What KIND of Social Capital?

I'm coming to think that whatever we are beginning here, it will mean breaking "new ground." In the past, social capital was earned and spent in order to help us survive in the physical world. It was the kind of social capital that helped provide necessary goods and services for ourselves, our families and our communities: It provided economic goods in the traditional sense of that term. Post-modern social capital, on the other hand--though it will certainly also traffic in traditional economic goods--will have to include a relatively new, "psychical" form of economic good, as well. Our physical needs are no longer our primary concern. What we "want" is an intentional community in which the higher needs of being human (on the higher rungs of Maslow's hierarchy, if you like) are the primary concern. The kind of economic goods we will want to produce and trade in are those that are conducive to the actualization of our higher human potentialities. These kinds of economic goods are less tangible, of course.

From this point of view, it may not be necessary to speak of "social capital," per se, at all. We're talking about a community in which each member feels fully empowered to "be themselves," a community sophisticated enough to provide the psychological security in which each member will feel free to discover what "being themselves" might actually mean, in ways that may not have been previously possible in their lives, in the absence of community, or in the absence of community in this full sense--community that embraces all of each of us. That may sound a bit vague and airy-fairy, but I'm still working on it...