They are rungs in your ladder. With company, you quicken your ascent. You may be happy enough going along, with others you'll get farther, and faster. Bellah thinks we've got this individual vs. community all wrong. Even ontologically wrong.
Ontology is a fancy word for the science of being.
It studies why things exist and how they exist. Our radical individualism posits the existence of the individual prior to the community. In this view, community is optional. I stay in it only as long as it meets my needs. But, even science, says Bellah, is now telling us that the opposite is true.