most build communities to support us, to sustain us, to unite us, others build communities to divide and destroy.
The Internet is no trivial pursuit. It is more than just amusements, more than just shopping carts, more than just instant messaging and chatrooms. The Internet represents a fundamental shift in our understanding of what defines a community. We have learned, but not yet fully grasped, the important lesson that community transcends neighborhoods and nations, churches and ideologies, buildings and distances. We learn that someone just across town shares our concerns and interests–someone who we may never have met any other way–and we feel connected to them. We learn that someone halfway around the world from us shares similar concerns and lifegoals to our own, and we feel connected to them.
One day, the sun that provides us all with light and warmth will die, and the earth, our home, will die out with it. All our buildings, all our inventions, all our monuments will die with it as burnt cinders encircling a dead star. Only by understanding that the things of this world are transitory, and that only positive communities can endure, can we hope that our civilization will not die with it.
1 year ago, I did a marketing project about weblogs with 4 members. I never saw myself making one until a few months ago! I agree that communities are the core of every possible thing good or bad. The internet is a virtual place to connect with people all over the world and a way to express our inner thoughts. It is another way(out of the many) to keep in touch with people and a paradise of information flowing endlessly through virtual space waiting to be discovered. In the end this is all part of a community building process for each thought or comment you sent through virtual space is already being absorbed and divided among the people where the reactions of each people will develop into a community of like minded individuals.
I never used to think much of blogging either!
Since the world is getting smaller, communities on the internet seem to be a logical extension to our need to associate with people who have common interests.
It’s interesting what you say about the world ending (never took you for a doom’s day guy) and I think you make your point well. When you look back on your life, are you going to think about all the great stuff you had? Most people are more concerned about how their own children and grandchildren and the children and grandchildren of friends will turn out.
It’s the community that you build around you throughout your life that defines who you are.
Well, the sun is going to die one day, but I think we’ve got a billion years or so before that happens.
“Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.”
–W. Somerset Maugham
[...] DCR wrote a very good post about building communities and the value they bring. [...]