Society: a Man-Made Darwinistic Construct.

Prompt: Why do individuals band together into society?

  Darwin once stated the facts of evolution, and the means of natural selection. Similar systems to natural selection can be seen in many human constructs such as capitalism, in where the weaker business dies and the stronger ones move on until taken by a better, more efficient company. 

       I believe that the ability to form communities is a way that us, as homo sapiens found to improve our chances at survival. The creation of groups, weather it be a pack for hunting, a flock for travel, or a herd for safety. Humans formed communities because it helped us accomplish goals together that would have been impossible separately. It created a more efficient, and stronger "organism" made from multiple independent individuals.

       With a community comes issues that result from differences between individuals, but these differences create strength, the variation gives a wide spread of ideas and ideals to the community and a form of "natural selection" happens once more. Ideas that do not make sense get exchanged for ones that do, the longer an idea lasts, and the more changes that are made to it the more refined it can become. The same goes for beliefs and ideals. 

       The faith in Zeus and the greek gods is gone. The thought of slavery being a good thing is dead. That is because ridiculous ideas get thrown to the road side, while the good ones survive.

       Our entire existence depends on communities, they developed our current technology from rocks to computers, because with out a group of people any improvements made by a single person would only be for that one person, and only for one lifetime.       

Individualism vs. Community, A timed essay by Peter Kamin

A balance between being an individual and being part of a community is a hard thing to decide, and a balance must be found, However the decision of weather or not community or individualism is the right choice, should be made on an individual basis, and by that person.

I believe that it not better to be an individual, and that being in a society is also not better. I believe that it is best to let the individual decide and do what they wish, or need to do, and that avoiding the creation, or participation in any community is a horrible idea. However, it can not be argued that joining in a society does not come with down sides.

Communities are groups of people gathered for a reason, often this reason is a goal, and many goals require more than one person to accomplish. For instance, in Throeau's "Walden" he uses a steel axe to chop dow trees for his house. Without a community to mine the iron, and a blacksmith to turn it into steel then make it into an axe, then he could not have used the axe. However, the cost of the community is freedom, the miner can't just leave, the blacksmith can't stop working. Because the community needs them to do their jobs, with out them other tasks could not be completed, like the farmer could not plow his fields, because there would be no blacksmith to repair his plow. The rewards from having a community are worth the cost though. The blacksmith can get bread from the baker, and the miner can get his clothes from the tailor. Commerce is the reward for being included in a society.

Communities can take freedoms, and the ability to be absolutely what ever you want is one of them. But being an individual does take more time and energy to even survive, much less to take time to do what you want to do, many survivalists and studies have shown that in a survival situation you are far more likely to survive if you work in a group, in where there are allocated tasks, such as foraging/hunting for food, collecting fuel for, and tending to the fire. building shelter. ect... Rather than trying to do all those tasks on your own. However, who are we to decide if another wishes to maintain their complete individuality by not joining a community, and instead decides that it would be better to live on their own? Isn't making the decision for them taking even more freedom away from them than joining a community?

In conclusion, I believe that it is not our decision on weather Community, or Individualism is better for someone, but a decision to be made by the person themselves.