Wednesday 29 December 2021

I Got Your Community Right Here

I have written quite a lot down the years about the word 'community' and its uses and abuses. 

I've recently been considering in some depth what it means, for two reasons. The first is that early this year I moved to an area with a very strong community (it's the kind of place where everybody knows everybody else by at most two degrees of separation) and found myself immersed within it by virtue of having a school age child. It is like living in the 1950s. There is a traditional high street with a butcher, greengrocer, baker and so on; the kids all walk to school together in the morning and all play in the local park afterwards; people stop and say 'hello' to each other as they pass; there are thriving karate clubs and weight-loss groups and baby yoga classes and all the rest. Elements of it are vomit-inducingly bourgeois (baby yoga being a case in point; the area even has 100% Liberal Democrat local councillors). But it certainly beats having no community at all. 

The second reason is that after decades of respectful agnosticism I've recently restarted semi-regular churchgoing, and have rediscovered the low-key virtues of high-church Anglicanism, the unique smell and temperature of English church halls, and the 'oddly reassuring and reassuringly odd' nature of parish life. A church congregation also has many of the characteristics of a community: a bunch of people who have nothing in common except that they live reasonably close by, and apparently share a common faith. (I use the word 'apparently' advisedly - it simply isn't done in Anglican churches to actually discuss personal religious belief.) It isn't the same as a 'community' strictly understood, for reasons which I'll come to, but there is a close connection. 

'Community' is a particular form of human association that is chiefly defined by what it is not. It is not family, or friendship. Nor is it what you might call 'civil association' - the loose ties of common respect for the law which are necessary to make society function at all. It's not a business or charity. It is not quite the same as a tribe or subculture or 'scene'. Nor is it exactly a neighbourhood, because there are plenty of neighbourhoods with no community at all. Rather, it's what you get when a certain number of people are brought together chiefly by happenstance - because they have ended up living in the same area - and interact with each other regularly enough to become familiar. They are together through fate rather than choice, but they do choose to engage with one another beyond the level of mere coexistence. 

It is not necessary to like, or even get along well with, the other members of a community. People can even detest one another - as long as they do it relatively discreetly and do not puncture the veneer of civility. All that is really necessary is polite toleration and somewhat regular interaction. Enough of the members have to see one another regularly enough - even if just to say 'hello' to - to generate a critical mass of baseline familiarity.

A church congregation, then - just like a baby yoga class, indeed - is not really a community in this sense. Nor is a sports club or political group or local charity, or a pub or cafe or post office. But all of these things do help foster it by providing the opportunities for interaction upon which community rests. (And it is often when all or most of these things have disappeared from a neighbourhood that its community collapses, because it means that people are no longer interacting with one another frequently enough to be familiar.) Some of these are more important than others, depending on the nature of the community in question. But all of them help.

What does this have to do with the OSR, then? Until recently, you would have had a very hard time convincing me that an online scene like the OSR could ever really meet the description of a 'community' as such. Too online, too diffuse, too anonymous, and with a membership united by a shared interest rather than the mere happenstance of living near one another. I am probably, on balance, still of that view. But I can also see that there is an argument from the other side - that the OSR might be thought of as a loose collective of individuals who interact frequently enough to generate a certain level of shared familiarity, such that, if we don't all know each other or communicate directly, there is a certain level of recognition of particular names, aliases and relationships sufficient enough to make us a simulacrum of what a real human community is. That it is no substitute for the real thing does not in itself invalidate the analogy.

To extend the analogy further: is a blog something like a village pub, with a rotating irregular cast of visitors coming and going from evening to evening? Is a Discord server like a post office or off-license through which people continuously flow through the course of the day? And is a forum like a church, full of ageing parishioners still gamely plodding along and slowly slewing off members from year to year?

35 comments:

  1. 20 years ago I would've shuddered at the idea of a small-town-and-church life like that, but now it sounds to me like a very good way to live.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yep, although oddly enough it's not a small town - just a suburb of a city that has its own particular character and fairly defined boundaries.

      Delete
    2. I've gone through a similar change, although I still can't bring myself to frequent a church - but I'm slightly annoyed with myself for that. For several years I attended Sunday Assembly - often described as "atheist church" although that's inaccurate as several of the people there - including one of the organisers - also followed their religious faiths. The sense of community and, especially, communal singing were really special.

