Building & Fostering Community

A community doesn’t have to be a cult. It also doesn’t have to be composed of meanies that would be constantly measuring you and would ostracize you over trivial stuff. Furthermore, community isn’t necessarily something vapid that only the weak would seek. There is strength in numbers, cultivation of potential, and so much more.

Maybe you’re used to being a little (if not quite) odd and the mere idea of being part of a community scares you. Maybe your past experiences didn’t serve you or did you dirty. Or maybe you’re just so solitary that you assume any community would be too taxing for you.

The thing is that there are countless ways in which a community can be built and fostered. They don’t have to be stiff and strict. They don’t have to follow ridiculous rules and comply with absurd norms. They don’t even have to be actively participated in. You can find and, if not, make your own kind. And as long as people are safe and happy there, it counts and prevails as such.

There are a few qualities essential to communities. Everything else is optional and can be tweaked. However, be careful of what you change or remove - what may seem arbitrary may in fact be fundamental to one or more aspects of it. Put shortly, they are:

• Sharing, exchanging, and cooperation.

• Similar interests and/or aspirations.

• Sense of belonging and security.

• Specially fulfilling events and activities.

• Survivability against potential and future threats.

Now, you’d have to ponder what these fully imply and how they would apply to the kind of community that you can bring about.

For example, many communities thrive on firm hierarchies and defined roles. And this would fall under what it means to have a sense of belonging and security. Treating everyone “the same” sounds good in theory but doesn’t quite work in practice when it doesn’t consider what people are contributing, what their preferences are, and if they have limitations that should be accommodated. It is nuanced work if you hope to get it right. And there may be plenty of trial and error.

As another example, it might seem as though competition should be banned, but competition fits under what’s sharing, exchanging, and cooperating. If it doesn’t get so malicious and harmful that it destroys relationships, it’s merely a means to encourage development and improvement among those competing. They’d have to be mature enough about it, though. Or have someone around with conflict resolution skills to smooth things out and help them through any tensions.

It is simple, yet complicated. And it depends. Different challenges come with different types of communities. If they’re large or small. Diverse or uniform. Going against the odds or going with the flow. And if you’re serious about it, it is a full-time job to figure out what’s best for it and implement it.