Community:
The enemy of polarization
Community can be abstract and difficult to grasp as a concept, but is more tangible as a perceived quality – a sense of community with other people or belonging to a group is a tangible counterpart to the wide-spread sense of division or conflict in today’s Western societies. We can thus see de-polarization as a community-building exercise.
Community: what is it?
Our concept of community is very pragmatic and down-to-earth. We view it not as a utopian state of social unity or political peace, but rather as a viable process wherein people coexist while respecting their social diversity and accepting political compromise. Such a process obviously depends on stable and efficient democratic institutions, but equally so on reliable and valuable bonds between people. This invisible network, the sum of bonds people share beyond their private lives, is what we would call a community. Community is the fabric of a living democracy.
Community is always present and often flourishing. It is what underpins our extended families, local neighborhoods, circles of friends, teams in the workplace, football fans or even entire nations.
Dialogues enable citizens to bridge ideological divides and rebuild social bonds fractured by rising polarization. Hence, they contribute to re-building communities – be they local, social, political or national.
But there is also a different type of community – one based on diversity, rather than identity. This kind of community underpins liberal democratic societies which profess an equality of citizens regardless of their individual identities, be they racial, regional, ethnic, religious or even national. It is a reluctant sense of togetherness which implies that we are different, often radically diverse, but dependent on each other for better or for worse. Some societies struggle with it, while others have integrated it into their political cultures.
Diversity-based community is the bedrock of liberal democracy – and a target for authoritarian forces. They use polarization to weaken it, while bolstering identity-based communities which those forces rely on for political support. Hence the narratives which artificially pit religion, tradition or nationality against human rights, gender equality or climate protection. This manipulation works due to pervasive fear permeating Western societies, fostering a retreat into identity-based communities and creating an illusion of security in the face of cascading crises.
But what specifically binds us together within a particular community can vary. In most communities, it’s a shared identity rooted in common ancestry (extended families), residency in the same area (local neighborhoods), employment under the same organization (workplace teams), support for the same sports team (football fans) or belonging to the same territory (nations).
