Micah Tillman

^{I’ve been working on this one for a long time.
I’ve provided a table of contents, so you don’t have to read the whole thing at once.
But, then again, you don’t have to read the whole thing at all.
Or any of it at all.
So, you know.  No pressure.}

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Table of Contents

1. Background
2. A New Development
3. Basic Thoughts about Communities
4. Sharing Experiences in Communities

a. Type 1: Sharing In “Foreground” Experiences “Within” the Community
b. Type 2: Shared “Background” Experiences “Behind” the Community
c. Type 3: “Outside” Experiences Shared “Within” the Community
d. Summary

5. The Role of Objects in Community Formation

a. Concrete, Singular, Physical Objects
b. Pluralized, “Typical” Objects (i.e., Objects that Belong to Types)
c. Activities and Events as “Experienced Objects”
d. Summary

6. Community Splintering and Identity

a. Objects of Experience that Splinter Groups
b. Communities Seek Identity

7. The Role of Purposes in Communities
8. Conclusions

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1. Background

My choice of some kind of personalism (not individualism, but personalism) as a guiding philosophy has forced me to rethink what “systems and structures are, what it means to “change a system,” what “groups” are, what “cultures” are, and what “institutions” are.

My basic argument so far has been:

Systems, structures, cultures, institutions, etc. are simply sets of decisions about how to look at the world, how to act, what to wear, how to talk, what to think, etc.

A group — and a system/structure/culture/institution/community/country/etc., insofar as it is taken as a kind of group — is simply a number of persons who each and all either make or consent to the same set of decisions.

A group (or a system/structure/culture/institution/community/country/etc., insofar as it is a kind of group) in other words, is not something above and beyond the persons within it and the decisions they each and all make or consent to.

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2. A New Development

But I’ve decided I need to add a new nuance to the theory.

Here’s my newly-nuanced theory.

A group is a number of persons who each and all make or consent to a certain set of decisions and who share a certain set of experiences.

But to explain why I think that making the addition of the phrase, “and who share a certain set of experiences,” is important, I think we should examine what it means to be a community.

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3. Basic Thoughts About Communities

A community is a kind of group, right?  So it’s a number of people who each and all make or consent to a certain set of decisions.

But a community differs from other groups in that a community is the kind of group where everyone knows everyone else–or, at least, where most of the members know most of the other members.

A company, in contrast, is a group where the persons in the group do not have to know each other (or that can exist without most of the members knowing most of the other members).  But there’s an “intimacy” to a community, without which there could be no community.

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In addition to the added intimacy of a community–relative to (at least some) other groups–communities are also marked by a kind of camaraderie that is not necessary for (some) other groups.

That is, communities not only require the members to experience (or “be experienced with”) each other (that is, to “know” each other), but they also require the members to experience the world together.

To put things generally, therefore, communities form around not only a set of shared decisions (about how to act or dress or think), but around a set of shared experiences.

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4. Sharing Experiences in Communities

So, that was the preliminaries.  Now for the specifics.  I want to argue that there are three types of shared experiences around which persons form communities, and thus that there are three ways in which the members of a community share experiences.

I’ll begin with some examples of the first kind of experience and sharing.

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a. Type 1: Sharing In “Foreground” Experiences “Within” the Community

The members of a community “share in” what I’ll call “foreground” experiences “within” the community.

Persons in a church community, for example, share the experience of worshiping together, listening to sermons together, and “fellowshipping” together (which is Christianese for eating food, talking, and having a good time with other Christians).

It’s not just that they all make or consent to the same set of decisions about where and when to meet on what day(s) of the week, about how to dress, about what hymns to sing, and–probably–about how to interpret Scripture and how to respond to the world in light of their faith.  It’s also that they decide to do things together, and thus they have experiences together.

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Persons in a “gaming” community (a community of “gamers”–i.e., of people who play video games), to take another example, share the experience of playing games online together (see The Guild), of playing games in person together, of going to gamer conferences or video game stores together, etc.

It’s not just that they all make the same decisions about what to do with their spare time (i.e., play video games, or read video game reviews online, or watch G4, or pwn noobs, etc.) or what to do with their spare money (i.e., buy new games, buy new game systems, buy better computer hardware, etc.).  It’s also that they make decisions about when and where to do things together, and thus they share experiences.

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b. Type 2: Shared “Background” Experiences “Behind” the Community

The members of communities also usually share certain “background” experiences.

