Community is everything in the age of isolation
We didn’t get here, 315,000 years after the emergence of our species, individually.
The anonymity offered by large societies that individuals can cloak themselves in today is a nascent, recent phenomenon. Homo Sapiens survived for 315,000 years because the curious, social animal learned to rely on other Homo Sapiens successfully, sharing and exchanging so that the young could protect the old, the strong the weak, and the wise could teach their life lessons to the young up-and-comers. We lived in small units. We lived with extended family. We were accountable to one another. What emerged over millennia as our traditional survival strategy contrasts sharply with the new realities of living in the modern world. With the primacy of the individual and widespread adoption of city life, the erosion of community values is amplified by pervasive technologies that isolate people despite promises to bring them together.
We didn’t get here, 315,000 years after the emergence of our species, individually. Being able to count on one another to share, exchange, compare, and compete is the framework for our success. Living and learning in the proximity of others forms an integral part of the human experience. The community, with the social norms and rules it implies, has always been at the heart of our survival and led us to overcome the challenges we encountered in our various living environments across centuries.
The graphs below illustrate the temperature and sea level changes throughout humanity’s tenure on planet Earth. Our collective ancestors survived three cooling periods with global average temperatures much colder than they are today, for example, and a warming period exceeding the 2 degrees Celsius our contemporary watchdog the IPCC is eager to avoid. They also survived competition with Homo Erectus, Homo Floresiensis, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo Heidelbergensis ultimately winning the battle for survival out of the humanoid group. In short, we are here because they overcame what pacha mama threw at them. May our genes prevail.
The adaptation of Homo Sapiens to the challenges encountered on this planet explains much of what we can observe in humans today. We have these particular teeth from our omnivore past. Our bodies developed defenses to withstand extreme heat and extreme cold. We have eyes sensitive to contrast and movement because our ancestors needed to be expert hunters. Over time, our brains were modified to better adapt to our social and intellectual needs and desires.
Researchers found that the skulls of Homo Sapiens gradually evolved from an elongated endocranial shape to a more globular one. “Two features of this process stand out: parietal and cerebellar bulging. Parietal brain areas are involved in orientation, attention, perception of stimuli, sensorimotor transformations underlying planning, visuospatial integration, imagery, self-awareness, working and long-term memory, numerical processing, and tool use. The cerebellum is not only associated with motor-related functions like the coordination of movements and balance, but also with spatial processing, working memory, language, social cognition, and affective processing.” Our minds and bodies are shaped over time by the features of our environments and the demands we place on them, adapting to better navigate physical and social challenges. “Human beings are able to pool their cognitive resources in ways that other species are not… made possible by a single very special form of social cognition, namely, the ability of individual organisms to understand conspecifics as beings like themselves who have intentional and mental lives like their own.”
Psychologists have long studied in and out-groups. Individuals tend to favor members of their group and discriminate against members of other groups. That bias is “associated with activation in the amygdala, a brain region involved in emotional processing and fear.” When participants in a study “viewed the faces of individuals from their own racial group, the amygdala was less active than when they viewed the faces of individuals from other racial groups, suggesting a heightened emotional response to out-group members. This bias may have evolutionary roots, as it might have facilitated group survival and cohesion in ancient times.”
The implicit recognition of in and out-groups is one of many inherited traits from our tribal past that shape how we process the social environments we encounter today. “Carving the world into ‘us’ and ‘them’ is a fundamental aspect of social cognition.” We differentiate between groups based on many factors, but it has been found that “morality is central to how group members perceive themselves and evaluate others; perceptions of moral divisions are salient in forming in and out-groups.” We are predisposed to in-group bias, to favoring members of our community over others.
Surrounded but lonely
It’s a strange, new phenomenon that someone can feel acute feelings of loneliness while surrounded by millions of other humans. In the history of humanity, it’s a new reality that we have never had to face. In the world’s largest cities like Tokyo, Delhi, London, Shanghai, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Paris, and New York, where there are great concentrations of humans, people report feeling lonelier than in rural environments. The paradox is alarming but logical when considering how our brains are wired after hundreds of thousands of years of communal living. Despite the physical proximity between people in a city environment, emotional and psychological proximity does not often follow, and it’s this particular paradox that sends our brains into chaos (along with sensory hyperstimulation, air pollution, reduced access to green spaces, and plenty of other ‘unnatural’ conditions of the city environment).
An enormous lifestyle change has been upon our species since the advent of the modern metropolis. Organization into “societies” has overtaken our traditional “community” structures.
Let’s define terms.
Let’s say that community is the feeling you get when you’re in a group of people who know each other, where you can ask each other for favors and expect that most people in the group will treat you well. Negative social behavior will likely lead to a bad outcome. It’s also the condition of sharing or having certain attitudes and interests in common.
Let’s say that society is the feeling of being a small fish in an enormous ocean, where a distance between strangers exists in a large group of people who live together in an organized way. In society, it matters less what you say or do to a person you encounter or interact with because chances are, you’ll never see them again. There is a much diminished negative social outcome for bad behavior towards others.
The meaningless, shallow interactions with coworkers that accompany close-quarters individualized cubicle environments, surrounded by people you have little if nothing in common with, working towards an objective that provides little personal motivation or reward—a product of society. Meeting up with friends and family for dinner around food that everyone enjoys and conversation that stimulates the group—a feature of community.
Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft
That’s German for community and society and in 1897, German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies was hard at work trying to describe what was happening around him as traditional communities transitioned to modern, more individualistic societies. In a sociological treatise, Tönnies explored the dichotomy between two types of social organization: Gemeinschaft, representing community or traditional society, and Gesellschaft, representing society or modern industrial society.
