What Community Means to Me

I figured its probably about time that I do a post that has some direct relevance to our course, so here's one about the topic that Chris addressed to us in lecture 2.

What does community mean to me?



This is a difficult question for me to answer, mainly because of who I am as a person. I generally define myself as a very 'hard logical' person (i.e. the bottom-right quadrant of the BCHC's integral process diagram), to which things are black or white, with anything in the middle being hypocrisy - a trait that I detest. Because of this, I essentially view almost every human being (myself included) as a hypocrite in some way or another. This causes me to often judge people very harshly and cut through the bullsh*t in any situation. These traits, coupled with a slight superiority complex and a healthy dose of introversion means that I don't talk much and form close-relationships far less frequently than others. Now before you start thinking that I'm about to break out in tears or something - I'm quite content in my current situation, since, again, I feel that my way is the only way and the best way! :)

So how does all that sentimental stuff help to answer the question? Well, it helps to explain the fact that I really don't identify with any "community" that I can think of, and so it means nothing to me. Sure, I have friends in the environmental community, the video gaming / nerd community, the popular kids community, but no matter what group I get involved with, I always feel like the outsider. Perhaps this isolation is purely mental and self-imposed, but I feel that I only really connect with people if I can hang out with them on a 1-on-1 basis (and I don't do that with many people, as I would probably find their company insufferable).

At the same time, I am a big-picture thinker and a strong environmentalist, which raises an interesting discordance within me. I have devoted my life to conserving the planet for ourselves and the next generations (and other similar collective, left-wing type principles), yet most of these people that I am trying to save do nothing but irritate or anger me. In that respect, I relate myself a lot to Paul Watson, the infamous captain of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, except that I still view environmentalism from an anthropocentric (rather than an ecocentric) perspective. But why am I anthropocentric if I generally dislike people? ...
Perhaps it is more that I "love the sinner, hate the sin" or what have you. I do think that there is good in people, but that from the point of birth onwards, we all get progressively more f*cked up thanks to every aspect of our society and culture, and once you're screwed up, there's no fix for it (Well, maybe there is, but it would probably take years of intensive counselling-type stuff to get you to change all of your values).

I don't really know how to explain it better than that, and, of course, as soon as I hit "Publish", I'm likely to feel slightly differently, as my philosophies change on nearly a daily basis (although, no matter how much my paradigms may shift, I doubt I'll ever be an outgoing, touchy-feely, top-left quadrant-type person). In short, though, I currently have no meaning associated with 'community' in my life. In a perfect world where we weren't all messed up, I think I might enjoy being in one, but for now, I know that it is not to be, as my judgemental attitude would immediately cause me to self-isolate whenever I came across someone with a different (i.e. flawed! haha) value system than my own.

Now let's just pretend this post never happened and head back to your regularly scheduled interesting news stories...