Every community needs to employ the services of its members, under the direction of some leader or at least some group of coördinators, in order to convert its human energy into the utilities that keep it alive. A Chinese community in Confucius’s day needed community work gangs for road building, ditch digging, and the like. A modern community needs police, firefighting, medical services, schoolteaching, electrical power, sewers, and much more.

And for these things, the community needs more from its leaders than courtesy and charity; it needs true spiritual direction, foresight, and a corporate discipline. And if the leaders or coördinators fail in their duty to provide these things, and instead allow the community’s energy and resources to be dissipated or squandered, the community is endangered.