Communal self-affirmation

July 20th, 2023

My participation in the whole being is relative to and mediated by the community. This is more than simple participation in natural being, which is of course an individual matter and responsibility. And that can only be done by using language that transcends nature and creates universals by which we can find a relation to nature.

Language is a funny thing — it is used for personal expression and can be shaped to personal needs and amended to fit individuality. But — by itself, language is a product of communal invention, it has a meaning only within a community that uses it and it is used to strengthen ties to any particular societal group.

I think it takes a lot of courage to affirm a personal self to be a part of the community in which said person participates. Or want to participate or belong to. Each self-affirmation is deeply personal and here that personal experience needs to be subjugated to an affirmation of a collective. For me, it is quite painful to even imply that my affirmation is now a building block of a communal affirmation. The collective is threatened by my non-being within the community and can be threatening to my non-being within the community. There is a collective anxiety of any individual non-being within its grasp and that anxiety can be easily transported into rejection. Courage then is required for self-affirmation just as it is for communal affirmation. Now — which one of those actions can lead to the enlargement of the self? Growing in strength in the courage of self-affirmation, or growing in strength in being a part of the bigger whole?