In a Gemeinschaft, social relationships are characterized by a sense of community, organic solidarity, and a strong attachment to shared values, traditions, and norms. Interactions within Gemeinschaft are based on personal ties, face-to-face relationships, and a sense of belonging to a closely-knit community. Tönnies sees the family, rural villages, and small towns as examples of Gemeinschaft.
Gesellschaft refers to modern, industrial societies where relationships are more impersonal, contractual, and based on individual self-interest rather than a sense of community. In Gesellschaft, social bonds are often weaker, and individuals are connected more by economic transactions and formal institutions rather than shared values. Large cities, industrialized societies, and complex organizations are seen as examples of Gesellschaft.
While Gesellschaft brings increased individual autonomy and freedom, it also brings a sense of alienation and disconnection as individuals become more independent and less reliant on close-knit communities. Tönnies observed a historical shift from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft as societies underwent industrialization, urbanization, and modernization. He argues that modernization leads to a decline in traditional community bonds, replacing them with more formal and rationalized social structures. He is critical of the potential dehumanizing effects of Gesellschaft, arguing that it may lead to a lack of social cohesion, a breakdown of community, and an increase in social anomie.
Tönnies emphasized the importance of maintaining elements of Gemeinschaft within Gesellschaft as he witnessed the inevitability of societal evolution towards Gesellschaft. He recognized the significance of intimate, personal relationships, shared cultural values, and a sense of belonging in fostering social cohesion and individual well-being. He advocated for preserving and nurturing Gemeinschaft-like qualities to ensure social harmony and human fulfillment.
Hyper-connected tribespeople
Before the advent of larger, communal human gatherings in small cities or towns, humans survived ice ages, famines, animal and humanoid predators, and natural disasters over those millennia of existence in tribal groups. This means that our genetic memory is imprinted with the inherited social norms of hundreds of thousands of years of tribal life. Tribal living is what we are pre-programmed for and has influenced how our brains are structured. Research has shown that our “ancestors lived in small groups, necessitating cooperation, coordination, and the development of social skills like communication, empathy, and cooperation, all favored by natural selection. Perceiving others as part of our group activates the brain's reward system, fostering loyalty and preference,” and it “activates the brain's empathy circuit, promoting compassion and cooperation.”
But what does this mean for our species when we propel ourselves forward into the modern world? What happens when our predisposition for community living is confronted with the demands and stresses of city life now that more than half of the global population lives in urban settings and two-thirds will be urbanized by 2050?
There’s no use arguing that modern society isn’t a kind of paradise. The vast majority of us don’t, personally, have to grow or kill our own food, build our own dwellings or defend ourselves from wild animals and enemies. In one day we can travel a thousand miles by pushing our foot down on a gas pedal or around the world by booking a seat on an airplane. When we are in pain we have narcotics that dull it out of existence, and when we are depressed we have pills that change the chemistry of our brains. We understand an enormous amount about the universe, from subatomic particles to our own bodies to galaxy clusters, and we use that knowledge to make life even better and easier for ourselves. The poorest people in modern society enjoy a level of physical comfort that was unimaginable a thousand years ago, and the wealthiest people literally live the way gods were imagined to have.
And yet.
—TRIBE, Sebastian Junger
Have our brains been able to adapt to the rapid technological changes of the last 200 years after thousands of years of programming? Our always-on, technology-immersed, globalized society has been around for less than 0.1% of our species’ existence.
The underlying assumption is that modern city life is necessarily alienating and isolating, and although it can be so for many people, it isn’t always the case. People naturally strive to create havens of Gemeinschaft within the Gesellschaft. There are ample opportunities to find community in cities, around shared interests, shared language, culture, etc. all the more made possible by social media and online groups when used healthily.
Social media and digital communication platforms, while allowing for virtual connections, substitute for real, face-to-face interactions. While social media platforms laud their networks for encouraging community values of “connecting people,” studies show that the “use of social networks is strongly correlated with the development of anxiety and other psychological problems such as depression, insomnia, stress, decreased subjective happiness, and a sense of mental deprivation.” Our collective transitioning from ‘communities’ into the age of ‘societies’ has been accompanied in the last two decades by platforms that accentuate and exacerbate the most prevalent mental health conditions linked to urbanicity: symptoms of depression and anxiety.
We are late apes communicating with other late apes on the other side of the planet with technology most of us cannot explain. We are tribespeople holding microcomputers in hands designed to grip wooden and stone tools. We are the products of thousands of years of human evolution in the natural world thrust into the cold, artificial world of machines and metal. Let’s give our brains some time to catch up and remember what they’re built for.
Finding Gemeinschaft
“Human beings need three basic things in order to be content: they need to feel competent at what they do; they need to feel authentic in their lives; and they need to feel connected to others. These values are considered "intrinsic" to human happiness and far outweigh "extrinsic" values such as beauty, money and status.”
—TRIBE, Sebastian Junger
In our journey through time, we have witnessed the evolution of Homo Sapiens from tribespeople navigating the challenges of the natural world to denizens of modern society, shaped by the forces of urbanization, industrialization, and technological advancement. Our collective history is marked by a profound reliance on community, a bond forged over hundreds of thousands of years that ensured our survival amidst the changing tides of our environment. As we navigate the complexities of our modern existence, we are confronted with the paradox of unparalleled connectivity alongside a pervasive sense of isolation. The dichotomy between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, between the intimate ties of traditional community and the impersonal structures of modern society, underscores the enduring importance of human connection in fostering social cohesion and individual well-being. In this age of hyper-connectedness, may we strive to rediscover the essence of Gemeinschaft, to cultivate authentic relationships, and to forge meaningful connections that anchor us in a world often adrift in the sea of progress.