"I do not address myself to nations but only to those few people amongst whom it is taken for granted that our civilisation ("Kultur") does not drop from heaven but is, in the end, produced by individuals. If the great cause fails it is because the individuals fail, because I fail. So I must first put myself right." -C.G. Jung (1)

A community's value rests in the linking together of diverse individuals who share a common ground or neighborhood-creating vital relationships-promoting individual human potential. However, the notion that all in a community must be "good citizens" would destroy true diversity and leave a community unchallenged, without the tension needed for constructive social development.

A "both and" approach to community embraces difficult opposites as Andrew Samuels, in his book, "The Political Psyche," suggests, "If love and hate do not always have to be linked in so-called normal ambivalence, then there is a place for both community spirit and ruthless selfishness. They do not have to be seen as canceling each other out."(2) Samuels further suggests the value of constructive tension: "Nor is it unethical to try to subvert the system, to try to out-smart or out-negotiate other people or other groups. Negotiating and bargaining are are profound and passionate forms of relating." and "...No clarity exists save in relation to confusion."(3) Healthy tension-suffering some discomfort-evokes our humanity, and therefore is an indispensable ingredient in our cultural, social, spiritual and psychological development.

We lose soul when we lose our outer connections with others as well as an inner connection with who we really are as unique citizens of planet Earth. Michael Walzer, writing in "Dissent," proposes that the "...crucial commonality of the human race is particularism."(4) Indeed, social evolution, as Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell pointed out, requires greater individualism; therefore, the highest purpose of any group or community must be grounded in maximizing individual human potential-supporting and protecting personal freedom and autonomy.

We naturally gravitate towards others with similar characteristics and interests: whites with whites, blacks with blacks, Christians with Christians, Jews with Jews. Ironically, this clustering instinct has proven to be divisive, fragmenting our world into hostile groups and reinforcing feelings of superiority. If we are to have vital groups and communities, we must learn to embrace difference-difference that also incorporates the individual's unique vision and personal journey as well as collective ideals; both are indispensable.

Certainly, belonging to a community requires some degree of compromise. And to survive in a community, we must more or less try to follow the community's rules. In order for communities to be creative and life-enhancing, individuals must live their own authentic lives, walk their unique path in the midst of our collective culture. The awesome pull of collective organizations on each of us comprises a powerful existential conflict between two opposites: How to live a creative singular life while remaining involved in and contributing to one's community.

Like our physical bodies, which function well when each organ (member) does its unique job, groups function optimally by encouraging each individual to do what they do best. Just as there is a necessary interconnectedness and cooperation among bodily organs, a healthy community requires interconnectedness between its members. Furthermore, both healthy communities and groups thrive on the dynamic relationship in-between mutually independent groups.

Our increasingly fragmented (into groups) society has lost its sense of human connectedness-its indispensable need for relationship. Instead we use our financial resources to build separate island worlds, removed and insulated from those (different) elements of society that make us feel uncomfortable or unsafe. Walled-in, guarded communities increasingly separate us from each other, as do walled-in exclusive ideologies.

We can limit the destructive potential of groups by limiting their size. When an organized religion, a nation state, the IRS, an IBM or Dupont run amuck, the human, economic and environmental consequences are potentially devastating. In contrast, if the corner market decides to sell outdated fruit, damage is confined to a small area. The noted economist, Leopold Kohr (1909-1994), maintained that bigness was a major cause of social misery. He believed smaller, more autonomous regions would improve the quality of life and political institutions. Kohr said, "Let us hope the 21st century seeks universality at the smallest scale, that it recognizes that the fullness of existence is contained in the smallest of spaces."(5)

Our communities ought to mirror those natural inclinations of the human spirit that propel us towards wholeness, integration, compassion and greater integrity. Laws and regulations that attempt to control how a community should develop prevent creative evolutionary development, keeping communities in infantile static states. Alan Watts realized, "...the order of nature is not a forced order; it is not the result of laws and commandments which beings are compelled to obey by external violence..."(6)

In groups, centralized control (internal or external) establishes an either-or hierarchy, which insures increasing stagnation and repression of individual creativity and innovation. Since 1651 we have struggled under Thomas Hobbes' political dogma suggesting that only through hierarchal central authority can cooperation develop. With the intensifying disintegration of totalistic political systems, it is becoming apparent that such top-down organizational structures do not work. Indeed, quite the opposite is needed-a bottom-up, decentralized, individually empowered, network of decision/choice-making. This entails tolerating (and trusting) a frequently chaotic process. For example, the Internet, a conglomeration of anarchic electronic communities, demonstrates that cooperation does in fact emerge out of interconnected, mostly-autonomous self-interest.

