We Were Meant to Live Together: Reclaiming Community in a World That’s Forgotten How

For most of human history, we didn’t live or survive alone. We didn’t try to do everything by ourselves, and we certainly didn’t think needing other people was a weakness. We lived in families, tribes, villages. Our ancestors looked out for each other, raised children together, shared food and work; grief and joy. Our ancestors survived because they understood that survival depended on each other. But somehow along the way we replaced the community with a false ideal - the stoic, strong, independent person became the ideal.
 

The trickle down result centuries later is we now live in a world where you can go weeks, months, even years without ever truly knowing the people around you. You can order food, work, shop, go to school, go to the doctor, and even worship, all without having a real conversation with another human being. It’s convenient, sure. But it’s also deeply isolating.

The ideal of Pa Ingalls, the character made famous in his daughter Laura's writing, has become a central part of our national narrative even though that ideal is no more real than Bigfoot or jackalopes. It is a creation of Manifest Destiny, or the wealthy who needed humans to go in and "break" the frontier, just as block breakers were used in the 20th Century by wealthy men trying to feed off of less wealthy people.

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This isn’t just about nostalgia for “the good old days.” It’s about something much more urgent: the fact that this hyper-individualized, disconnected way of living is breaking us. It's breaking our spirits, our relationships, our planet. From the moment the Lewis and Clark left on their expedition to map this nation, we began extending a nation built on generating wealth to hoard instead of building a strong society of people loving and helping people.
 

We were not made to live like this.
 

Technology has connected us in some ways, but it’s also made it easier to avoid real connection. We social media scroll past each other, send emojis when we don't know what to say, and too often don't know the names of our neighbors. Meanwhile, anxiety and depression are climbing, loneliness is epidemic, and people are working more and feeling less fulfilled. All while a small group of wealthy people keep stockpiling resources, building bunkers, and planning for a future where they can survive alone—on Mars, even—while the rest of us are left behind. There was a Dean Koontz horror story in the 1990s that featured a community that was filled with human bodies living only so they could maintain the human brain within them, brains that were wired into a network where they were used by a corporation to make more money. The true horror is how close we have come to that story.

Some of the things we have relied upon, like insurance, have arisen as a direct result of this disconnect. There was a time in this nation that when a neighbor's barn caught on fire, the entire community turned out to help extinguish it, and then they showed back up to help clean up the mess and rebuild, supporting that family with the resources they needed to survive. Now, when we watch the neighbor's house burn (literally or figuratively), we offer some words called prayers or thoughts, and then we walk away to let them and a corporation argue over the value in the remnants of their life laying in the ashes and soot.
 

That kind of future is not one we should accept. It’s not one we should allow.
 

If we want a world that survives and heals, it won’t come through billionaires or algorithms. It will come through communities. Real ones. Built in neighborhoods, on front porches, in shared meals and late-night talks. It will come when we look out for each other—not just because it’s nice, but because it’s necessary. It will come when we demand that sidewalks come back to the subdivisions of McMansions we have built like millions of golden calves.
 

The truth is, for thousands of years, people have done exactly this. Indigenous communities, African villages, Jewish shtetls, Buddhist sanghas, and so many others have known the power of collective care. These ways of living were built on relationship, not competition. On sharing, not hoarding. And they weren’t utopias—but they were grounded in something modern life is starving for: a deep understanding that our lives are tied together.

Millions of people who have forgotten the importance of community say they are Christians, but they have forgotten that Jesus didn’t live in isolation—he lived in community. He walked with his friends, ate with people others had cast out, healed in the middle of crowds, and built relationships wherever he went. His way of life was deeply communal, rooted in shared responsibility and care. A lot of modern Christians have turned that upside down. Faith has become something private, something individual, more about personal salvation than showing up for each other. It has become about getting into heaven instead of living in the resurrection to communal human thriving.

 

We forget that after Jesus, the first person raised from the dead wasn’t a prophet or a leader—it was a woman named Dorcas, or Tabitha And why? Because she made clothes for widows. Because she served the people nobody else noticed. Because she loved and lived communally, the community couldn’t bear to lose her. That says something powerful about what matters. When we ignore that kind of love—the kind that feeds and clothes and shows up—we lose something vital, not just about faith, but about what it means to be fully human. For Christians, ignoring that means losing the truth of what is important to the God they follow.
 

Today, people wear burnout like a badge of honor. We praise independence, even when it leads to disconnection. We talk about “self-care” but forget that sometimes the best care is someone else making you tea when you’re too tired to get out of bed.

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And honestly, trying to meet all our needs by ourselves isn’t just exhausting—it’s impossible.

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We were never meant to do it all alone.

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So what would it look like to turn back toward each other?

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Maybe it means starting small: growing vegetables with a neighbor, organizing a childcare swap, checking in on someone we haven’t seen in a while. Maybe it means dreaming bigger: reimagining our economies around mutual aid instead of endless profit, our housing around co-ops instead of isolation, our faith communities around belonging instead of perfection.

 

Because when we build lives that are shared—really shared—we don’t just survive. We thrive.

That’s how we’ll make it through whatever is coming. Not by going it alone, but by walking each other home, by giving a friend a hug, and by loving each other more when the hard things happen.

 

The work of our spiritual ancestors, the work of those who fought to change the status quo and open new doorways to thriving for others, serves as a powerful reminder that resistance is not just about standing against something harmful, but also about standing for something transformative: a world where all people are affirmed, loved, and able to live in their own radical authenticity. A world where the stories reflect a shared past we can all be proud to claim.

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The resurgence of nationalism, racism, and the erosion of rights in recent years can feel overwhelming, but it also presents a call to action, urging communities of resistance to unite in solidarity and to rebuild the very relationships that nationalism seeks to tear apart. Every story of healing, of connection, of standing firm in the face of adversity, is a message of hope. It’s these stories—from the past and the present—that help break down the walls that divide us, and show people they are not alone in their struggle.

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I believe that the change we seek in the world begins within us. And it is through finding our community—our chosen family—that we discover our internal center, our sense of belonging, and our power to transform.