Creative Destruction: April 2010 Archives

Over the past two weeks I've been either attending or conducting concerts woven around a central idea. As both an audience member and as a performer, what struck me was the realization that these were as much projects as they were concerts, and that those projects created a following (read audience or community) around the organizing ideas. 

That led me to think about the way communities are formed, how they sustain themselves, and why they stay alive or die.

Mulling over the subject, in turn, led to these ten little questions. Perhaps they will provoke your own thinking as well.

1. What if communities are the manifestation of ideas?

2. Is that how communities are born?

3. Is a community what you get when you commit yourself to an idea?

4. Does a good idea make a good community?

5. Do you know the value of an idea by the nature of the community that forms around it?

6. Does a large idea necessarily make a large community?

7. Is it better to have a large community around a tepid idea, or a smaller community around a passionately-held idea?

8. Can you have an idea and no community?

9. Can you have a community and no idea?

10. Is the absence of a central idea how communities die?