Dynamically-gated envisioning communities?

Walking Elven Pathways: enactivating the pattern that connects (Part #4)

---

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]

---

Increasingly social groups, typical of the diversity of civil society, might be usefully understood as forming into psycho-social analogues of the "gated communities" that are now emerging in affluent suburbs. Whilst in the latter case it is for security reasons to sustain a particular lifestyle, in the psycho-social case it would appear to be a question of sustaining a particular belief system or worldview -- and in this case a sense of a desirable future. They might be described as "dynamically gated envisioning communities" -- existential vehicles designed and maintained to travel into a predetermined future. The process is being reinforced by the rapid commercialization of the web and the creation of exclusion zones -- gated communities in cyberspace. (cf Dynamically Gated Conceptual Communities: emergent patterns of isolation within knowledge society, 2004)

The curious feature is that by opting for this mode, each can associate with a future of a particular flavour, feel or vision by a process of self-selection. Failure to buy into this understanding simply ensures exclusion. Such communities may be large or very small -- as in the case of the personal "cocoon". They may overlap in many ways. Of course this condition poses a real challenge for issues of relevance to the future that are common to many communities -- or where one community is effectively exporting problems for which others are obliged to care. How to design and build meaningful bridges between such communities -- especially since the fragmentation they represent is also a fragmentation of our individual psyches into isolated sub-personalities?