For example, you have churches whose members come from similar backgrounds, and thus share certain experiences of “growing up in x kind of area,” or “attending x kind of church when I was a kid,” or “having x kind of interactions with my parents after I went off to college.”

Likewise, most of the members of gamer communities played the same games in their individual pasts, wanted the same things for Christmas, played on the same systems, watched the same movies, were made fun of for the same reasons by the same kinds of people, got yelled at for the same reasons by their parents, etc.

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Perhaps the most obvious examples of persons forming communities around shared “background experiences,” are survivors’ support groups.

The members of survivors’ support groups  not only unite around shared decisions about when to meet, which message boards to frequent, what books and articles to read, etc., they also unite around shared traumatic experiences in their pasts (and, most likely, around a shared ongoing experience of having to deal with that past trauma).

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So, in addition to the experiences that members of a community share in together, there are the experiences they share in that they have all “independently” had the same (kind of) experiences in their pasts, or outside their community.

Communities, therefore, not only share certain foreground or ongoing experiences–these are the experiences they “have together within the community,” as it were–they also share certain background, or “foundational,” experiences–these are the experiences they “bring into the community from their own pasts,” as it were.

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c. Type 3: “Outside” Experiences Shared “Within” the Community

Finally, the persons in a community share a certain set of experiences in a third sense as well.  They share their “personal” experiences with each other, in the sense of telling each other about the experiences they have “when they are apart.”

When another person shares his or her experiences with you in this third sense, you share his or her experiences at a kind of remove.  You live his or her experience through his or her telling it to you.

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This third kind of sharing is like a mixture of the other two.

It’s like the kind of shared experience when members of the group do something together “within the community”; the experience had by one person is basically the same as that had by the other person.  There’s one experience, and both people “participate” in it, as it were.

But it’s also like the “background” type of shared experience, in that the people sharing the experience share the experience at different places and different times.  The person who originally had the experience experiences the experience when and where it originally happened, while the person with whom she or he shares the experience experiences the experience when and where the other person relates the experience to her or him.

Where this third type of shared experience differs is in the priority that one of the persons sharing the experience has.  The experience is only experienced in the full sense by one person, who then shares it with another.  The second person has the experience only in a secondary, or more passive, sense.

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d. Summary

A number of persons form a community, therefore, around a set of decisions that they each and all make, as well as a set of experiences they each and all have.

However, there is some leeway, as it were.  The greater the number of the decisions and experiences around which the members of the community gather that you share with the other members of the community, the more “a part of” the community you feel (and the more “a part of” the community you seem to others) and the “deeper” into the community you go.

The fewer of those decisions and experiences you share with other members, the more “apart from” the community you feel (and the more “apart from” the community you seem to others) and the further out “on the fringes” you are.

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So, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying that what makes a community different from a simple group is that the members of a community all–or mostly all–”know” each other.

But I think what it means to “know” someone is at least for that person to share a certain amount of her or his experiences with you (in the sense of telling you about them, and probably also in the senses of sharing certain background experiences, and sharing in some of the same experiences together).

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5. The Role of Objects in Community Formation

Every experience is an experience of something.  Therefore, I’ve come to realize how real-world objects anchor groups, by being that which the persons in the group all experience, and thus providing common experiences to the persons of the group which they all can share.

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a. Concrete, Singular, Physical Objects

For example, the building in which a church meets provides the members of the church with a certain set of experiences in which they all share.  They all walk the same hallways, sit in the same pews, use the same doors, etc.

Hence the trauma a church can go through when altering their building or moving to a new building.  In losing one of the primary sources of their shared experiences, or even having it altered, a break is created in their shared experiences.  Those who join the church after the building change will never be able to share some of the experiences of those who “were around back in the day.”

(Remember that passage in Ezra when the Jews return from Babylon, and the older people weep over the new temple?  Their communities had effectively been split because of the loss of the first temple; those who were born in the exile would have never experienced the first temple, and thus could never share a certain set of important experiences with their elders.)

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Likewise, the coffee shop or pub at which a group of friends, or a book club, or a burgeoning collective of political activists meets provides them all with a set of shared experiences.

Even what we might call more broadly cultural objects like the Statue of Liberty for communities in New York City, or the Eiffel Tower for Parisian Communities, or the Cherry Blossoms for communities in DC can provide shared experiences that help cement communities.

Thus, physical objects can act as real-world, concrete anchors around which communities can form, in that they act as a kind of ever-ready source or font of new shared experiences.

