Authors: Trent Hamm
When I walked out of the room that day, I knew I would never return. For four years, I had been heavily involved with a technical community that promoted the use of open source software. When I first joined, the community was a huge personal boon for me. I built several strong friendships, received tons of valuable advice and suggestions, was given a lot of used computer equipment, and found myself with new potential career opportunities. I participated in nearly every event the group held and eventually wound up being elected president of the group. But the group had dissolved into a bitter war over how to organize ourselves: Should we remain an informal gathering of people with the president largely making most of the decisions, or should we become a more formal group with missions and aims? The bitterness of the argument drove people away, including many of the people I cared the most about. When my term ended, I no longer felt the same sense of community. I walked away from the group, but I kept my dignity and a handful of great friends.
August 2001
The economist Adam Smith identified enlightened self-interest, which he described as the “invisible hand,” as the most powerful force in the world. In his words, “by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain; and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it.”
1
Smith’s message was simple: Our greatest successes occur when we work in our own self-interest while simultaneously bringing about positive change in the broader world. Think of Thomas Edison working in his laboratory on the light bulb—his motivation may have been income, but the light bulb brought about tremendous positive change in the world.
Our natural human need for community fits into this equation. We participate in communities with our own self-interest in mind—we
need
connection with other people, and we often desire the wisdom and other resources possessed by others. Yet, by participating in communities in a positive fashion, we get the connections and wisdom and resources we covet while simultaneously improving the lives of others in the community—and often in the broader world.
Participation in a community is perhaps the most valuable thing we can do as people—the value we put in is amplified and returned to us.
One particular example of the power of community that I’ve been involved with in the past is the online community of game documenters—the people who write detailed FAQs and walkthroughs for complex video games. Within this community, people invest hundreds of hours writing extremely detailed documentation, explaining every trick and puzzle to be found within a video game
without compensation.
Over the years, I’ve contributed documentation to this community several times, simply because I get value from these documents myself and I feel it’s worthwhile to give back.
In 2007, Andy Oram of O’Reilly Media surveyed participants in online game documentation and asked them why they invest so much time in this without compensation.
2
Overwhelmingly, the reason people contribute this time is a sense of
community
—a group of people with similar values and interests who share their knowledge and resources freely for the benefit of all. Countless friendships have been built and connections have been made through this process, benefiting the lives of these documenters.
In their paper “Sense of community: A definition and theory,” David W. McMillan and David M. Chavis provide a very thorough definition of a community: “The first element is membership. Membership is the feeling of belonging or of sharing a sense of personal relatedness. The second element is influence, a sense of mattering, of
making a difference to a group and of the group mattering to its members. The third element is reinforcement: integration and fulfillment of needs. This is the feeling that members’ needs will be met by the resources received through their membership in the group. The last element is shared emotional connection, the commitment and belief that members have shared and will share history, common places, time together, and similar experiences.”
3
This clearly describes the type of community many of us seek to participate in, in which like-minded people engage each other and share thoughts and resources openly and without prejudice, creating a shared emotional connection.
In the past, such communities were often found in our local physical area. Without pervasive communication tools like the Internet and cellular phones, we were often connected with the people around us simply by the fact that we lived near each other.
Although this community continues to exist, communications tools have made countless other communities possible, ones based on common interests and other factors but without the physical closeness of a local community.
Both types of communities have some advantages and some disadvantages. The local community is stronger in a physical, tangible sense, whereas a distributed community is stronger in terms of shared information and ideas. The distributed community tends to offer better support in times of stability, whereas the
local community often provides more support in unstable times (like natural disasters and personal crises).
While it’s easy to see the benefits of each type of community, it’s similarly easy to see the problems as well. Having such a multitude of communities available to us means that we often neglect other communities. Quite often, this means that we have a weaker connection to our local, physical community. We no longer know our neighbors as well, but we do know someone across the country that shares an interest with us. This creates a sense of disconnect, as people no longer enjoy the deep connections with the people physically around them as previous generations had.
