Community is an Act of Voluntary Myth-Making

Definition:Community is not an artifact of proximity. It is not your zip code, last name, or voting district. It is a consciously selected narrative alliance, a narrative immune system against the chaos gnawing at the edge of meaning. It’s the story we agree to tell each other—loudly, often, and with ritualistic precision—not because it's “true,” but because without it, we're just semi-autonomous meat puppets scrolling toward oblivion.
True community is a deliberate hallucination, like money or marriage or Mondays—real only in the sense that enough people believe in it to make it dangerous when withdrawn.