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I really strongly disagree with the sentiment of this comment. I've been living and working in a very ethnically / culturally diverse non-profit charity organisation for several years now. We're a Christian charity, so there are strong religious ties across the board, but huge cultural differences. A sense of community is far more developed by the shared experiences together, rather than just the similarity of past culture. I always had a very strong sense of community with the people I did my initial training with, and the people I worked with every day. Much less so with the people from a similar culture. I'm currently living in Carlisle, in the North of England. Very mono-cultural, very white, working class, etc. There's really not a lot of sense of community at all. After the flooding a few years (shared experiences) there was. But here now? No. Most people just sit at home in the evenings watching TV, and never do things together (much shared past / culture, they often watch the same shows, but no shared experiences, so little sense of community). My wife and I work quite hard to deliberately develop community, inviting people over for meals, (board-)games evenings, barbecues, etc. But the thing is now, you have to be deliberate about creating community. It's no longer automatic. Personally, I blame TV hugely. It's far too easy these days to spend all ones free / down time disconnected from the people around you. The internet just continues the trend. In our organisation, on board our ship(s) ( http://www.logoshope.org/ ) which doesn't have TV, when people started having their own laptops that were able to watch TV series and movies on, we saw a huge shift in community, from people in free time hanging out together and talking, playing games, exploring, etc, to people sitting on their own in their cabins playing computer games, watching TV / movies, etc. And the sense of community suffered. |
There's a huge difference between active and passive experience. Listening to a lecture is a passive experience. Asking questions is an active one. Watching TV is a passive experience. Playing a board game is an active one. The exact definitions can be a bit hazy, but the major concept should be fairly clear.
This is why in longer training courses / workshops run for a bunch of people from different communities, rather than from an already established one, there's often an 'icebreaker' game which is interactive and requires active participation, rather than just watching a funny cat video, or listening to a talk straight away. Even if the game is a little bit boring, or if you don't remember anyone's name, you have now all got at least one shared active experience, and a (slight) sense of community. If there's already a sense of community, then this is less needed, obviously. This sense of community is then useful for getting people to offer assistance to each other, be more likely to ask questions, make team discussions / activities later on much more interactive, and so on.
It's why there is a sense of community on slashdot, here, github, etc. and many many communities on reddit, youtube etc. but bbc, cnn, amazon, netflicks, etc. don't (much). Even if many many people watch BBC, or the same tv series on netflicks, and spend hours watching the same content as other people there, there's very little active participation. Often any active participation is lost amongst all the other noise, rather than becoming a shared active experience with other people. 30 people watch a glove and boots video, make their own responses, and watch each others videos, and maybe make responses to those responses. They will feel like a community. 300000 people watch it and 'like' it, and then go on to watch a video about kittens, and maybe like that too. They may enjoy their time, but won't feel like a community.