Building Community in a Digital Age
DebbieG

Tue Sep 22 02:50:35 1998
Deb and I were chatting about community and what work it is to build and foster a community atmosphere when the members are flung to the corners of the world. I'd just read some good passages on the topic (community in general, but applicable to digital communities as well, I think), so I thought I'd pass them along.*p*This is excerpted from Starhawk's 1988 New Edition of "Dreaming the Dark... Magic, Sex and Politics."* I'm going to post snips, in order to retain the good stuff and skip the typical Starhawk feminist rhetoric <g>.*p*-----------------------*p*We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been -- a place, half-remembered, and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.*p*... Within that kingdom, when we join in community, in solidarity, we too can find sources of strength and renewal -- the true magic that dissolves fear.*p*And so we move toward each other, if only because the battle is too large for any one of us to fight alone. In community, we call forth power in a dimension that moves beyond the interests of the personal self, for power-from-within cannot exist in a vacuum. Power-from-within is more than a feeling, more than a flash of individual enlightenment or insight; it involves our sense of connection with others, our knowledge of the impact we have on others. Power-from-within is the power of the give-away, that comes from our willingness to spend ourselves, to be there for others at the price of risk and effort.*p*...*p*Immanence means that each of us has inherent worth -- yet we cannot feel self-worth because we believe it as a theological doctrine. We feel it when we connect with another person, when we can comfort someone in distress, ease someone's pain, do work that means something to us. We feel our own worth when we help shape the choices that affect us.*p*To call forth power-from-within, to free ourselves, we must be willing to move beyond self-interest, to cease grabbing for the carrot and flinching from the stick. We must be willing to give away.*p*In community, we have power to heal each other and to help each other, power that goes beyond the individual self.*p*-----------------------*p*I've been involved in online communities for <gulp> 14 years now, and the same dynamics that Starhawk sees in physical community, I think we can find and/or build in online communities. It's not easy... takes work, and commitment, and the same kind of willingness to argue, forgive and go forward that you develop with family or with in-person friends.*p** Starhawk, Dreaming the Dark, Beacon Press, Boston, pp 92-96*br*  ISBN 0-8070-1025-1, copyright 1982, 1988 by Miriam Simos*br*