Kevin Kelly, in his book, "Out of Control," describes what he terms "spontaneous cooperation." Kelly suggests that "...societies with good communications could develop cooperative structures without heavy central control."(7) Destructive groups and communities suffocate the precise uniqueness and individual creativity that society so desperately needs. As Jung points out, because group-directed thinking and feeling are much more comfortable than individual critical thinking and effort, the overwhelming temptation to allow the group mind to displace individual thinking is ever-present. When the group dominates, the community's only source of moral progress, true innovation and real integrity are submerged beneath a collective agenda. Doomed to repression, individuals become little more than robotized automatons serving the collective machinery.

Destructive Groups: The Warning Signs:

A group or community turns destructive the instant it becomes more important than the individual. In such groups, things become more valuable than human beings or our environment; people become economic resources to be exploited. Destructive organizations exhibit many of these common traits:

- Totalitarian in structure: strict top-down centralized control with a "we-they," "us versus them" attitude. Groups become totalistic islands in the midst of society, which reinforces an adversarial relationship with outside groups.

- Creating enemies: the government, other races, other religious groups, other communities, other nation states, other ideologies.

- Attempts to control all communication into and out of the group as well as the individual's inner thought processes. The group's doctrine becomes more important than the individual, which then suppresses individual critical thinking. Doubts and critical ideas are perceived as disloyalty or lack of faith.

- Leaders' ideas, politics, mission and agenda are "sacred," or "inspired," beyond reproach. This results in an presumed superiority over all others who do not hold the same views. Hence, these groups dispense the right to existence, fostering elitism and prejudice.

- A special language, beyond what would be considered normal jargon. They "load" members' language with buzz words, cliches, slogans, chants, prayers and doctrinal phrases that keep people saturated and mesmerized with one viewpoint-another way they attempt to control members' internal environment. Lionel Trilling calls this the "language of non-thought" because it has the effect of reducing complex questions to simplistic slogans and programmed answers.

- Radical separation of pure and impure: The notion of "purification" becomes an obsession that is always just out of reach-an eternal carrot. Purity equates to being in the group, impurity equates to those outside the group, who must be "saved," defeated economically, or converted.

- Exclusiveness: Belief that their system, mission or ideology is the solution for the world's problems. They embody an absolutist (totalistic) vision of truth: they have it, and outsiders or non-believers do not have it. Noted psychologist, Robert Lifton observed that "...those who have not seen the light-have not embraced that truth, are in some way in the shadows-are bound up with evil, tainted, and do not have the right to exist."(8) For example, third world countries are by definition "inferior."

- Frequent use of public confession or testimonials to entrap members/citizens. Camus observed: "I practice the profession of penitence, to be able to end up as judge," and "the more I accuse myself, the more I have a right to judge you." Public testimonials, confession and sharings to reinforce the collective viewpoint, make it extremely difficult for anyone to disagree.

- Attempts to dominate the social lives of members. There may be endless meetings, events, seminars, lectures, group encounters. Gradually group activities take over one's life leaving little or no time for outside activities. Not attending such meetings indicates a lack of dedication(a stigma of being somehow inferior and selfish, of letting down one's fellow members.

How to Get Out From Under the Influence of a Destructive Group:

- Responsible self-interest: Make sure your interests come first, before the group's agenda and their doctrine.

- Always question collective authority. Examine their motives and the consequences of their actions: do they increase or decrease individual freedom and autonomy, and are the group's actions harmless both to individuals and to our environment?

- Self-responsibility: Refuse to participate in demonizing any other group or ideology. Don't label others. Refuse to categorize others by group characteristics such as color, ethnicity, nationality or economic status. Dividing the world into good and evil camps is a patriarchal disease.

- Allow no censorship of any conflicting opinions or written material from within or outside your group. Secrecy is a hallmark of dysfunctional organizations. Open and free communication maintain cooperation and expose corruption.

- Never allow peer pressure to influence your decisions or choices. Follow your heart, not a herd or a collective illusion.

- Stop collective idolatry. Take back your projections. See and respect individuals for who they really are, not cloaked in the collective mystique of fame, power, guruship or celebrity. Watch out for charisma, Hitler had a lot of it!

