Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

For the last 15 years I've been going "what the . . ." every time I've come across these terms and now, thanks to the Internet and Wikipedia (of course, I've been ignoring the beautiful dictionary on my desk . . .) the definitions are at my fingertips.  And now, fearless reader, thanks to the Internet, Wikipedia, and me, they are at your fingertips, too.

I think they complicate my struggle over the construction of culture, so I'm going to muse a bit here to integrate my developing conceptions of culture with the 2 Gs.

Gemeinschaft is a close relationship among the individuals in a collective, where the individual is subsumed within the larger group.  The cultural impetus of such a grouping is necessarily going to be conservative in that it is going to define itself by what it is not - the progressive ideal of inclusion has no room in such a closely knit community.

On the other hand, Gesellschaft is a looser-knit collective, where individuals can be individuals, but still work together with other individuals because it is in their self-interest.  This allows for a society without an "other" and is a more progressive approach to society.

Every society has both, but perhaps we need more Gesellschaft and less Gemeinschaft.  But I wonder . . . to what extent does Gesellschaft lead to a society which dehumanizes, not by defining some people as "other" but rather by not even considering other people at all - the focus on the individual has its own problematics, no?