WHAT MAKES A COMMUNITY?

A community is simply a group of individuals living together in a given location or gather for a routine habit. It is inevitable for one to belong to a certain community because by nature, man is meant to live amidst other humans thus the saying no man is n island. Just as the writer of Ecclesiastes emphasizes that two are better than one, this presupposes that man should in a way live in a certain kind of organization-community. If the need to belong is justifiable, the next question would be what makes the community that man should live in? John Finnis in his writing tries to emphasize the fact that community is a matter of relationship and interaction, a form of unifying relationship between human beings. This justifies the need to examine what real makes of a community of which man exists. First, a community is a group of individuals that have consciously or unconsciously selected themselves to be part. Sometimes the habits, behavior, race or even employment determines the type of community for an individual. Thus, it coming together as individuals and a group will be formed. According to Finnis, a community is a sharing of life or of interests coming together; the aspect of coming together denotes a group. It is also important to note that a good community will always be that which has same stories shared amongst all the people. These stories help in bonding the community together as the individuals believe that their set principles emanate from such stories; these may range from slogans, beliefs, traditions and norms. This means that the community reasons together at least to the acceptable norms or customs, they will be widely acceptable and practiced without difficulty; this is thinking together of the same proposition in accordance to Finnis. A community has a common struggle. During the black struggle in America, the blacks had one common struggle- struggle against racism which united them for a common good hence they fought had to achieve freedom until they achieved their success. This is the same situation in South Africa where the blacks had a common struggle of the fight against apartheid and indeed they got independence. This means that the community reasoning was communal and that every member of the society understood the importance of fighting for freedom hence contributed for ways of achieving this. This idea of reasoning together is not egocentric as it serves the whole community. Depending on what nature the community exists, language is so important, it is interesting to note that every community will adopt its own language of which when a stranger is at large, they would face difficulty in understanding; this may range from jargons, slangs and unique words or language used by different kinds of people. Finnis writes that the idea of community connotes language which is very important as it serves two purposes, identity and communication. A community needs a leader to grow and develop; a leader helps to organize the community to achieve its intended goals. It has been noted that normally communities with no leaders are very small and also lack collective vision for their particular community. Of course not to mention that there “must be one man with a vision” (as it is the case for Uganda where the President claims he is the only Ugandan with the best vision for Uganda)-rather the leader would help to organize his subject to assume responsibilities. Long term commitment is an important facet of a community. I will compare this to Finnis’ analogy of a family where he says that for a family to be united there should be modes of communication with each other. It takes commitment to tolerate each other for the sake of peace, the community should take this direction-tolerance of one another and this be established as the long-term commitment. In conclusion, reason and selfless is what will help a community, a nation and the world as there will be free sharing, unity and tremendous development all because of the amicable society that is birthed by right reason.