“Community” Is The Most Beautiful Word In The Human Language

The human being is a social animal: Individuals exist in their relationship with others.

As such, we need to belong to communities. Incidentally, the idea of “community” is both a very trendy concept in the digital age and a very old sociological reality.

Throughout our lives, we build or join communities – be they related to family, local, professional, extracurricular, spiritual or political activities. The number of communities to which we can belong is unlimited.

These communities can be temporary* or permanent, and our sense of belonging can be more or less profound from one community to the other.

But, always, our desire to contribute to a community, from the largest, the planet, to the smallest, our household, leads us to be better individuals**.

The responsibilities we assume in communities are also the most important ones in our lives because they are collective. Communities motivate us to care about others and overcome our innate selfishness focused on our individual survival.

Last but not least, communities help us be more open-minded. To take just one example, belonging to a sports community (be it as an amateur practitioner or a team’s fan) may allow individuals to meet with people who are very different from an ethnic, religious, sexual or ideological standpoint – people they would maybe not meet otherwise. The multiplicity of communities to which we belong help us overcome our human singularity.

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* Every time I go to the theater, movies or concert, I say to myself with joy that, despite all our differences, the other spectators and I are an artistic community for two hours.

** Of course, some communities have an evil purpose. Fortunately, they are a minority in number.