Community Is Not Coerced

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For some reason, people assume because I question the legitimacy of the nation-state, I don’t believe in “society.”

“A man is not an island.” They tell me. “We can’t live in isolation,” they proclaim. “We need each other,” they insist.

To a large extent, I agree.

God created human beings for fellowship. We are fundamentally social creatures. We function and thrive much better in groups. But it doesn’t follow that we have to organize ourselves into coerced collectives centered within arbitrarily drawn borders.

My objection isn’t the existence of “societies,” or “collectives,” or whatever you want to call them. My objection is to collectives held together by force. People should associate voluntarily, not because some guy with an army waving a colored cloth holds them together.

“Well, that just won’t work,” some people proclaim. “We need the state to maintain order. We need the state to advance the general welfare. We need the state to collect taxes for common purposes.”

Simply not true.

Think about it: you voluntarily enter into the vast majority of interactions you have on a day-to-day basis. Consider a church. Nobody stands over the congregation with a rifle during the offering to make sure each member pays their fair share. Nobody throws members in a cage if they break the rules. People can freely join and freely leave. Churches operate as fully functioning societies – no coercive force necessary. The cross binds the community together, not guns, clubs or iron cages.

Of course, we can point to other examples. People come together into thousands of voluntary societies based on countless common interests and goals – from communes, to neighborhood associations, to philanthropic organizations.

True community is not coerced.