A community is often seen as a system in the sense that its
constituent parts – individuals, technologies, shelters, food stuffs, etc. –
interact with each other in a distinct way, a way that possesses a certain
character. It is not a closed system, but an open system that interacts in turn
with the environment in which it is nestled.
Interactions which negatively affect the community’s
reproduction into perpetuity could very well be called damage. An individual
whose effects are preventing the community from reproducing itself as a whole –
effects that can be minor or intense, widespread or particular and local –
tends to be sanctioned, or damaged in turn: the daily reproduction of the
individual in its present form is altered, so as to preserve the community.
Sanctions are meant to repair harms to other individuals,
and to the community system itself, restoring harmony. A healthy community can
sanction an individual and restore its own reproductive form, which is in
harmony with its environment. An unhealthy community, however, is something
else entirely.
A community whose very relations damage the environment it
is a part of, and which damage its own constituent elements, cannot repair
itself by sanctioning or damaging its constitutive individuals. No, such
attempts at sanction cause great harm, both to the individual and to the
community itself. This damage is chronic and self-reinforcing, in which
a damaged individual is damaged repeatedly and only gets worse, and the damage
spreads with greater intensity and breadth as the process continues.
To bring such a process to the attention to a community of
individuals is to divide them, between those who want change, and those who
don’t. Both interest groups have those who benefit from such a system, and
those who are harmed regularly. Such a division, or polarization, is damage
itself. A sick community then progresses to disintegration by repeatedly doing
damage to itself.
Such a community then can only move forward by
reconstituting itself, or it must destroy itself. What then, is damage?
