Information and comments on the essay:
Communities and their essential limits on personal freedom
From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee
Find out more, including where to buy books and ebooks
Read or download this essay as a PDF file at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4eNv8KtePyKTkF5N0Q0WmRzZGc/edit?usp=sharingCommunities are inherently intrusive, coercive, and very necessary
 |
| Chum For Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters |
Communities and their
essential limits
on personal freedom
“No man is an island.” Communities are the foundation of
civilization. It is almost impossible to be entirely self-sufficient. We need
each other for our variety of abilities, interests, and ideas. Our individual
differences make us stronger as a group.
Farmers understand that monoculture crops require extra care
because they are more vulnerable to disease and disaster. Colonies of
single-cell bacteria do not need diversity in the same way because they just
reproduce rapidly to consume whatever they find and then die back.
For people, it is easiest to create communities when
everyone shares mostly the same values. But, the more we isolate ourselves from
others who are different in some way, the more extreme, intolerant, and
fragile, our group becomes.
In the natural environment, thousands of
