Communities

How do I define a community?  I consider a community a group of people consisting of anywhere from just a few to many people that closely coexist, sharing common beliefs, interests, and most importantly one or two main goals.  For example, a neighborhood community or a family usually just strives to live together in peace, a sports team strives to get together to better themselves, and an orchestral community strives to create beautiful sound in sync.  I have been a part of all of these communities and without cooperation, patience, and that common goal, these communities probably wouldn't have lasted very long.

That was waaaaay too formal for a blog and me.  Now I have to break up the formality with this picture of a cat.

Moving on:

What role does a language play in a community?  Most people would immediately say a huge role.  Personally, I'm on the a 419 Productions film crew which consists of 40 college students that gather every weekend to shoot a feature length film.  To work on this production, you must know a certain language, motion picture jargon.  You have to have a good knowledge of a completely different vocabulary.  DIT, DP, AC, F-stop, gaffing, HMI, pull focus, marker, take, rehearsal, and I could be an ass and keep on going.  C-47 is a good one.  Guess what a C-47 is.  Just guess.   It's a clothespin.  Yeah.  Why such a stupid name?  I haven't the slightest clue.  Shows you how dumb jargon can be.  But I say that language doesn’t always necessarily have to play a major role, or any role for that fact.  Look at the UN for example.  I mean of course most of the diplomats within the UN speak an eclectic collection of languages, one main one being English, however a language barrier can’t change people’s beliefs and goals.  Coming from a multi-ethnic family, I personally know that language isn’t essentially a hindering or beneficial quality of a community.  A good example of this is shown within the relationship between my english speaking father and my chinese speaking grandmother.  They talk and talk and talk, but rarely do they ever speak the same language.


Here are a few examples of communities that I've been a part of: orchestras, film crews, television studios, football teams, frisbee teams, rowing crews, my high school and college community, my personal friends and family, of course the list goes on.  Throughout my life I have been in a multitude of communities, many of which were successful and few that were very unsuccessful attempts at being a community.  What keeps the good ones together?  That similar mentality of achieving that single, maybe several main goals.  Nothing else is more vital than this for a community to survive.