Both types of communities are valuable
, and we suffer when we miss out on the advantages in our lives provided by either type.
As many of us know, there is a dark side to community. It occurs when the tension between self-interest and the greater needs of the community break in the wrong direction. Unenlightened self-interest takes hold, and an individual, in an effort to maximize the value he personally receives in the short term, devours the resources of the community and effectively damages or destroys it.
In his 1968 paper, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Garrett Hardin describes this phenomenon well:
“Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.
“As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, “What is the utility
to me
of adding one more animal to my herd?” This utility has one negative and one positive component.“1) The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly +1.
“2) The negative component is a function of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decision-making herdsman is only a fraction of -1.
“Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another… . But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit—in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.”
4
The tragedy of the commons pops up quite often. People join committees with the purpose of steering their work in a direction to just benefit a few. Trolls invade online communities to get a shred of personal enjoyment from the destruction of a prosperous group. Individuals will make plans for a group of people that will only be enjoyed by a few members of the group.
Un
-enlightened self-interest is a danger to any community.
How do we overcome this? It’s vital to keep in mind that every positive community has only a certain lifespan—no community is permanent. It’s also vital to remember what communities are actually composed of.
I spent the afternoon cleaning out my desk and talking with my coworkers. It was my final day at my “nine to five” job. I was leaving to spend more time with my children, to write, and to figure out what came next for me. As I took a final look over the documentation I left behind, I realized that I wouldn’t miss the work at all. I had been doing repetitive and unengaging maintenance tasks for years without the creative work that had really lit my fire during the early years of the job. I would miss
the people. I walked across the hall and spent a good hour chatting with Darwin about nothing much at all, realizing I wouldn’t be able to do that again. I walked through the office and said my goodbyes to lots of different people. As I walked out with a box of belongings under my arm, I glanced back over my shoulder. There stood Darwin, a person I had worked with since day one at that job and had become a true friend, looking at me out of the window of his office. He grinned and I grinned back. My job might be over and that community might be changing without me in it, but I would still keep the relationships I had built.March 2008
In the end, a community is made up of a bunch of interconnected relationships. You know a certain group of people, and some of those people know each other. The little clusters of people who know each other and have things in common is a community—you share things, have common values, and help each other.
It is those individual relationships, built up over time, that are the fundamental source of value in our modern world. They provide material assistance, emotional help, and countless ideas. They boost you when times are good and support you when times are tough. They help you get your foot in the door and they give you a helping hand when you need it. A collection of solid relationships with people that inhabit a wide variety of communities is
the
strongest foundation for long-term success today, because social capital pays dividends in ways that dollars can never reach.
Finding a community is easy—all you have to do is identify people with something in common. Do they live near each other? Do they share a common interest? Do they share common beliefs?
Building a community is much more difficult. It requires building strong relationships with a number of people with common interests or other attributes, and then fostering relationships between them. Together, these relationships form a strong safety net for everyone involved—a mutual community of support that can provide far more value than you put into it.
We’ll dig into the power of relationships deeper in
Chapter 9
, “Cultivating People and Opportunities,” but it’s vital to recognize that a community—a sense of belonging—relies on a bedrock of individual relationships, and it’s up to you to bring forth the investment of time and energy to build these relationships.
For many of us, being part of a community can be difficult. It requires some very strong initiative to get our foot in the door—an overpowering common interest. More transient connections are often hard to make; as Simon and Garfunkel once put it, “I’ve built walls, a fortress deep and mighty, that none may penetrate
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain
Its laughter and its loving I disdain.” It’s often easier to not speak up and to be alone.
For others, such outward connection is much easier. They are blessed with gifts that make communication and relationship building intuitive and natural.
Daniel Goleman, in his book
Social Intelligence
, argues that much like some people have a higher IQ, others have a high social intelligence, meaning that they’re able to be successful in many situations. He defines social intelligence as being a combination of a multitude of factors, many of which are learnable.
5
Let’s look at these eight factors in detail: