So what's a concept?

     All of these ideas about community have really got me to thinking: Maybe I should go talk to my neighbors. I find the words of some of the people Peter Block has based his practice to are very profound. Werner Erhard's ideas that "... it is the future that one lives into that shapes one's being and action in the present" (pg. 16) really struck me as a concept that has a lot of meaning to me. Erhard goes on to explain that most people perceive the past as having an effect on their own present but how their view of the past effects their view of the future and has little to no effect on their present. In the journal article I read, “Acts of hospitality: the community in Community Music,” this idea of shaping the future seemed to tie not so much into what a community is, but what the possibilities a community can achieve. Higgins’ interviews with members of his Samba ensemble show how the way a person shapes their future can have a dramatic effect on their present.

     At first it was difficult to grasp what Erhard had said, his idea did not make immediate sense to me; I had to change my perception of the past, present, and future in order for the idea to change into a concept. The difference of an idea and a concept, even though the meaning of each word is almost identical, is that a concept can change the foundations of a previous existing notion. An idea, I think, is added on to notions one already has. In this sense, all concepts start out as ideas. The original thinker’s ideas are then passed on to others who “conceptualize” it. The original idea now rooted deep in their foundations of perception, they can use it to form new ideas, share these ideas and they become concepts themselves.

     Earlier I mentioned possibilities a community could achieve. The meaning of this does not mean that their possibilities come to fruition and are successful; this only means that they achieve the gaining of the possibility of that success. To me, this is a new idea of the word possibility. I always thought that possibility meant: now that the possibility for success is there, I should focus on seeing that to the end of that possibility, whether it was success or failure. Now instead of a word, it is a concept; a possibility is a link that connects to other possibilities of similar objectives that push action toward those goals forward. Achievements start as these possibilities and keep building until something is accomplished. Not the final product per sé but a step toward that direction.
  
     For some reason, an example of a concept that is described as a concept popped into my head. In the movie “Drumline,” the director of the main character’s band says: “So what’s the concept?” To which the reply is “One band, one sound!” So one band, one sound is the concept. I think that statement is an idea which instantly sparks in the minds of all the members the actual concept: despite that the members of this one band each carry an individual instrument, they must all sound together as if to be one instrument. This is a good example of how one person’s idea when shared with people becomes a concept when it builds into their foundations of what the idea of what one band, one sound means.