Community arises from the meeting of real needs.

“[Witness the] disconnection and loneliness of a society in which nearly all social capital, nearly all relationships, have been converted to paid services; in which distant strangers meet nearly all of our material needs; in which we can always “pay someone else to do it”; in which the unspoken knowledge I don’t need you pervades our social gatherings, rendering them vacuous and dispensable.

Such is the pinnacle of civilization, the end point of centuries of increasing affluence: lonely people in boxes, living in a world of strangers, dependent on money, enslaved to debt — and incinerating the planet’s natural and social capital to stay that way. We have no community because community is woven from gifts. How can we create community when we pay for all we need?

Community is not some add-on to our other needs, not a separate ingredient for happiness along with food, shelter, music, touch, intellectual stimulation and other forms of physical and spiritual nourishment.

Community arises from the meeting of these needs. There is no community possible among a group of people who do not need each other. Therefore, any life that seeks to be independent of other people for the meeting of one’s needs is a life without community. The gifts that weave community cannot be mere superficialities, they must meet real needs. Only then do they inspire gratitude and create the obligations that bind people together.”

- Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics