Identity is grounded in community

The measure of this competence - and possibly the prime source of self-esteem - is one's ability to join new communities and retain effective participation in previous communities. The challenge is to join a community without losing connection with earlier communities of which one was a part.

The sense of belonging is an experience which is sought by the individual. Some are searching for identity in this belonging. Others are developing, expanding, generating their identity by increasing the variety and quality of their participation in communities. These latter have gone beyond belonging issues. (The "price" of expanding participation is contribution.)

Corporations generally provide little in the way of satisfaction for what is sought in community.

Communities provide practices which are more or less congruent and conducive to human expression within the pursuit of enjoyment of their "attractors of interest". (Again: distinguish from tribes, sects, cults, etc.) Communities allow for expression and varying degrees of active membership in other communities. Communities are in and of life - the whole of life. Like an individual can be visualised as a point where conversational threads "cluster" within a vast network of conversations, a community can be visualised as a cluster of interactions between a vast network of other communities with individual (as well as energy-information) the dynamic connection between them.

While a corporation can be seen this way as well, most will also exhibit significant barriers to such natural flows. This alone will inhibit the experience of belonging and of community.

Corporations deny the full human life of those who constitute their "body/mind" and thus limit their potential for community. As David Whyte has so aptly said, "There is no corporation large enough for a single human soul."

Corporations, besides their inhibitory practices and structures, fail to provide practices and structures of community. These are not merely a list but an integrated, interacting set of language, communication, justice, respect, common interest, relationship, and similar phenomena.