The Four Elements of Community
Lately, there’s been a lot of tension and conflict in my community, as there often is anytime humans from different backgrounds try to come together. In my many years of community organizing and attempting to find my “village”, I have observed a few things about human bonding and the glue that keeps communities together in healthy ways when conflict arises. In many cases I see communities hyper-fixate on meetings, processes, and conflict resolution as if they were somehow going to solve their problems and make the community a happy place. While those things are important, they can never cultivate happiness, at least not on their own. Rules, policies, community agreements, and other tools in the community organizers kit are essential, but they don’t actually make a community worth participating in. They build the “invisible structures” that contain communities. But they are not WHY we live in community. The “why” of community is something much more emotional and material.
I have called this the Four Elements of Community because when I think about what actually makes a community a happy place, it isn’t the structural components of community life, it’s the activities described below, and I think they neatly fit into the categories of the Classical Four Elements- Earth, Water, Fire, and Air. Without these, no matter how positive, life-affirming, and cooperatively-based your guiding principles may be, you will have a hard time actually building a cohesive community of respect and shared purpose. As I implied above, these things are the “glue” that holds people together and makes community a worthwhile endeavor.
Earth- Starting with the foundation, one of the most core Earth-based activities that we as human animals do is eat together. It’s literally the reason we have societies. We are not built like some animals to forage on our own and live a solitary existence. We need other humans in order to sustain the meatsuits we inhabit, and that need has driven social structures from the dawn of human awakening to the present. If you find yourself in a community project that does not eat and drink together or have any kind of food culture, you might question whether it is a community at all and not just a business arrangement. The earliest tribal groups that emerged in our distant past did so with communal eating at their core. Throughout history, feasting has been a critical piece of communal celebrations, rites of passages, and social engagements of great importance. When we eat together, the social animal in us is satisfied and connections are made that are hard to replicate any other way. The most successful communities I have had the pleasure to be a part of have all had a very strong culture of food and sharing sustenance together.
However, feasting and sharing food is not the only Earth-based activity that one could point to as a bonding experience for people. Using our hands in a collective way to shape our material world is also Earth-element coded. Building a house. Tending the land. Creating crafts and works of art that require teamwork. Most of these things could be done in a solitary way, and of course capitalism does a fair job at removing the community element from them, but they all go better when the work is shared for collective benefit. This in turn tends to develop and strengthen human bonds.
Another activity that comes to mind that people tend to rally around that has a particularly physical component is sports. Since at least Ancient Greece (and probably well before) feats of physical prowess have been a favorite human activity that brings people together, both in the act of performing said feats and also watching others who’ve trained as athletes test their limits. As I write this, the World Cup has just concluded with Spain as the world champion team. Of course, there are a plethora of politics that sow division in myriad ways, but there is also an incredible sense of solidarity that is generated when certain teams, particularly those from oppressed communities like Palestine, are able to participate in games like these. Physical play is a very animal drive that humans have turned into a highly refined activity we broadly call sport. Whole communities, if temporary, form up around teams and events, and I think of this aspect as an Earth activity.
Water- ‘Water is Life’. This phrase poured into popular consciousness during the NoDAPL protests at Standing Rock in 2016. It probably had a much longer standing usage in Indigenous communities who have always recognized the sacredness of water. The roles that water plays in our lives as beings made up of mostly water are innumerable, but in the context of human bonding I think it is important to look at how we behave when we are around bodies of water.
Broadly speaking, as an agent of social interactions water is a central feature in human culture. Springs have been designated as sacred sites by cultures all over the planet, and other bodies of water are often gathering points. In most religious traditions, water plays a critical role in cleansing, dedications, and other functions that weave human existence together. We also just love to play in it. Humans tend to enter into a more child-like state when we remove some of our clothing (armor) and get in it together, whether it be for play (cool) or for relaxation (hot). A day at the beach brings people together in significant ways, and soaking in hot springs is often something we tend to do in a collective way. In the non-human world, predators and prey will even sometimes suspend their eternal contradictions and drink from the same source side by side.
Water is also often equated with our emotional life. Intense grief and happiness both tend to elicit water from our eyes. In a community, especially communities that don’t have a strong shared background, sharing emotions can often be difficult. We are taught from a young age to only share emotions with the most trusted of confidants, if at all. But it is vital in any community context that emotions can be shared. Many communities build in “heart circles” or other types of emotional sharing opportunities to facilitate this function. This aspect can unfortunately be a slippery slope if not structured right, particularly when emotions run high. Emotional sharing circles of any type should not be mistaken for healthy conflict resolution and accountability processes. But when properly contained, as all water is when in its beneficial state, emotional sharing is incredibly important in community bonding.
