Redefining and Evolving the Concept of Community

I remember that there was quite a bit of construction still going on. Between the sounds of tools and machines making their voices heard, we sat at the picnic bench and talked.

The names of the few people present lay lost somewhere in the recesses of my mind, but I remember the theme of our conversation. We spoke on the need for building and maintaining community.

Even before it first opened its doors, the Aquarium of the Pacific, its board, management, and staff shared a common vision to be a part of the Long Beach community and its many facets. This mission was chiseled into the mission of the Aquarium from day one. It would be another two years from that date of that meeting before the first African American Cultural Festival would be held.

In an age defined by hyper-connectivity yet increasing isolation, the value of community has never been more vital—or more at risk. Our modern social structure has an obsessive preoccupation with individualism, the illusion of progress, and supposed technological innovation.

I am not a naysayer of any of these social constructs. In fact, I think we, as a society, have made incredible progress in personal freedom and technological innovation. What I am attempting to relay is that, plaguing that success, is a quiet crisis of loneliness, division, and a weakening of the social fabric that once bound people together.

Reimagining community is not merely a nostalgic exercise—it is an urgent necessity. I believe that traditional and Indigenous cultures, many of which continue to practice deep forms of communal life, contain wisdom that can guide us toward balance and reconnection.

I often tell my students that because a group of people may be economically challenged does not mean that they are impoverished of wisdom. We can learn a lot from many of these cultures if we are willing to only open our eyes and see what has always existed in front of us.   Let me offer a simple, brief example of a culture I am most familiar with and that is the Bamana Culture of Mali West Africa. In the language of Bamana nko there does not exist a word for community. The word used in its place is Balimaya, which means Family. So, you can see how this speaks to the depth of relationships among the Bamana people.

In modern Western contexts, “community” is often reduced to a collection of shared interests or online interactions. Social networks simulate closeness while rarely providing the emotional or material interdependence that real communities require.

I want to be clear that embracing lessons of other cultures does not mean romanticizing or appropriation of Indigenous practices. It means recognizing that their community practices have endured for millennia because they are rooted in ecological awareness, empathy, and collective resilience—qualities our modern systems desperately need.

I want to take us back to that picnic bench outside the Aquarium of the Pacific more than 27 years ago. There was an intentional gathering of people of different cultures, unified under the banner of promoting and sustaining community.

Community is not a relic of the past but a blueprint for a sustainable future. To rediscover community is to rediscover ourselves. If you doubt any of this, then just look at the cultural festivals hosted by the Aquarium of the Pacific: 26 years and still going strong.