What is called community today is often only audience-building.
It is the growth of numbers, not relationships. Engagement, not participation. Influence, not belonging. It is a creator broadcasting, a brand expanding its reach, a leader gathering followers. Even in spaces meant for connection, the power remains in the hands of the one who started it. Even when voices are invited to speak…
To name a place “community” when it was only a kingdom in disguise.
A true community unfolds without blueprints, without rulers, without ownership. To be in community is to step away from empire-making and into presence. It is to unlearn the hunger for power and instead replace it with reciprocity. To let go of the illusion that we must shape it and instead allow a co-creation.
True community is not a structure; it is a current, an exchange, a shared breath.
It does not belong to anyone. It does not need a leader, only participants willing to meet each other in their wholeness. It does not ask, “How do we build it?” but rather, “How do we create, together, in this moment?”
I have met several who have escaped the grid thinking they will find freedom often bringing their cages with them. They speak of nature, of independence, but they mistake isolation for sovereignty. And when fear enters, when the unknown presses against their walls, they retreat into old patterns, privilege, exclusion, control.
This is not community. This is opting out, an option not available to everyone. These places, often, become homes for echo chambers of anti-scientific thinking, homophobia, extremist beliefs. They reject not only oversight but accountability, mistaking rejection for true freedom.
There is a difference between leading and relating. Between building and creating.
Leading holds the map; relating walks the path together. Building demands control; creating moves with the flow of what is already present. Social media has blurred these lines even further. Platforms encourage “community-building,” but what they promote is follower engagement, not true connection. Even when spaces are made for interaction, they remain top-down, structured to serve the one at the center.
Visibility is not community.
Influence is not belonging.
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