I was noshing on a carrot, of the full-size genre not the baby type, when it occurred to me that life sends us little messages that we either ignore or embrace.
My little message came in the form of a vegetable; an item so simple to consume all that is required is that I wash it before I eat it. This vegetable also happens to be extremely nourishing and if I’m not mistaken good for eyesight. And while enjoying this almost decadent variety of vegetable something extraordinarily simple occurred to me; why do I seek to complicate my diet regimen by introducing chemically enhanced treats that weigh me down? Obvious answer: they taste good, but truth be told I don’t need those things to function let alone be happy.
In taking my vegetable vision and applying that to the realm of communities, I surmised the following:
1. Real communities exist because they are organic in nature. They come from something real, an intangible and innate quality within all of us defined by our desire to connect with something more than just ourselves.
2. Man has made tools to facilitate the connection of individuals within communities, but the simple fact remains that the most engaging online communities are extensions of off-line communities. Even Facebook began as an online extension of an off-line collegiate milieu. (I’m certainly not the first to iterate this, I like this older post from ‘05 that speaks to the socialization of the web)
3. Holism, the theory that the parts of any whole cannot exist and cannot be understood except in their relation to the whole; “holism holds that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts;” it’s almost a creed for community. I’m not a theologist or philosopher by any means, but I’m struck by the simple and direct correlation here. A community as a whole is far greater than the sum of its individual participants.
4. Add your own observations.
On that note, let’s all just KISS (keep it simple stupid).
