The Dark Side of Community

 In holistic education, there is often a great deal of attention paid to the value of communities. Community, as the word suggests, is about "communal ties", and this idea often relates to the idea of interconnection that is highly valued in holistic circles. However, I would like to suggest that communities are not always necessarily about celebrating commonalities and getting along with everyone. There is a dark side to community, as witnessed in famous "cults" throughout the world, where people begin to suspend their critical thinking in favor of attachment to a greater whole. The other dark side of community is that it can stunt a person's growth by granting them a sense of identity that is neither complete nor completely genuine. Sometimes the ideal of community overshadows the complexities that make up and individual.
   Are there ways to avoid succumbing to unhealthy attachment to communities? I think an important element in all of this is to understand the ways that unmet needs get projected onto communities, as though the latter were universal "cures" for many of our psychic wounds. Depending on how the leaders of the community will respond to these projections, one will either succumb to the illusions of an ideal, all providing community, or will start to develop a more realistic understanding of what it means to serve a community. Letting go of the fantasies one has about communities being all-giving and "always gentle" could be one way to get on with the real work involved in community building.