The Art of Community

Belief is a critically important human function. Whether your belief is in an all-creating god, in a family member’s ability to achieve something for herself, in a better future in your neighborhood, or in the reliability of a restaurant guide, belief is what gives us hope for the world around us. Belief can also make human beings surprisingly resilient in intensely difficult and uncomfortable situations.

Opportunity is born in a sense of belief.

realized that the mechanism behind communication in a community is stories

People don’t make money for the purposes of just having money: they make money because it allows them to do other things.

Social capital is the collective family of positive interactions between two or more people. When you affect someone positively, it builds your social capital. This could include being generous, helping someone, sympathizing over a problem, or something else

Social capital is known by us all, but we know it by many different words: kudos, respect, goodwill, trust, celebrity, influence, supremacy, greatness, and leverage, to name a few.

belonging is the reward of a strong social economy.

If there is no belonging, there is no community

the group that generates community, but the interactions within it. These interactions, and the feeling of belonging that they produce, are generated from a distinctive kind of economy: a social economy

The reason why Ben was so involved in LugRadio, why Neil ran the Linux User Group meeting, and why thousands of other community members around the world get together, comes down to one simple word: belonging.