On Identity - the individual and the community

The community, as we understand it to be, is an interdisciplinary concept that is very abstract in nature. Shared by the disciplines of biology, sociology, psychology and anthropology- even these disciplines themselves have yet to reach agreement on a definite definition of the term. Dictionary has eluded that concept to the concepts of ‘group’, ‘similarity’, and ‘togetherness’, but biologists tend to further define it to be the group of interacting organisms sharing an environment. Sociologists traditionally understand the ‘community’ to a group of interacting people living in a common location, but with the advent of the internet geography no longer poses a limitation to the concept today. Psychologists identified four distinct elements from ‘communal identity’- namely: membership, influence, integration and fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection. Anthropologists tend to limit the community to ‘settlements’ and ‘culture’.

While these definitions are diverse and infinite, certain definitions tend to overlap and re-iterate themselves. One of the more notable conceptual definitions of the community is the address on personal and communal individuality within the group. Shared by the disciplines of sociology and psychology, this introspective tends to understand the community as a system of personal representations and interpersonal relationships.

German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies distinguishes two types of human association within any community. Known to him as Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, Tonnies argues that ‘family’, ‘Kinship’ and ‘ideals’ comprise of the Gemeinschaft while Gesellschaft is a group in which individuals who make up that group are motivated to take part in the group purely by self interest. These two ideas are shared by Mc Millan and Chavis, who spearheaded the psychological understanding of ‘community’. They believed that the motivation was sparked by influence, the need of integration and fulfillment of needs, and sustained through the ‘kinship’ of membership and shared emotional connection. As exemplified:

Someone puts an announcement on the dormitory bulletin board about the formation of an intramural dormitory basketball team. People attend the organizational meeting as strangers out of their individual needs (integration and fulfillment of needs). The team is bound by place of residence (membership boundaries are set) and spends time together in practice (the contact hypothesis). They play a game and win (successful shared valent event). While playing, members exert energy on behalf of the team (personal investment in the group). As the team continues to win, team members become recognized and congratulated (gaining honor and status for being members). Someone suggests that they all buy matching shirts and shoes (common symbols) and they do so (influence)

It is understood that there is no particular order of the elements.

While the first idea of personal representation is synonymous to the concept of personal identity manifestation, and this is in line with Gesellschaft, ‘influence’ and ‘fulfillment of needs’; we can see that this need for integration is personal and logic orientated. On the other hand, we get to see that the second understanding of interpersonal relationships (Gemeinschaft/ membership/ shared emotional connection) as a foreclosure to ‘sense of community’ is a concept that alludes to one of ‘love’ and ‘intuitive emotions’. Indeed, when we tone down these complex ideas postulated by sociologists and psychologists, we get a very concise and summarized statement:

The community, or the sense of community within the individual, is founded from two primary (and inter-linked) elements- namely for 1) personal interests, and 2) for love and belonging.

In the last post we have made light on the concept of social identity and its relevance to our individualities. We have touched in considerable detail on the possible contradictions of social expectation and personal aspiration and concluded that simple moderation is inadequate a technique should we attempt to find our objective selves and the ‘living best.’ We also understood that love is essential should we attempt to find and integrate our individualities with society. Today, I shall attempt to make the connection between the self, the community, the identity and love.

Do pause for a moment to re-consider the concept of ‘personal identity’ and its relevance to our ‘objective identity’ (or our full identities as of today). Personal identity tells us more about our biological makeup, our personal character, and the way we perceive things around us (via our thoughts and feelings at the changing world). But as I had iterated it is seemingly irrelevant to our well-being; for that is no more than for your personal reference and understanding. I had given a light-hearted example of ‘knowing the nineteen year-old girlfriend’ to highlight this point in my last post. But the essence of this point is that it’s fact that even our personal identities cannot be manifested unless there is someone else (different) to re-affirm our personal individuality.

