Image and Pilgrimage #1 Communitas

In this book, Victor and Edith Turner talk about communitas. Communitas are a spirit within a community, it is usually a sensual feeling of togetherness, unity, and equality. This environment characteristically involves people who are experiencing liminality as a group. Liminality literally means "threshold" and is a place of being in between one way of life and another. During this experience, every person no matter who they are or where they come from are equal. This forms a structure of communitas which incorporate positive morals, fellowship, and loving contact. During a pilgrimage, different people from different social classes and backgrounds can mix and become equals. In normal life, this would typically not happen, these people would rarely converse or their conversations might be limited to receiving or giving orders. According to Turner, this sense of communitas is created as the pilgrims "distance themselves from mundane structures and their social identities, leading to a homogenization of status". The idea of communitas takes community to next level and allows a group of people to share an experience through a rite of passage. If this idea was taken and used in everyday life, could their be peace? If the whole world was involved in a communitas environment, would there would be war, racial tension, religious strife? I believe that if this were to happen, there could be worldly peace.