15. Reimagining Community

Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world

So I keep coming back to the anti-maskers, how their refusal to do this one easy thing sounds so angry, so rebellious. But might they have something to rebel against after all? Today we look at the concept of community that dominant American society inherited from Europe, in which community exists to mold people into similarity, making individual freedom a prize to be won through struggle. The dichotomy is visible in conservative communities, like the one I grew up in, but it runs throughout American society as well—for instance, in education (turning students out in identical batches) and mass marketing (same devices, same clothes). I’ll never forget when I glimpsed a different way—from Malidoma and Sobonfu Somé of West Africa, who said that “community exists to help individuals remember their purpose.” What a radical idea—that a group can enhance individuality and nourish the uniqueness of each member! We need this radical reimagining of community to pull together during a pandemic. And reimagining community will give us much more adequate tools for addressing the climate crisis and healing our broken relationship with the rest of nature.

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