      Delete
    3. No Eastern Orthodox churches around here 🤷🏻‍♂️

      (Genuinely more interested in Eastern Orthodoxy than more local forms of Christianity, after listening to some Bible podcasts a few years back)

      Delete
    4. (actually, although genuinely interested, I don't think I could submit to millennia-old dogma. Although I grew up with a mix of Quaker and International Hermeneutic Society/ISHVAL grandparents, and those seemed like largely sensible things to be)

      Delete
    5. I am also very interested in denominations that seem in touch with the 'numinous' in some way. But I think ultimately it's probably more important to just get into the habit of regularly going somewhere. I always feel better for having gone to church, even if in many ways it is just a 'bog standard' CofE affair.

      Delete
    6. Eastern Orthodox may be 'better', but Anglican is *ours*. Like I once saw Libertarian Sean Gabb say (right after that crypto-Nazi Richard Spencer) what matters is not whether Evola is objectively better than Locke & Bentham, but that the latter are *ours* and the former is not. Orthodoxy for the Orthodox, I say. Admire it, don't try to LARP it.

      Delete
  2. Can a community be unilateral? I always feel glad to see the familiar names on these blogs (this is one of the best and most thought-provoking), even the folks with whom I virtually always disagree, and that gives me a dose of fellow feeling and common purpose. I don't know whether anyone else experiences the same.

    It's great to hear that you've resumed church attendance!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't know if community can be unilateral but I am sure there is a word for what you're describing. No idea what it is though.

      Delete
  3. Baby yoga... I'm still processing that.

    I feel connected to the OSR folks in my nebulous network. It's like a community, but a certain amount of interactivity is missing. If the OSR went away, we'd all drift apart.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have no idea what it is, but it is definitely A Thing.

      Delete
    2. I think Baby Yoga needs a tiny hut with chicken legs.

      Delete
  4. On your last point, I think rather than the type of site it depends more on the character of the blog, server, or (ahem) forum.

    https://www.rpgpub.com/

    ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sounds a little like Midsommer Murders to this American but that's sort of the appeal of the show. I think the OSR is something of a community. If you live in the states you can go to like two conventions (pandemic willing) and meet a pretty good selection of the people involved. This goes a long way towards feeling like a faceless group of online individuals exist in real life (I know it did for me). I don't know if there are any similar conventions in the UK. To extend your village metaphor - meeting someone at least once really helps to make any further gossip/news about that person interesting and somehow applicable to oneself.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We don't kill each other quite as much as in Midsommer Murders...

      It's funny that's the image that came to mind. It's actually a former mining town that is now on the outskirts of a big city. Pretty much the opposite of the setting of Midsommer Murders!

      Delete
    2. Sounds like a nice place though! I've learned a lot about the UK from watching British TV - Oxford is the murder capitol of Europe, never join in any quaint village activity if you value your life, and the life of an antiques dealer is always intense.

      Delete
    3. Yeah, if you want a crime solved, it's generally always best to contact an antique dealer.

      Delete
  6. I've had a very similar experience to you, where I recently moved to a new city with a very friendly, tightly knit community, something I hadn't experienced since I was a kid. I feel like a lot of people are relocating to find that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. For sure - I hope the trend continues, but the real problem is reviving community in places that have lost it...

      Delete
  7. A book I recently read (Mediated by Thomas de Zengotita) introduced me to the phrase "in a tribe, everyone was famous", which goes some way towards explaining the human need for fame/recognition. A community can satisfy that need (and lack of community no doubt explains a lot of posturing on social media)

    I'm sure there's also something to be said about the Dunbar Number - above a certain size, a community no longer offers that bolstering of personal identity.

    ReplyDelete
  8. My Eastern Orthodox parish has new converts, new babies (the most recent baptized on Christmas Eve), and older members (the oldest being 93 and in good health, his doctor telling him that he'll live to be 100). Our last funeral was about 40 days ago. We have people from America, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine, England, Lebanon, and probably some countries that I'm forgetting. All told, the parish is growing slowly.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think Eastern Orthodoxy is on the cusp of a revival if it isn't happening already.

      Delete
  9. I've always thought that a community, by definition, needs rules. Not necessarily harsh rules, but nevertheless rules (being polite, respecting each other, taking part to some degree in the community activities...). Because of that I've always thought ill of naming 'community' to 'a gathering of people who share interests'. If I like, I don't know, Warhammer I'm not part of 'the Warhammer Community'. I don't have any obligation nor interest in having one with other people who also enjoy Warhammer (maybe with my gaming pals, but nothing more). I can even share rules or other types of materials in forums or in blogs, but even that does not make me part of the 'Warhammer community'. Because, in my opinion, there is no 'warhammer community'. There are people all around the wall that enjoy, share and even make a profit from that game, but that is not a community.

