I am loving M. Scott Peck's book The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace mostly because it feels real and it touched me very deeply in terms of feeling, yes, that's exactly what I desire--community (not the draining fake mascot, pseudocommunity). Community transcends its differences so that each person's uniqueness is appreciated as a gift. In the end, a true community embodies agape, or unconditional acceptance.
However, as Peck says, many groups don't make it to community. He breaks the process of coalescing into a community into four stages:
1. Pseudocommunity: "The basic premise of pseudocommunity is the denial of individual differences."
2. Chaos
3. Emptiness
4. Community
In my personal experience, I've seen groups teeter between Pseudocommunity and Chaos (and back and forth) many times without breaking through to Emptiness. This post only contains a few snippets on stage 1 and 2. Stages 3 and 4 will be a separate post.
Below Peck shares a time he was facilitating a community building workshop for a group of psychology-savvy New Yorkers:
"Within minutes they were sharing deep, intimate details of their lives. And during the very first break they were all hugging. Poof--instant community!
But something was missing. At first I was delighted, and I thought, Boy this is a piece of cake... But by the middle of the day I began to grow uneasy, and it was impossible to put my finger on the problem. I didn't have the wonderful, joyful, excited feeling I had always in community. I was, in fact, slightly bored. Yet to all intents and purposes the group seemed to be behaving just like a real community."
The next morning Peck announces, "I have a strange feeling that something's missing, that we're really not a community yet. Let's have a period of silence now and see how we will respond to it."
. . . . Dozens of interpersonal conflicts from the previous day surfaced practically simultaneously."
. . . .In pseudocommunity a group attempts to purchase community cheaply by pretense... it is an unconscious, gentle process whereby people who want to be loving attempt to be so by telling little white lies, by withholding some of the truth about themselves and their feelings in order to avoid conflict.
In pseudocommunity it is as if every individual member is operating according to the same book of etiquette. The rules of this book are: Don't do or say anything that might offend someone else; if someone does or says something that offends, annoys, or irritates you, act as if nothing has happened and pretend you are not bothered in the least; and if some form of agreement should show signs of appearing, change the subject as quickly and smoothly as possible--rules that any good hostess knows. It is easy to see how these rules make for a smoothly functioning group. But they also crush M. Scott Peck, The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace, and the longer it lasts the duller it gets." - M. Scott Peck, The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace
After pseudocommunity, typically a group will resort to a Chaos stage' as individuals take it upon themselves to heal or fix or convert the other individuals that differ from themselves even under the mantle of kindness, and other times just plain frustration, bitterness and judgment.
"If your theology or ideology is different from mine, it calls mine into question. It is uncomfortable for me to be uncertain of my own understanding in such basic matters. On the other hand, if I could convert you to my way of thinking, it would not only relieve my discomfort, it would be further proof of the rectitude of my beliefs and cast me in the role of savior to boot. How much easier and nicer that would be than extending myself to understand you as you are." -M. Scott Peck, The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace
Another snippet:
"Recently a man representing a potential source of funds attended a community-building training conference conducted by FCE [The Foundation for Community Encouragement, Inc.]. Toward the very end this man said with visible agony, "I feel torn apart. On one hand this has been a most moving experience for me. I have personally benefited from it more than I dreamed. I am very glad I came and surprisingly sad to be leaving. But as I think about what has happened here, about the essence of the experience and what you are trying to do, I cannot help but conclude that it is really about nothing more than love. And how on earth can I go back to my board of directors and sell them on love?"
That man's problem is ours and yours. It is our task and yours to sell the world on love." - M. Scott Peck, The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace (published in 1987 and Peck passed away in 2005, the FCE continues to function)
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