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b. Pluralized, “Typical” Objects (i.e., Objects that Belong to Types)

Less concretely, we have those real-world physical objects that come in types, rather than existing as singular entities.  Styles of clothing or cars or hair, TV shows (in which the actors, we might say, are the “real-world physical objects”) which are popular at a certain time in a certain place can provide common experiences for communities (whether they exist then, or will come into existence later).

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c. Activities and Events as “Experienced Objects”

Less concretely, but perhaps more importantly, we have concrete activities (like having to wake up for school at a certain hour, or being let out of school at a certain hour, or making a particular trip to a popular tourist destination, or going to concerts, or having sleepovers, or going on roadtrips) that help provide shared experiences.

Likewise, there are the experiences of participating in an event (like attending a conference or march or rally or wedding, etc.).  For example, to be “inducted” into a community (whether officially or unofficially), you might be required to make a certain trip to a certain place to see a certain object or to engage in a certain ceremony.

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d. Summary

The point with all of this is to emphasize that a shared experience is a shared experience of some “object” (whether it be a single physical object like a memorial, or a type of physical object like a kind of shoe, or an activity or ceremony), and thus that the objects of experience have an important role to play in community formation.

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6. Community Splintering and Identity

a. Objects of Experience that Splinter Groups

However, we also should note that the “objects” of experience can not only anchor a group, but pull them apart.  They can anchor a group if they are experienced by all the members.  They can pull the group apart if they are experienced by only some.  (Cf. the examples of changed buildings above.)

The remedy for those objects of experience that divide groups into those who have experienced them, and those who haven’t, is the sharing of the third type (i.e., the sharing in which one person tells another about some experience she or he has had, and thus allows the second person to share that experience at a certain remove).

The third type of sharing keeps the objects outside the group’s shared experience from tearing the group apart (by exacerbating the natural divergences between the trains of experience of the different members “outside” the community).

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b. Communities Seek Identity

And this might lead us to note the following:

There is a sense in which the effort to create community is the effort of the members to completely identify with each other.  The more the experiences and decisions of the members overlap and coincide, the more solid their community is.

Thus, the members of the community will tend to centralize (i.e., to attempt to gather in or around certain physical places or objects), will tend to do things together (so as to have more shared experiences, and fewer non-shared experiences), will tend to dress alike (as a further means of sharing more experiences), will tend to read the same books, watch the same television shows, listen to the same music, etc.

This is what people usually call “conformity” or somesuch, but might more accurately be seen as the natural expression of the fact that communities are “about” shared experiences, and the more experiences that are shared, the more intimate (the more community-ish, as it were) the communities are.

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7. The Role of Purposes in Communities

Finally, it would seem that many (if not, perhaps, all) communities also unite around a common purpose.  And this is not surprising, since humans do everything they do for some purpose or other.

The question is whether it is necessary that all the members of a community participate in that community for the same purpose.  I suspect that the answer to that question is “no.”

There’s no doubt that having a common purpose can help solidify a community.  Nevertheless, I do not think that having a common purpose is necessary for having a group, and I’ve been intending this discussion of communities as a way to explain why I’ve added “shared experiences” to my definition of groups.

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8. Conclusions

So, what’s all this been about?

As I’ve continued to think about groups and whatnot, I’ve come to the conclusion that a group is not simply a number of persons who each and all make or consent to the same set of decisions.  I’ve decided that a group is a number of persons who each and all make or consent to the same set of decisions, and who each and all share a set of experiences.

This addition can be seen to be necessary at least when one is examining communities.  However, I think the addition applies to all groups, at least insofar as making or consenting to a set of decisions is itself an experience that all members of every group share.

However, the addition has also led me to realize the importance of objects (especially real-world, physical objects) in group and community formation.  After all, every experience is an experience of something (e.g., a monument, a war, a city, a building, a type of clothing, a song, a person), and every decision is a decision about something (e.g., a monument, a war, a city, a building, a type of clothing, a song, a person).

Therefore, to give a complete account of a group, one must not only describe the decisions and experiences the members share, but also the objects of those decisions and experiences.   Those objects help to “anchor” or “center” or “stabilize” the group or community.

Furthermore, this means that if one wishes to alter (grow, shrink, motivate, change, improve) a group or community, one may be able to do so by altering (adding to, changing, removing, improving) the objects of that groups decisions and experiences.

Change the “anchor objects,” change the decisions and experiences, change the group.

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Tags: Communities, Community, Decisions, Experience, Experiences, Group, groups, Objects of Experience