what holds us together holds us apart

During a discussion yesterday concerning ἀγάπη I was reminded of an old thought I had as an adolescent; ‘what holds us together, holds us apart’. It makes sense on an individual level; the things that make me a coherent person (agency, rationality, memory, etc) are the things that distinguish me from other people. It also makes sense on the level of small groups of people; what it means to belong to a sports team necessarily requires considering why others are not to be understood as belonging to the sports team. The principle seems to generalise to all levels; in short, an essential aspect of any unity is that it distinguishes itself from the variety.

Consider what it means to be part of a community.

If my above characterization is correct, then it will mean something along to lines of there being a network of interpersonal bonds which hold the people together and enables them to function well as a community, and also that they will distinguish between ways of behaving towards members of the community and non-members of the community.

The question arose whether it is possible to have a well functioning community that does not exclude people or in any way distinguish between members and non-members. The reasons for desiring such an ‘open community’ seem clear enough, and the possibility of such a community seems to be the foundation of many utopian visions. My guess is that such a community could not exist for a significant period of time. Either the community would grow so large that the members no longer shared any actual bonds with other members, or it would transform into a community that did exclude people or distinguish members from non-members. If this community were to exist, then we could expect to see it develop into something like a unified global community. Of course, I think such a community impossible, but I also think that it would be very undesirable.

Instead I believe that a more realistic situation is one in which there are a plethora of communities, with meta-communities between the communities, and meta-meta-communities between the meta-communities, and so on. This would differ from the open community, because individuals are not members of meta-communities, their communities are members of the meta-communities. If we examine the world around us then it becomes apparent that such an arrangement is strikingly natural. Further to this, I would suggest that the super-meta-community would be what we might now call the community of life.

Perhaps the point is more fruitfully expressed as ‘what holds us apart holds us together.’

[edited: added more content]