Compare and Contrast Essay on Healthy versus Unhealthy Communities

Introduction

The health of a community depends on the environment the residents live in as well as the genetic health of the people. The health of a person is a product of their environment. Therefore, a healthy community is that community in which the residents have access to quality social services such as schools and health centers, economic stability, the physiological and environmental well-being of the community's environment and its influence of the environment on the health of the residents. The unhealthy community is characterized by diseases and other many social problems together with an environment that favors unhealthy community. According to Ottawa (1986), requirements for health community include security, proper housing, food, stable incomes, clean environment, sustainable resources, justice, and equality. Therefore, a healthy community strives to improve its environment in a way that all the prerequisites for health are met.

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A diverse community is a healthy community because it makes all people open-minded, both at work and in our communities and this is a long-term effect of diversity. Ethnic diversity has been on the rise in many advanced countries because of the rapidly increasing levels of immigration Putnam 138). The likely long-term effects of diversity and immigration are cultural benefits, economic benefits, and development in these diverse communities. On the short run, ethnic diversity and immigration have a tendency of lowering social solidarity and capital. In almost all modern societies, ethnic diversity will be increasing in the years to come mainly because of immigration and this is an inevitable fact, which is desirable in the future. Ethnic diversity in societies with successful immigrants has resulted in the creation of new definitions of social solidarity and reduced the negative impacts of diversity through the construction of new entities that feature ethnically diverse people. As such, a diverse community is healthier than a homogenous one. Homogenous communities lack the creativity that has been greatly enhanced diversity. According to Webber and Donahue (2001), the creativity demonstrated in many work groups in either businesses or education has been successful due to diversity. In addition, intellectual diversity brings about better and faster solutions to problems. On the other hand, homogeneous societies have had the same background, religion, and language, and they lack creativity. Since homogenous communities do not interact with other cultures, they tend to lack new ideas that can solve their problems faster and more efficiently.

A healthy or unhealthy community could be visualized as a group of people with norms and values that define behavior. Failure to follow the laid down norms may result in expulsion from the community while adherence to these norms assures membership to a community. However, not all communities are the same. People in some unhealthy communities are often exposed to environmental hazards that led to illnesses, preventing us from achieving the prerequisites for a healthy community (Bastian and Haslam 108). Unhealthy communities have rigid thoughts on their norms and values; dynamism is not part of them. For instance, people's fear of ostracism and their desperate motive to avoid the painful anxiousness that grows due to this fear can lead people to ignore the real effects of below optimal environmental conditions. This kind of static thinking and blind adherence to norms and values in fear of the fate they hold for you results to suffering in the expense of 'following the rules'. Healthy communities have dynamism in their problem-solving cycles. There social norms and rules are also changing as people adapt to new ways of doing things.

A healthy community encourages individualization whereas an unhealthy community demands conformity and communalism. An unhealthy community compromises sameness but a healthy community embraces diversity and difference. Conformity is a characteristic of unhealthy communities that is non-negotiable. Irrational authority is the menace that breeds and enforces conformity. In the case that the small population in power lacks interest in its community members and rather continued enjoyment of certain rights and privileges, non-negotiable conformity to certain ways of doing things led to the imbalance in power hence irrational authority. Healthy communities have people who are free thinkers, and this is the best weapon that fights irrational power imbalances. Due to this, unhealthy communities view conformity as a virtue and individualism as a crime. In a healthy community, conformity is looked upon as a vice while individualism is embraced as a virtue. This is not to imply that healthy communities do not have certain shared values and norms, but the difference is that members in a healthy community, be it a nuclear family or a country, are encouraged to raise questions on any matters, criticize and show their unique traits and abilities- to be themselves. This is the most basic norm and value that all healthy communities exhibit regardless of the cultural disputes between its members. A healthy community does not need its people to conform to some norms and values but rather it encourages its people to embrace difference. This is because the people in power have much interest in the growth, development, and happiness of all the members of the community (McMillan and David 10).

Works Cited

Bastian, Brock, and Nick Haslam. "Excluded from humanity: The dehumanizing effects of social ostracism." Journal of experimental social psychology 46.1 (2010): 107-113.

Putnam, R. D. Diversity and Community in the Twenty-First Century the 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture." Scandinavian Political Studies. 30.2 (2007): 137-174. Print.

McMillan, David W., and David M. Chavis. "Sense of community: A definition and theory." Journal of community psychology 14.1 (1986): 6-23.

Webber, Sheila Simsarian, and Lisa M. Donahue. "Impact of highly and less job-related diversity on work group cohesion and performance: A meta-analysis." Journal of management 27.2 (2001): 141-162.

World Health Organization. Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion: An International Conference on Health Promotion: the Move Towards a New Public Health, November 17-21, 1986, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. WHO, 1986.