Definition: For the purposes of this conversation I define ‘community’ (with the understanding that this definition leaves out much if not most of what the term ‘community’ is used to describe now) as:
A number of people interconnected in various ways, who feel a sense of identity with the collective as well as a sense of being known and cared about by the others who consider themselves part-of, and who are interdependent with at least some of the others.
A community is an emergent phenomena. You can’t build a community. You can’t manage a community. Instead, if you are interested in community, you can create the conditions for emergence, including structures that reduce the opportunities for malignance.
What to weed out
Some things that will likely lead to toxicity or a failure to cohere:
1. Over-leadered spaces: a community thrives on egalitarian structures. Leaders emerge rather than appoint themselves. Expertise can be offered but not imposed.
3. Too much enclosure: No community can survive when there’s not progress, which requires new people. Lives change, people leave. Newcomers offer the opportunity to see one’s own evolution through others at different stages, and a sense of ownership that comes from welcoming.
4. Too much openness: There needs to be a threshold, a sense that there is connection, purpose and shared identity. There needs to be a sense of consistency with the people you’re with.
5. Dominance: If one individual has power over others, there are limitations on being, and this has cascading effects for the whole community
6. Unstructured interaction: We come into every space with the shapings of our lived experience, our inherited trauma, and many blind spots. When there’s not enough structure, people can miscommunicate, make assumptions, or play power games like ‘helping’ in ways that feel imposed onto others.
7. Too much identity: belonging is both an action and an experience. We choose to include ourselves, and part of growth is rooting out where we might be excluding parts of who we are. Communities can easily develop anti-patterns in which membership depends on suppression or hiding of parts of who we are. Fitting in the opposite of belonging.
8. Rules or weak norms: again, as an emergence, a community shifts and changes. Strong (articulated) norms allow people to be at different stages of development and to feel into how things work. Rules lead to policing and power games. Weak norms lead to confusion and disintegration.
9. Action before trust: trust takes time and is torpedoed by many things, often interaction that doesn’t accommodate full agency or freedom to be.
10. Not enough deep interaction: an essential part of community and belonging is being seen and known. Parasocial dynamics need to be coupled with actual social connection, but also should be voluntary and fairly unstructured. These are the ‘spaces between’ in community.
11. Under-leadered spaces: communities need structures that keep things happening. Much of this can be ‘automated’ in a way with regular meeting times, a standard format, and fallback options. But communities develop leaders naturally and offer ways for ‘leaders’ to be in service or stewardship without authority. Under-distribution of work leads to burnout.
12. Not enough togetherness: frequent, positive interaction with the same people is the basis for emergence. There may not be such a thing as ‘too frequent’ except insofar as it tends to build trust that is more difficult for newcomers to penetrate.