Consider this thought experiment: imagine you are living in a world exactly identical to this world we are living in. All the buildings in this world are present in that imaginary world, in perfect order and structure- and the same applies for all the flora and fauna of this world. The only difference is in the imaginary world, you are the only person living there. Then one day you ask yourself this question: who am I? You immediately dwell into the concept of personal identity of what you think of the buildings and the flora and fauna and the weather, and you look at your own body to distinguish yourself as a ‘thing’ with a pair of arms and legs. But how do you know these thoughts and feelings make you, you? The only sense of identity awareness is probably you sitting there and considering your existence in that imaginary world. You would not even for a fact that you are a human being unless you’ve seen another human being before- and even that act of seeing and associating, requires sociological identification and emotional connection.

Indeed, the identification for oneself can only realize only after we have associated ourselves with others. Our unique characteristics- our interests, our agendas, thoughts and feelings remain no more as idealistic concepts unless we are able to act upon. Our subjective truths cannot be objective unless there is a form of re-affirmation and correspondence; which in this case, lies in the identification of the ‘others’.

Now that we have understood the essence of sociology and its relevance to our identities, we look back at what we have discussed earlier- immediately, we see that all types of human association are for the primary purpose of personal interests and for love and belonging. Integrating all of these together, we find out that it is actually precisely on the points of personal interest and love and belonging we have actually built our personal identities upon. Without love or the manifestation of our personal interests, we would be just like inhabitant(s) of that imaginary world- soulful, but identity-less.

But why for love and belonging? A personal sense of community entirely out of selfish personal interest may possibly suffice and manifest adequately our personal identities to the point of self-recognition. Alternatively, an identity formed out of hate and mutual exclusion could be founded too- perhaps in the imaginary world we do not need to associate with another human being to know who we are, perhaps the alternative solution is to de-associate with all the animals in that world and shrink down our possibilities to the ‘last option standing’. Analogous to ‘striking out incorrect answers in a multiple choice question to the last available option’, we could still find out our objective identities, without love-

Now, if we were to look back to the dictionary, we also get to see that the concept of ‘togetherness’ is incorporated into the concept of the ‘community’. It is notable that even within the concept of ‘togetherness’, a certain conceptual allusion of ‘unity’ and ‘positive relationship’ is evident throughout. It is even more notable that when the partial concepts of ‘unity’ and ‘positive relationship’ are integrated with ‘togetherness’ and embodied by the individual to his personal viewpoint, it in actual fact is re-represented by the concept of ‘love’. I am positive that we are all familiar to the layman’s aphorism “love unites”; we also know that the concept of love transcends the superficiality of romance and passion. Putting it in a much generalized form, we can say that any form of ‘unity’ between two or more individuals already has a partial concept of ‘love’ within the attachment.

Moreover, while Tonnies had formed the theory of the Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, he had proposed that in the real world, no group was either pure Gemeinschaft or pure Gesellschaft, but, rather, a mixture of the two. Integrating once more, we see that the concept of love (or the partial concept of it in the form of unity) is in every case indispensible in any community. Indeed, we may join a certain community for a particular personal interest, but the concept of personal interest requires a ‘love’ in certain traits of oneself, and we know that it is impossible to love without prior personal identification of the traits of oneself, which requires a sort of ‘positive relationship’ with the prior community. In either equation, we can never escape the requirement of love with the communities we are engaged in. Of course we can maintain that we never loved the previous community but the actions of the previous community; that would now be a question of narcissism, but I believe that is already beside the point.

The concepts of love, unity, self, community and identity are interlinked and come hand in hand. We know from our previous posts that personal identity, although meaningless without social re-affirmation, contributes greatly to our individualities (or what I term as the united self). Personal identity distinguishes us from our peers, while social identity re-affirms our distinguish-ments. We know now that love for oneself can only be true after the realization of others, and that social attachment entails love and belonging. In the next and final post on identity, we’ll have a glimpse of the problems of over emphasis of social identity over personal identity: de-individualization and ‘masking’. We’ll attempt to integrate both ‘identities’ with the same concept of love, and from there find the living best as we speak of today.