Building strong communities is something we perhaps shouldn’t even need to discuss or provide strategies and tools for, but in so many ways, just as we have degraded soils and water, we have allowed the design of our society to destroy communities instead of building them.
How did we lose those concepts? In our culture module we covered some ways that Native American culture was systematically destroyed.
One could say that cultural destruction has happened in American society overall, as well. An exploration of the reasons for this are beyond the scope of this course - it doesn’t matter from the viewpoint that the remedy is the same either way.
In many cases, it appears to be a matter of unconscious design and an omission of whole systems thinking; a loss of understanding of the importance of beneficial connection between all things.
Let’s look at some of the ways that community building is discouraged or cut across. Doing so gives us an idea of where a different design approach could rebuild communities, by reversing the process. Humans are naturally herd creatures.
We have always banded together in groups, and worked together to survive and to achieve things. We can achieve these things on our own too, but even a great artist who sees the world in unique, independent ways, depends on galleries, marketing and an audience (as one example).
Yet, here we are, sitting in our rooms in front of our computers, alone - interacting only through a screen. Too many of us don’t know our neighbor’s names, we don’t have a community support network when we need help, and loneliness is an epidemic in some ways.
How did things get this way?