conceptual inquiry regarding meaning » concrete conditions » community
Communities are made up of individuals. Communal conditions therefore basically involve personal responsibility. Yet properties emerge in communities that are sometimes greater than the sum of their parts. Sometimes people in groups behave in ways they'd never behave alone—some good, some bad. Sociology can help us understand this better, as well as economics, and so on.
The heart of any community rests in the capacity its members have for sharing. Sharing comes in many forms. Communication is a form of sharing that can be more or less clear. Exchange is a form of sharing, where what is exchanged isn't necessarily shared, but the enterprise of exchange and the trust underlying that enterprise is. That enterprise can be more or less fair, and so trust can be more or less shared. Feelings can be shared through empathy. There are different forms of empathy, ranging from effortless empathy (already knowing what it's like to go through something) to imaginative empathy (where with great effort one tries to share a foreign experience). But all sharing is active in nature. Sharing is an activity, not simply a state. Even that which is commonly owned must be actively maintained.
The activity of sharing is reciprocal in nature, and so dialogical. Dialogue necessitates an openness to each other—a willingness to give and receive. Just like this Project is to remain in dialogue with Mystery, each of us in some way is a mystery to ourselves and each other. Yet Mystery fundamentally involves a radical openness. In communities we can share the contours of our essential natures and thus come to know ourselves together.
Formally the C-node is characterized as addressing sociological conditions, but that is perhaps the paradigmatic way humans understand a more basic type of condition. The more basic type of condition might be characterized as the process of making common, or the simple exchange of information (when a common ground is established).
C is the limit of U's activity, where we simultaneously ask and answer the central question what is the meaning of existence? given how we're engaging with the world. U of N is the rhythmic mode of attending involved in active intelligibility, the mode of intelligibility that breathes meaning into experience, again, given how we're engaging. As the limit of U, C represents the communing of self and world. In a flow state—that toward which U of N is stretching—the boundary between self and world disappears even as the two remain separate. This is when we most resonate with the world—when we feel as if we belong—when we feel as if we're home. It's to achieve this union with our world (which is mostly social) that motivates our engaged activities in the first place. We ask what is the meaning of existence? because we care.
