Human beings are social creatures. All of us, with rare
exception, live out our lives in the company of other people.
An Eskimo lives in a small, tightly knit community of close
relatives; a rural Mexican may live in a small village with
hardly more than 200 members. In contrast, someone from
New York City might be a member of many overlapping
communities, such as professional societies, a political
party, a religious group, a cultural society, a neighborhood,
and the city itself. Even those who try to escape community
membership always begin their lives in some type of group,
and usually they continue to depend on groups for material
and emotional support. Communities are an essential and
permanent feature of the human experience.