Community

A community is defined by shared obligation, not shared preference. Scripture binds diverse people into one body, and the Restoration extends that body across generations, setting a standard that networked technology must meet.

The English word descends from the Latin communitas, built on communis, "common," which in turn rests on munus, a duty, office, or gift. At its root, a community is a group of people who hold a charge in common. The word barely appears in the King James Bible, but the idea runs throughout it, from the assembled congregation of Israel to the early church in Jerusalem, where "all that believed were together, and had all things common" (Acts 2:44). Modern usage has drifted toward affinity: a community of gamers, of fans, of people who think alike. Communities in scripture go beyond that. They bind together people who did not choose one another and would not otherwise stay together.

One Body, Many Members

Paul's image of the body describes a community that cannot afford to dismiss its weakest members. Writing to a church divided by faction, Paul compares the congregation to a body in which "the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee" (1 Corinthians 12:21). He goes further: "those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary" (1 Corinthians 12:22). The argument does not rest on mutual liking. A hand and an eye share nothing but a body and a life. Their bond is functional, permanent, and unchosen. A community in Paul's sense is defined less by who belongs than by the fact that no member can be discarded.

All Things Common

Restoration scripture treats community as an economic and covenantal reality, measured by the absence of poverty. The Book of Mormon describes two centuries of peace after Christ's visit in which "they had all things common among them; therefore there were not rich and poor, bond and free" (4 Nephi 1:3). The city of Enoch was called Zion "because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them" (Moses 7:18). In both accounts, unity is a measurable condition. A community with poor members it could lift has not yet become Zion. The Lord's standard for the latter-day church is blunt: "be one; and if ye are not one ye are not mine" (D&C 38:27).

The Welding Link

The Restoration extends community across time, binding the living to their ancestors and descendants. Joseph Smith taught that the dead "without us cannot be made perfect⁠—neither can we without our dead be made perfect" (D&C 128:15). The work of redeeming the dead, he wrote, forges "a welding link of some kind or other between the fathers and the children" (D&C 128:18). On this view, community does not end at the edge of a lifetime. The human family forms one body stretched across generations, and its perfection depends on every link holding. Genealogy, the preservation of records, and the hope of resurrection are all forms of keeping faith with members who can no longer speak for themselves.

Community at Scale

Networked technology can extend community across the globe or dissolve it into frictionless affinity, and the difference lies in obligation. Digital networks let people find one another across any distance, and the open, cooperative development of knowledge and tools can bind the human family together as never before. Yet the same networks sort users by preference, feed them what they already believe, and let them leave any group the moment it becomes costly. This produces affinity at scale, which is the Corinthian problem amplified: factions rallying around competing voices, each sure it has no need of the others. A community that anyone can exit without cost is not a body. It is a crowd.

Mormon transhumanists hope for a future in which human capacities, extended by technology, are joined in a society worthy of God's presence. That hope depends on whether new tools build bonds of obligation or erode them. The test for any platform, institution, or enhancement is whether it binds people into mutual care with those they did not choose, or makes it easier to gather only with those who are already alike.