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If I were to anticipate the first question you would ask me, it would likely be about the thought process of building a communication platform in an era crowded [more…]

Every society is built on unique communities within their broader context. Each of these communities produce an environment where the individual can contribute to ideas that are bigger than themselves.

What’s more, communities provide a special place for the individual perspective to be considered at its own worth rather than being lost within or diluted by the widely diverging ideas that surround it. 

When individual perspectives, with similar but different experiences, collide in one coherent community, each of those perspectives unite to produce concepts, innovations, and perspectives that strengthen the individual and give life to the community as a whole. 

Individuals, separated from some kind of communal reality, are devoid of authenticity and unique contribution, since the individual cannot compare itself by itself. Individual authenticity is completely dependent on the comparative reality inherent in community.

The challenge with authenticity’s reliance on community is the equal challenge of finding the ideal community where the individual perspective can make a marked impact. True, healthy communities that give license to the individual perspectives within are inherently protective of their ecosystem and therefore difficult to join, if even identified in the first place! The best kept secrets are the hardest to find.

This challenge then begs the question – When an individual’s perspective is left without community, does authenticity cease to matter? Furthermore, if authentic contribution is so reliant on some kind of communal reality, is the individual perspectives devoid of meaning outside of such a community?

Here we find our challenge in the 21st Century world, where channels abound that offer to carry the individual perspective to the four winds at the tap of a button. Where young and old alike are growing increasingly aware of the opportunities to get their opinions in front of people they have never met. Where community is defined by the platform that offers access to billions of views rather than by particular individuals who design a micro ecosystem defined by common ideals, dreams, and passions. These macro, platform-centric “communities” are so glutted with political, financially-motivated, me-first-driven data that they have devolved into platforms that are carried by the squeakiest wheel, the most outrageous “creators”, or the individuals (or organizations) with the deepest pockets. The authentic, individual perspective not sullied by false pretense is crowded out and left without a home, and we’re left with a world of lonely people with everything to say and no way to make a real difference.

A colleague recently noted that it’s harder to find community today in a world of technology, AI, and virtually unlimited resources than it was 200 years ago when the world’s population was 6 billion people lighter. The suicide, addiction, and crime rates agree.

So what’s the solution? How does the individual perspective find a safe and productive home?

Welcome to the conversation.