They’re neither mutually exclusive alternatives nor universal.

I don’t see a thing wrong when someone is looking out for themselves. We all have to, at somepoint or another or we won’t know how to survive on ourselves when situations boil down to just us alone.

Now as far as bonding together and getting mutually along with eachother to co-exist without bumping eachother or touching people’s buttons? yeah that’s a tricky one and usually makes everyone fall apart. The societal and political climates of today seems destined to break those bonds.

Various factions would like us to feel isolated and helpless so we can be manipulated more easily. All of the things you mentioned still exist and have meaning, but there are alternative meanings being pushed at us. And we not everyone has a community or family in the traditional senses anymore.

If you want to be a member of a community, you can. There are many available in most places, and there are more on the internet that are not limited by location. Find a group of people with common values, common interests, or anything else that ties you together and participate in it. Humans evolved to be social animals.

Human interconnections are a threat to the power that be. Individuals are easy to deal with via manipulation, intimidation, or incarceration. All of that becomes harder with groups, and the larger the group, the harder it is. That is also why we see so many efforts to subdivide us by race, culture, nationality, generation, education, income, religion, gender, gender preference, sexual preference. The less unified we feel, and the more we view the people around us as “other” instead of part of our community, the less able to we are to band together to form an effective threat to the ruling class.

Clan never really meant anything even in Scotland. All that tartan shit was invented by Sir Walter Scott as tourist fodder.

Neither - the words you mentioned are usually employed by people wanting to take advantage of you.
Distancing from it is a self-preservation thing, and sometimes a moral thing. People don’t like being played, or doing bad things because someone told them it’s for family/clan/country/etc.

Life and society is not some overly simplistic monolith as you’re alluding to. People have been selfish in the past just like there are communities today. Change your social circle. Try moving, try new groups, try something different. Community still exists in various forms.

I’m pretty sure “conmunity” does indeed not mean anything and never has.

The words have meaning. Of that. We can be certain. But I think you’re asking about people’s values, and doesn’t that always depend on the people in question?

Of course everything depends on the situation, but I see people supporting their family and community on a regular basis. It’s so obvious that many people really do want to make life better for people around them. It’s not like they do that 24/7. On the other hand, there are a lot of selfish assholes who only think about themselves out there, too. And some people will talk about community for selfish reasons, too.

It’s been like this my entire life. I don’t see things degenerating. But I don’t live where you live, I don’t know the people you know.

You mentioned the word country, but I have no idea what sort of background you have. Were you raised to be hyper patriotic? I think patriotism is generally evil because it frequently leads to nationalism and therefore racism and xenophobia. So if you’re suggesting that there is less patriotism in the world, then I think it’s a good thing.

Yes, they do. That’s why so many people are struggling mentally in the “most developed countries”. The capitalistic society, centering around “me”, we build up in the west is contradictory to the human herd mentality.

The inadvertent typo of “Conmunity” is GOLD.

If it doesn’t mean something, it SHOULD. ;)

Idk, I think people are showing their needs of belonging more than in a long time, be it nationalistic or political or ideological or religious or social media cliques or influencer following or family or heritage or skin colour or sports teams. Because these are dynamic times, so the tribal Us vs Them is way ahead in the front before other primal urges and basic needs.

Here in secular Sweden with the probably most inclusive state church in the world, they have found that young people are showing interest in religion more than in generations, except they don’t want the all-inclusive “woke” church but prefer more traditional and fundamentalist flavours.

Community is absolutely still a real thing. In my experience, however, you have to be willing to step outside of the mainstream and you have to be willing to touch grass every now and then. Socializing IRL is completely different than socializing online, which is different than socializing in VR, or in voice chat, or so on.

That said, there absolutely is a case to be made for idea that “community” being slowly ground into dust, possibly intentionally so. The death of open gathering places, the rise of online-only interaction and so forth, erodes at the kind of socialization you need in order to build a community. My tinfoil hat theory is that it’s easier to sow division in the unruly masses and keep them at each other’s throats when everyone is alone, so the rich and powerful have an incentive to kill the concept of community so that it’s harder to rise up against them.

At this point, I believe the places where you’re most likely to find a strong sense of community will be within marginalized groups; people who’ve traditionally been downtrodden tend to band together for protection, relationships and support.

Community in America means viewing the same website, buying items from the same company, or having a similar personal attribute to someone else at this point.

I think we use the word community so much in this country because it doesn’t really exist.

I think so. But regardless of wider society, I’d say be ethical to the degree you can and treat people like you want to be treated. The future isn’t written yet.

A lot of the importance of family and clan in previous generations was due, in part, to the economic need of banding together. It turns out the need for family diminishes when there are other economic alternatives.