I’ve come to realize that I’m building something that maybe doesn’t exist… I feel compelled to research this with Gemini, but it’s not necessary, especially after the conversations I’ve had over the past week.

I want to build COMMUNITY. All caps to distinguish it from how people normally use community. I’ve almost reached the point where I think people don’t really understand what community is… well… I suppose everyone knows what community is, but they don’t know what COMMUNITY is. Before I describe COMMUNITY, I’ll say that I think it exists all over the world, even in the Western world, but the Western world is where people are the most unfamiliar with it.

COMMUNITY is a community where all members of the group are connected to each other by varying, but strong, bonds. The bonds of most communities are centered around an idea (religions, nonprofits, hobbies, etc.) or a person. The bonds to that idea or person can be powerful, bringing people together and possibly creating a sense of COMMUNITY or something similar. After a brief thought, those wouldn’t be COMMUNITY either because a shift in thought from a member or leader will get them ousted or make the community fall apart.

A COMMUNITY is built for the sake of community. It exists to make the members strong because working collectively is infinitely stronger than working individually. I think COMMUNITY will have ideas and leaders as well, but these will be a byproduct of the community, not what keeps the community together.

The second ingredient I’ll add is “communal development”. Basically personal development, but applied to a collective. I looked it up the other day. There are 15,000+ books released in the personal development/self-help space every year. Gemini couldn’t find any real stats about “community development,” but guessed it was between dozens and a couple hundred. I just switched from “communal development” to “community development” there, because I think they’re different things. “Community development” is going to be books about how to build community, which I’m not even interested in because I don’t think they have anything interesting to say (to me). A book on “communal development” would be a book about making COMMUNITY resilient, anti-fragile, healthy, growing it in a healthy way, etc.

The reason I said I didn’t need to ask Gemini based on my conversations is that I was explaining it to some VERY community-centered people. They either told me it wasn’t possible or they couldn’t even understand what I was describing (because it doesn’t exist in the collective consciousness, even if it does exist out there in the world).

I pulled myself away to look for quotes on Gemini… I saw some, but I won’t use them. I’m still working on stopping myself from doing extra work for these posts! I’ll make my own quote.

The imagination needed to create a new world, for yourself, your loved ones, and all people of Earth, is trapped in the quicksand of colonialism and capitalism. Sometimes the movement to break itself free only pulls it in more. COMMUNITY is a requirement to get out and build that world.