Communities help generate a shared language, rituals and customers, and collective memory of those that join the group. For me, Communities are about Camaraderie, Content, and Context. Their members can find a focus for their social relations, loyalties, and interests. The analogy of a gem comes to mind. The seeds of community reside in humanity a social species just as a gem originally resides in the earth.
Geologists refer to a gem in the rough simply as a stone.
A group becomes a community in somewhat the same way that a stone becomes a gem through a process of cutting and polishing. Once cut and polished, it is something beautiful. But to describe its beauty, the best we can do is to describe its facets. Community, like a gem, is multifaceted, each facet a mere aspect of a whole that defies description. Margaret Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science said in The Community of the Future , Human communities are no different from the rest of life.