Communities

This handbook will eventually hold many resources related to the project Creating Communitas.

People interested may say so: they will be given the permission to add book pages to this handbook.

I think this article should be repeated here so the distinction between the meaning of communities and communitas is known.

There is a need state the difference between communities and communitas.

Communities is a broad classification and includes almost any gathering of people for whatever purpose.

Communitas is a restricted grouping and only applies where there is a felt sense of close connection. In communitas the individual willing surrenders will to a group of individuals. A recent clear example is the video and television series, A Band Of Brothers. In that series Easy Company moves into that magic space called communitas. The individual members of Easy Company willingly surrendered their will to a group called Easy Company. They were bound together by the knowledge they were prepared to die for each other. Whatever it took to keep their buddies alive was their commitment.

There is a need to state the difference between a community and communitas.

A community is a broad classification and includes almost any gathering of people for whatever purpose.

Are Blogs Communities?

Being geographically separate would, at first glance, seem to preclude blogs from being categorized as a community. From the blog point of view this is too restrictive an interpretation of what it means to be ‘in community’. Discussion on a blog is where a relatively large number of people co-operate in a process leading to an action or attitude based on the collective intelligence. This collective intelligence, based on the freely given thoughts of anyone joining the blog, is very enticing. Collective intelligence is one of the signs of community. Reading a blog discussion gives a validity to personal thought often missing in the day to day world – it is approval from one’s peers – a tribal stamp of significance and self worth.

There are already a certain number of communities working for carfree cities.

Here are a few I found. Could you post in the comments below more information on other *active* communities? thanks.

1- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/carfree_cities/ ,
there are more discussion groups at yahoo on the same topic. Just search.
Which ones are in your opinion the most active and interesting?

2- http://www.worldcarfree.net/listservs/ , not specific to any area.

3- I saw a few others, but I have to dig back up the links... I'll update here as I find them.