Cost-Benefit Analysis…

If I understood Gabe correctly, he disagreed with the idea that community necessarily had to involve some level of compulsion or force that the group has over the individual; however, perhaps that is part of the cost of being in a community. To some individual that cost is too great to outweigh the benefits of belonging. One could suggest that people have different emotional/social currencies based on their unique history/experiences/cultural perceptions. (Sort of like the Canadian dollar is worth “less” comparatively than the American dollar). The cost of joining a community might be worth the benefits to one individual but too costly for someone else. A simplistic example would be that some people are willing to pay $60.00 or even $300 for a designer shirt in order to make a statement. The cost of the shirt is less than the benefits they perceive from wearing it; whereas to someone else $60.00 or even $20.00 is ludicrous for what they perceive the shirt as buying them.

The idea of complusion or coercion is a greater anathema to people of individualist cultures and perhaps the current generation (?) than to others. Could it be that community does involve this “strongly encouraged cooperation” (AKA coercion) but that the language of the definition makes it something individualists reject?