Coyote, here's something for you to howl about:
Ancient and tribal peoples, according to Joseph Campbell and others, enjoyed a participation mystique, such that each person identified emotionally with what we would call a "community." The word "community" comes from the Latin communitas, which is a noun form of communis, which means "common." The New Testament Greek term koinonia, translated into Latin as communitas, also meant "common" or "property held in common." The words from which "community" is descended had both an emotional side, mystic identification, and a practical side, sharing of resources.
In more modern times, the word "community" usually describes something the writer approves of, but its radical meanings are diluted. Thus the 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant defined communitas as comercio, commerce. In the 19th and 20th centuries having a "community" came to mean sharing meanings, e. g. sharing values, sharing an ethnic identity, having a sense of common purpose.... Today, avant-garde social scientists deconstruct even the idea that community is based on shared meanings, arguing that meanings are idiosyncratic, local, and constantly reinvented - not nearly as widely shared as Max Weber, Emile Durkheim and other pioneer social scientist thought they were. Nevertheless, even today, even when the academic elite has forgotten that communitas was more about sharing property than about sharing meanings, the first meaning for "community" given in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary is "common possession or enjoyment; as a community of goods."
You ain't from around here, are you.
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