Community spirit can be both healthy and insidious, Tolerance in a segregated community of those elements that seek to further a segregationist goal, is to me at the heart of the issue in GSaW. This tolerance can be born of simple blood relation, membership in any form of community organization and indeed race. Segregation is certainly at the heart of what Penelope points out with her example of Islam and indeed groups like ISIS make many other forms of segregation seem almost mild by comparison, Not to diminish what we've been reading here with Harper Lee, To be clear, the treatment of blacks in the U.S historically was heinous, it should go without saying.Harry Marks:
Alienation is the flip side of community, is it not? If there were no community spirit, then the alienated would not feel themselves to be different in some important way.
The modern structure of Islam is a perfect example of that internal tolerance I'm talking about, we are told not to blame the muslim religion for the insidiousness of the extremist crimes against humanity but there it is, internal segregation and the tolerance within the hole of the religion, which doesn't go unnoticed by an outside population of the planet, There is great internal struggles happening in that particular religion and there are many within it that are dying to rid the population of muslims of that very deadly extremist element, but there is also within the group as a whole that for reasons of family relation, membership in community organization and race, or just plain conformist ideals, or an "I'm not directly affected" mentality, that prevents necessary change in philosophy or psychology. Communal alienation is both victim and victimizer, One could make the claim that Atticus was alienated but buttressed against that alienation by his education and position in the very community in which he sought to change, Atticus had only his mind which wielding great strength could not muster the sledgehammer that was needed to force change, Atticus understood that in the case of Jim Crow and all that was entailed, Forced change was too dangerous a proposition.