Arthur Noll
In his essay Community Values, Dee Hock wrote:
“In a true community, unity of the singular “one” and the plural “one” extends beyond people and things. It applies as well to beliefs, purpose, and principles. Some we hold in common with all others in the community. Others we may hold in common with only some members of the community. Still others we may hold alone. In a true community, the values others hold that we do not share we nonetheless respect and tolerate, either because we realize that our beliefs will require respect and tolerance in return, or because we know those who hold different beliefs well enough to understand and respect the common humanity that underlies all difference.”
Dee Hock would have us tolerate different beliefs and values, and yet call the result community. I see this as a contradiction. If I don’t hold the same beliefs, and have different values as a result, I will end up being a person the others cannot trust to act properly according to their values. Yet trust is a vital part of community. If the differences are minor, then they can be tolerated. But beliefs and values get placed on serious life and death issues as well. In such cases, the community will be torn apart by different beliefs and values.
An extreme example is that Osama bin Laden and his followers do not have the same beliefs and values as the majority of the US. Their beliefs and values end up saying that Americans should die. Obviously they cannot be part of the community here. There would be no trust. Yet among themselves, they have the same beliefs and values, they can have a community with each other.
If a core value is tolerance of everyone’s beliefs, that will please no one in the end. Such a person is seen as the pandering politician, ready to say yes to everyone, so eager to please the person at hand that the one spoken to yesterday is forgotten. Tolerance of many different beliefs leads to lies. I can trust the extremely tolerant person only to be untrustworthy. I don’t form community with such people. I can’t form community with them.
In the US, many different groups with different beliefs co-exist. Tolerance has been possible because there has been enough physical room and resources so that there was little competition. All the different groups have had a core agreement to work according to certain basic rules. Other than that, one set of beliefs seemed to be no better than another. Those who pay attention to issues of peace, said, look at that, tolerance is the way to peace. But if the rules adopted come to fail, and there is not enough, it will quickly fall apart. Differing belief systems are like a fault line, if there is no stress, it all seems like one solid thing. As soon as there is enough stress, the division quickly becomes apparent.
Examples are easy to find. Maps of the world have had to be changed quite frequently in the last few years. For example in eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union, the rules of centrally ruled markets failed, the people were under stress, not enough work, not enough money. And quite suddenly, the fault lines appeared. To think this would not happen in America sounds like wishful thinking.
If we want a solid community, we need agreement on basic beliefs. Communities that are riddled with divisions of different belief systems will fail under stress. The ultimate division happens when the belief is that people are independent of each other. To go back to the analogy of fault lines, an interesting phenomena with earthquakes is that sometimes apparently solid land becomes like quicksand, or soft mud. Buildings lose their foundation. It has happened that buildings completely disappear, swallowed up by the quivering land. The stress of the earthquake separates all the particles of soil, like billions of tiny faults. That would be the condition of a society with powerful beliefs of individual independence, under enough stress. Things built in times of no stress would crumble, foundation gone.
We have actually seen this happen in small degree. Riots have sometimes happened with societies that believe in individual independence, with people looting, setting fires, doing destructive acts, but not as a coordinated thing, just everyone doing what they want. Always there is some stress that happens to set loose these actions, but they only happen because there is no real bond between people, they are like the individual grains of clay or sand, with no structural integrity. Under enough stress, they separate out and do whatever seems good to each individual, and what was built together is torn apart in a flash.