6.0.6 Community Relationships - Overview

Version 1.2 December 2013                                                        (Previous Version)

None of us can live in total isolation, practically or psychologically.  We depend on others for numerous goods and services.  We need a stable functioning economy to produce and exchange the goods and services we need.  Continued isolation drives nearly everyone mad over time.

Virtually everyone is happier, and leads healthier, longer and more fulfilling lives, if they are involved with a community, perhaps raising children, at work, in education or cultural pursuits, in social settings, sports, shared hobbies and volunteering.  We interact with the community as children, hopefully going to school and being cared for, as students, employees, colleagues, employers.  Most of us benefit from a connection with our community, and Chapter 6.6 provides details of proposed guidelines for this area of life.

National and global economics and business are covered in Chapter 7.2, but many community interactions are commercial, as customers, shopkeepers, suppliers, and service providers in the trades and professions and so on.  These relationships, to be effective, must be based on trust, though we must always be on the lookout for occasional sharks.  We are entitled to rely on experts – whether they be accountants, doctors, mechanics or fruiterers – behaving according to professional ethics: to be competent, not exaggerate their skills, and treat us fairly.  We value honest dealings, fair exchange and mutual support, and, mostly, history shows, this is what we get.

We all need to be wary of identifying too exclusively with a single community.  Seeing the world only through the lens of race, gender, caste, class, nation or ethnic group – identity politics – is destructive.  We must value diversity – showing and expecting tolerance, considerateness, politeness, respect – which can easily be done while maintaining social cohesion.  We must value reality, to act as if there is a public reality shared by us all, because there is, if we can find it.

Community involvement should be a pleasure.  We should be able to participate in the community in safety, feeling secure, free from arbitrary arrest, safe from racist or sexist abuse and arbitrary aggression.  But many people feel that they can’t, and for some this feeling is more than justified.

As discussed in Part 7 (Politics), there is a major role for area governments to foster local communities in which people can flourish.  It is equally our responsibility as individuals to promote such communities and play our fair part in maintaining the social and physical environment we share.  Freedom must be tempered with responsibility. 

We can also join communities that are not local, such as scholars or people with shared interests, so we travel to meet, or communicate with others, confront difference and be amazed.

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Community relationships are based on respect and trust: derived from all our core values: truth, diversity, reality, life, love, beauty, responsibility, equality and hope.