Community, and When It is Not: Reflections in literature

Abstract

Introduction:  There is no more ceaseless or tormenting care for man, as long as he remains free, than to find someone to bow down to as soon as possible. But man seeks to bow down before that which is indisputable, so indisputable that all men at once would agree to the universal worship of it. For the care of these pitiful creatures is not just to find something before which I or some other man can bow down, but to find something all together. And this need for communality of worship is the chief torment of each man individually, and of mankind as a whole, from the beginning of the ages.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, «The Grand Inquisitor,» The Brothers Karamazov (254)