    In my mind that obsesion for making 'communities' is tightly associated with a postmodern kind of relationships where 'you are your hobby', and people tend to identify themselves way too much with their likes.

    With that said, I think that the OSR of that type of movements (like indie rpgs or narrative ones) are closer to a community than other kind of groups in the RPGverse, but mainly because people tend to vinculate themselves with an idea and not with a game.

    But I think that it will be cooler call it 'club'. The OSR Club' sounds way better.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, I basically agree with those observations. You see the same kind of thing in this habit people have nowadays of talking about things like "the gay community", "the Hindu community", "the deaf community", etc. Those things are not communities - the whole point of being a community is people interacting, knowing one another. Not monolithic identity groups spanning vast territories and millions of members.

      Delete
    2. i think youre conflating two slightly dissimilar circumstances here, if only for reasons of scale: the OSR as a community (as i tend to think it is) is much more similar to the local scene of players of a certain store than it is the hobby overall (theres certainly few enough of us that its not a huge ask to be cursorily familiar with most of the players on the blogosphere).

      There is definitely something to say for the lack of physicality to the scene however, which seems to be the posts thesis here; if there was a dividing line between nebulous hazes of 'scene' and 'community' its definitely centered on the 'can have a pint with em' factor

      Delete
  10. Live near Northumberland. Tick. CoE. Tick. Consistently interesting blog. Tick. Your blog post on Oakeshott/Galston was fired over the Atlantic and provoked an interesting discussion. Readers who do not meet your definition of community have been here for years - surely a worthwhile thing.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I moved to an island a few years ago and can relate. It's what I need. There's a dark side to that kind of close community life as well, of course - it's no wonder that Goffman developed perhaps the most paranoid theory of human interaction based on fieldwork in the northern isles. And people (not unlike me!) who come in projecting their fantasies on a place can easily become a cause of resentment. But still, the sense of purpose that comes from being able to work on a meaningful communal scale, I love it.

    Games wise, I do find the Oldhammer community to be a close unit and a community in the true sense; and I don't say that lightly they took care of me well in the past year when I suffered the loss of both my parents. But then what I'm thinking of as the community are people who periodically meet up to game together and have a sense of working on common projects, rather than just the tens of thousands who are members of the facebook group because they like old toy soldiers. So there's something about scale, and also the need for the online to be underpinned by the real...

    ReplyDelete
  12. My Discord server has a few dozen members, almost all have played and/or are playing D&D with me. It does have a 'community' feel, in a way that say a Facebook group or forum does not. I think it is largely the exclusivity, plus a certain size of membership, plus some posters being happy to talk about their daily lives etc rather than just the next D&D game.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I've kept moving south and west until I found pretty much the safest area in all London. Still, the thought of actually having to talk with my neighbours fills me with dread! Some of the South Africans here really want there to be an actual community, but in actuality I'd say there are groups of people who know each other plus a lot of affable silence. I love not having to talk to other parents on the school run.
    What would actually pull people together - for a while - would be a major threat such as a crime spree.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I grew up in *deepest* Southwest London (Teddington), and while there was a very strong community on our street in the 70s and early 80s, the whole area feels completely sterile when I return now - it really strikes me every time how hardly anyone ever smiles out says hello. I pity my friends who never moved out of the area (partly for the this unfriendliness, but also because of the insane cost of living there)

      Delete
  14. Hmm. I like your analogy of the "OSR community" better than my own (recent) one. I was thinking of us more as a nation of gamers with individual towns, cities and villages (depending on population size). However, pubs and churches (and gyms and rec centers, etc.) in a single neighborhood is far more apt.

    Ha! It's a bit funny how my relationship to the online community has extremely similar parallels with my real life "neighborhood" relationships. Something to meditate on, for sure!

    ReplyDelete
  15. The OSR is like a community in which there was a big scandal and for a while afterwards people spent more weekends in Brighton and the Lake District and avoided the local pubs until they realized the pubs were actually great and look, there's Mahoney, haven't seen him in ages, thought he'd moved back to Derry, we need to get out more, yeah but now with the kids it's different, well how about a bbq at Spence and Jill's, they mentioned the other day...

    ReplyDelete
  16. We're tangenting, but in my corner of North London there's a massive gulf between the renters and the homeowners; there's at least a weak community among homeowners, but we've been renting here for 5 years, and have been invited to exactly one social activity hosted by homeowners. (And me being a foot-in-mouth Yank may not be invited back soon even if we do buy.)

    Huh, I could construct some brute-force metaphor between 5e newbies and OSR grognards having spatially-colocated parallel-but-not-interacting communities, but I don't think I like it.

    ReplyDelete