POV

We know the rules of community; we know the healing effect of community in terms of individual lives. If we could somehow find a way across the bridge of our knowledge, would not these same rules have a healing effect upon our world?

We human beings have often been referred to as social animals. But we are not yet community creatures. We are impelled to relate with each other for our survival. But we do not yet relate with the inclusivity, realism, self-awareness, vulnerability, committment, openness, freedom, equality, and love of genuine community. It is clearly no longer enough to be simply social animals, babbling together at cocktail parties and brawling with each other in business and over boundaries. It is our task - our essential, central, crucial task-to-transform ourselves from mere social creatures into community creatures. It is the only way that human evolution will b able to proceed.

M. Scott Peck
The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace

Most of us know the parents or grandparents we come from. But we go back and back forever; we go back all of us to the very beginning; in our blood and bone and brain we carry the memories of thousands of beings...We cannot understand all the traits we have inherited. Sometimes we can be strangers in ourselves.

V.S. Naipaul
A Way in the World