Fire- Fire is perhaps one of the classical Four Elements that is the most human, or rather most unique to the human animal. We wield fire unlike any animal on the planet. It is theorized that the cooking of food may have actually contributed to our evolutionary jump from apes, scavenging what we found in the forest or on the ground, to animals that developed abstract thought, tools, and the ability to formulate ever increasingly complex plans. Like water, anything to do with fire when properly controlled tends to bring humans together and weave bonds of trust and friendship. The most basic form of this is the campfire. The place where our long distant ancestors told the first stories that described our mythical origins and the cosmic processes that made up the world. Ancient traditions throughout the world placed a sacred emphasis on hospitality, and much of that was centered on the Hearth. The Hearth was that place of warmth, light, and sustenance. It was considered taboo in many cultures to turn away a stranger from your Hearth. This sacred duty to provide for one another, even across potential ethnic or tribal lines was a unifying aspect that served to equalize relations and affirm our basic humanity.
Of course fire is often used in conflict, and the “heat” that rises in our blood even in the absence of actual fire has a destructive nature. But even in the midst of conflict, or when fire runs out of control as it tends to do in the era of climate change, it presents an opportunity for humans to come together to solve a particular crisis. In the West Coast of Turtle Island where I live, aka California, Indigenous communities had a very healthy relationship to this destructive aspect of fire. They have historically used fire to clear out understory plants, revive certain species used in their material culture, and cultivate park-like forests full of majestic old-growth trees that thrived on the regular, low-intensity fires they set. It is estimated that during the era of Indigenous stewardship of these lands prior to colonization, more fires burned annually (9-12 million acres) than have burned even in our worst year of wildfires (6 million) recently in the borders of modern day California. These were not campfires or fires that got away, but intentional, prescribed Cultural Fires that were used to replenish and renew the land. Through destruction and disturbance, Indigenous peoples lived and thrived in a veritable paradise full of “wild” salmon, berries, acorns, tubers, and other foods, and co-existed alongside large predators like wolves, bears, and the majestic California condor. It should be underlined that these Cultural Fires were not aimed at trying to prevent catastrophic fire, though that was a byproduct, but rather tools used to support the needs of the people and in turn opportunities for the community to come together. Today, this culture of Good Fire is returning, and in its wake reweaving a broken tapestry of Indigenous communities, in partnership with those of us “guests” whose ancestors once suppressed Cultural Burning. Communities come together around fire, whether a humble campfire, a response to raging wildfire, or to facilitate Good Fire for regenerating the land.
Air- Air is one of the least tangible of the four elements, and thus I saved it for the last as the activities that have to do with air are less obvious. Of course individually we all breathe air every second of the day, but that doesn’t necessarily induce a community bonding in the same way water or fire tend to do. Air is ubiquitous, needs no container, and teamwork is not necessary in accessing or working with it. However the one thing we do daily (except in specific contexts) that involves air is communicate. We make sounds carried through the air with our hyper-fluid vocal cords, lips, and tongue that we imbue with meaning and context. But this in itself doesn’t necessarily create community either, and in fact is often the source of division as everyone is free to interpret -or misinterpret- the sounds other people are making and what those sounds mean. So verbal communication is a neutral point in human bonding as it can both bring people together but also divide people.
The thing people do that is a hallmark of cultural unity and tradition is music, or as I like to refer to it- “pretty air wiggles”. Music, particularly in a group context, is a different kind of communication that embodies the concept of harmony. You cannot make music with a group of people without syncing up and matching each other in tone and rhythm. Communities that have music at their heart tend to forge very powerful bonds and it is foundational to traditional cultures throughout the world. Many Indigenous communities place music as one of the most important aspects of human culture for maintaining the balance of the world- which includes their own communities. Likewise, there is no religious community on the planet that does not also have its own litany of music and sound. Flowing directly out of music is dance, which is really just using our bodies to give physical expression to those pretty air wiggles. Dance, particularly cultural dances involving multiple people have long held ceremonial importance, but are also performed sometimes just because they’re fun.
Another form of air wiggling that we do that induces friendship and camaraderie is laughter, at least when done mutually and authentically. Laughing together is an essential part of any friendship. Laughter in any human culture tends to lighten the mood and remove barriers between people. Events that cultivate this aspect of human nature can be incredibly healing and useful for communities in strife. If you notice in your relations there is no laughter, it might indicate a point at which the community is deficient.
By now it should be apparent there are a few themes running through these; collective creativity, enjoyment, relaxation, and sustenance. In community it is essential that we have these ingredients as a way of giving people a reason to be there and continue to do the hard work that being in a community often requires. This is not to say that these activities or ones like them will solve conflict or crisis, but without them attempting conflict resolution is pure drudgery and will likely not result in true resolution. They will not replace an imbalanced system that needs accountability, nor can they bridge the divide between major differences in political or ethical positions. But without endeavors that create bonds of trust and solidarity between people, community organizing is vacant of purpose and meaning.
In conclusion, when community challenges arise, while addressing structural challenges directly and honestly is important, I would also ask questions like “how are you feeding people?” “what are you creating together?” “what do you do together for fun?” and “is there mutual support and solidarity for your personal challenges and goals?” If we think of a community as a house, the agreements and policies are like the floors, walls and ceilings of the building. But if you have a building that just consists of walls but no warmth or character, it will not support the mental and emotional health of the people in it. Like a house, community needs more than just the structural elements in place, it needs to be able to feed people and infused with the things that cultivate joy.