Whatever the question, community is the answer
I am at the end of a week which has been all about community. I volunteered at our local Food Forest working bee, facilitated a climate cafe, trained and supervised facilitators to run climate cafes, and attended a day of policy brainstorming between a coalition of environmental groups. It’s been a week of connecting, listening, talking, laughing, learning, inspiring and strengthening.
Being an introvert, I often approach a week like the one I have just had with some trepidation. I fear exhaustion mostly, yet what I am learning is that when I do meet up with people to build community around shared passions and loves, what I mainly I feel is fulfilled. Yesterday at the policy workshop, after a long day of discussions around climate adaptation and resilience, participants were asked to name the feelings they were leaving with. Mine popped out unexpectedly: energised and reassured. Not only by the work we had done together and the directions that were emerging, but also by the experience of being part of a network of diverse backgrounds, strengths, knowledge and ages collaborating in the midst of complexity and uncertainty.
One of the most striking things that came out of the workshop’s questions about what directions we need to head in as the climate and ecological crisis intensifies was how consistently community was in the answer. You name it - energy transition, political reform, food security, land and water care, health, housing, transport, disaster preparedness and recovery and much more - all work best when anchored in community.
Communities are the foundations of the human and more-than-human worlds as First Nations’ cultures have honoured and supported in their traditions over millenia. Yet for decades now dominant neo-liberal culture has promoted individualistic agendas which deny and undermine the fabric of community. Little wonder then that empowering community life features so strongly in the answers that are emerging to address what is failing in human societies and ecosystems today.
Take climate disasters, of which there are more and more around the world. A presenter at the policy workshop from the Sydney Environment Institute told us of their research which showed that the communities who fare the best after disasters are the ones who prioritise bringing the community together before all else. If you want to save lives, share resources, move mountains of debris, feed one another, hold hands and provide comfort, you need community, as a number of survivors of Hurricanes Helene have written about so movingly here on Substack (Katherine Beckett Winship, Renee Eli, Kimberly Carter to name just a few).
Some years back, Rebecca Solnit researched disaster-affected communities, including New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. What she learnt was just how altruistic, inventive and purposeful people can be when ordinary divides break down. And what a great vehicle community action can be for cultivating compassion, tolerance, meaning and selflessness.
The problem is that as heightened as purpose and connection can be in disaster, it tends to wane once the urgency of saving live passes. Especially if community life has not been valued and resourced beforehand. The long phase of recovery that follows emergencies can be gruelling and disheartening. Survivors feel the pressure to resume ‘normal’ life all the while feeling that they and their lives have changed irrevocably. Much too often returning to normal means going back into isolating and competitive ways of living which leave little time for tending to mental wellbeing and physical rebuilding. It’s a tough place to be in, as increasing numbers of people around the world can testify to from experience.
Once again community is a key part of the answer. Healing collective trauma requires collective responses through community, as I wrote about last year in my article Learnings from the Frontline: Community therapies in disaster affected regions in Australia. In my conversations with survivors of floods and fires, what I heard over and over again was that people felt the need to heal together in community, sharing their stories safely while developing caring strategies for one another and their places.
To do this well, communities need to develop resources and strategies for negotiating tough times and collective trauma. Georgie Igoe, a social worker and psychotherapist who works with communities recovering from trauma, points out that:
it is just such an anomaly in this culture that we live in … to actually have a space to breathe and to hold each other in our experiences, [to] not shy away from raw experience and emotion. It feels like part of the decolonisation process … which is transformative and really important in the process of building and rebuilding.
As climate and other systemic disruptions intensify, there is both an opportunity and a crying need to bring communities together, to develop cohesion and resources. To cultivate healing for what is already not working and to be ready to hold together when disasters strike - whether they be climate, pandemic, energy systems failure or some other form of emergency.
Rebecca Solnit observes “how much people want to be members of a stronger society, to be better connected, to have meaningful work [and] how much everyday life prevents that.” To cultivate this greater sense of purpose and belonging, we need to re-order our daily priorities. Taking even small steps into community can make a big difference in developing connections, making life less isolated and more secure.
After these last years of COVID and record-breaking fires and floods here in Australia, I have decided to give my remaining energy and years to community action. I have become a joiner! Both because it’s what is needed and because it’s what I want for myself. So now I am on the committees of both the local Food Forest and my community garden, as well as on the core team of the Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action. At the same time I have steered my climate psychology work towards supporting community conversations, such as the Climate Cafés run by Psychology for a Safe Climate. After burning out as a psychotherapist ( a highly isolating profession!) some years ago , I am loving how rejuvenated I feel by being in community, finding ways to contribute that are meaningful and surprisingly fun.
To nourish all this activity, I have taken up daily actions which anchor me in my neighbourhood, like practicing tai chi in the park and stopping to chat to birds, trees and people I encounter. Having been shy most of my life, I am amazed by how rewarding I am finding it to connect more to the people and places I live amongst, sharing simple loves ( the mulberries are ripe , the jacarandas are blooming!) while working on more complex issues over time (encouraging pollinating insects, building a neighbourhood food pantry).
Research by the Common Cause Foundation shows that most people underestimate how much their fellow citizens care about others and the world. At least until a disaster strikes and our media-driven biases and assumptions are torn to shreds by the spontaneous actions of people coming together to save lives. But why wait for disasters to find that we can have more fulfilling, meaningful lives by acting for common good now? The greater the participation and cohesion we can bring to our communities before disasters strike, the more likelihood there is of turning contemporary crises into a catalyst for regenerative actions that protect all of us together.
Any conversations in community have the potential to build ties and feed creative possibilities. A good place to start is by turning up to community gatherings and initiating conversations about what you care about most. When we share what really matters, finding common values and loves, we cultivate community, honour connectedness and nourish possibilities for collective action. What’s one way you can connect to community today?
I would love to hear from you about your communities, the joys and the challenges, the learning edges and the traditions.
And if you liked this post please tap the heart below so others can more easily find this newsletter. Thank you!
Early psychologist Alfred Adler argued that much mental illness came from turning away from challenges rather than confronting them. I see this happening at a governmental level with politician's ability to say they are taking climate action while increasing fossil fuel production and consumption. No sane people could do this.
Adler also emphasized that humans need to build 'community feeling', to approach facing challenges together. The mature person has to be able to learn to sit down and deal with others in the face of common challenges everyday and otherwise. This leads to a more productive, well balanced life and higher self-worth.
It is good to see this important realisation returning to psychology after years of everything being reduced to disconnected individual problems.
Sally, I thought I had read everything I could read tonight but your article stopped me in my tracks. Yes, to all of it. Community is the way, and as you mentioned ~ it is an intentional path of imitating ecosystems. I will restack tomorrow. And thank you for the mention; that means a great deal.💙🌎