- Debug your vocabulary: Remove "groupese" from your language: be suspicious of group jargon and buzz words. What do they really mean? Speak for yourself, your unique authenticity and distinctiveness.

- Make independent critical thinking your mainstay. Protect the freedom and autonomy of your own mind. Dryden admonished, "The worst [tyranny] is that which persecutes the mind."

- Don't be an "enabler:" Beware of any public confessions, testimonials or sharings that support a group's ideology. Be sure you're not sucked into the trap of supporting something you do not believe in or have doubts about just to feel "accepted." Remember William James' observation: "I now perceive one immense omission in my Psychology-the deepest principle of Human Nature is the craving to be appreciated."

- Suspect anything called "sacred" by the collective: Groups often cloak their agenda in an aura of sacredness. The unspoken implication being that any criticism of what the collective deems to be "sacred" is sacrilegious, a moral sin.

- Maintain friendships outside your group. This helps to mitigate one-sided collective influences and promote fresh, different viewpoints.

How to Recognize a Healthy Group:

"It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so everyone of us shares the supreme ordeal-carries the cross of the redeemer-not in the bright moments of his tribes great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair." (Joseph Campbell(9)

A healthy group uses struggle and tension as a basis for positive change, creative innovation and greater cooperation. The renowned psychologist and founder of the human potential movement, Carl Rogers, described this process of holding the tension between different ideas: "But when a group struggles through to a choice, having heard this need and that demand, this proposal and another that contradicts it, gradually all the data become available and the decision reached is a hard-won harmony of all the ideas, needs, and desires of each and every one."(10)

Only when we hold the tension between both sides with equal value, do we obtain a balanced perspective. Hence reasonableness and cooperation require minds and hearts that can encompass opposing viewpoints and difference-a both-and approach to life instead of an authoritarian either-or approach. Healthy Groups and Communities Have These Distinguishing Characteristics:

- Decentralized control. Empowerment of individuals.

- Individuals are more important than the group.

- Normal tension and conflict are viewed as natural elements in the problem-solving process. Like the prairie that needs an occasional wild fire to thrive, groups need dissenting, even disturbing voices.

- Openness, directness, probing and emotions are not only acceptable but necessary.

- No secrecy.

- Honest feedback, open communication and introspection are encouraged.

- Independent critical thinking is vital and supported.

- Unconditional respect and personal regard for others.

- Process is more important than the results.

- Chaos is OK.

- There does not have to be a solution.

- A healthy balance between life in the group and life outside the group.

By living group-dictated lives, we contribute to our collective shadow. In this sense, we each share responsibility for the daily terror and heartless violence infecting planet earth. Only by becoming more conscious can we even begin to alleviate the ominous growing darkness that promises to wreak ever-intensifying havoc on us all.

Greater consciousness means doing our best to live our own lives. It means being who we are, unique human beings independent of any collective organization or impulse, yet at the same time, remaining creatively involved in society. Self-responsibility means resurrecting our innate integrity, our ability to "hold together" as distinctive human beings.

Perhaps our modern mythical journey will be to slay the collective dragon-a far more ominous monster than the one St. George faced. There is an immense difference, as Robert Bly says, "...between living something and being lived by it;"(11) it is the difference between a machine and and a living soul. One is in a neurotic state when something outside controls one's psyche. New evolutionary beginnings rest on our shoulders, burn in our hearts, and it is within our capacity to remake our communities and our world, but not without first redeeming ourselves in our own unique image.

-END-

Notes:
1. Jung, Carl G., Quoted by H. Westmann in "The Old Testament and Analytical Psychology," Guild Lecture No. 10, The Guild of Pastoral Psychology, London, England.

2. Samuels, Andrew. "The Political Psyche." London: Routledge, 1993, p. 85.

3. Ibid., p. 49.

4. Walzer, Michael, "Making Sense of Tribal Strife," Dissent (Spring 1992).

5. Snell Marilyn B., "Leopold Kohr, Visionary Economist," Utne Reader (Sept/Oct 1994): p. 44.

6. Watts, Alan, "Tao: The Watercourse Way," p. 43.

7. Kelly, Kevin. "Out of Control, The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World" (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1994), p. 87.

8. Lifton, Robert. "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism." Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989, p. 432.

9. Campbell, Joseph. "The Hero with a Thousand Faces." Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949, p. 391.

10. Rogers, Carl. "A Way of Being." Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980, p. 334. 11. Cited in: Campbell, "The Hero's Journey," p. 205.

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