Fred BartelsWhat are the components of healthy well functioning communities? This is huge question comparable in complexity to the similar question regarding cellular organisms. There are, of course, organized systems (as with cellular organisms) and the identification and understanding of these components is a way to productively work through the complexity of communities. I’ll be investigating these systems in the weeks ahead.
The base components of organisms are cells. The base components of communities are people. Both cells and people can specialize to perform a huge variety of roles. The essential major difference as components is that cells play one role while we play multiple roles and can rapidly switch between them. This leads the life forms created with cells and the life forms created with people to be very different beasts, but both life forms nonetheless. Let’s consider how this works.
Another major difference between the cells of organisms and the people of communities is that people are semi-independent animals, very special and highly domesticated animals that have evolved for millions of years to be parts of communities, but still very much animals, with many of the selfish attributes that we associate with animals. The miracle of human communities is that we’re often able to tame enough of our selfish animal instincts to live together relatively peacefully in communities.
Communities are a strange mixture of being partially concrete and partially diaphanous, ephemeral and gossamer. Schools are a perfect example of this. School buildings are solid and semipermanent but the staff and students flow in and out of the structures in fluid and ever changing daily and seasonal complex patterns of activities. What’s true of schools is true for the other activities that communities must perform to thrive and support their parts. It is a beautiful dance of evolving life.