Of Pods, Squads, Crews & Gangs: Small Group Experiments In Radical Belonging

Thankfully there’s a new kind of social unit emerging which may play a crucial role in helping us to overcome this mostly silent epidemic of loneliness and disconnection. It’s already showing up in a number of different flavours but the four versions I’ve been tracking most closely include Pods, Squads, Crews and Digital Gangs. And while each one h... See more

many of us are drawn to these novel kinds of Small Group experience because we long for new kinds of friendship that transcend the categories of relationship currently on offer to us. We’re enticed and intrigued by the notion of a close group of people that are keen and eager to collectively experiment with:-Going psychologically deeper than the bo... See more

Small Grouping = Friendship + Structured Focus + Intentional Culture Creation + A High Degree Of Realness. It's my sneaking suspicion that despite all our shiny new communications technology there remains a deep streak of loneliness hidden inside almost all of us. 

The mystic psychologist Carl Jung suggested that such sensations do ‘not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.’ In other words this kind of loneliness arises from feeling not fully seen, held, celebrated or u... See more

That we straddle a pivotal moment in history being old enough to remember a time before the internet but also native enough to online culture to recognise and appreciate the whole new world of human interaction that the internet is only just beginning to open up. Many of us spent much of our late adolescence and early adulthood socialising online a... See more

This article explores why such social constellations might be forming and what makes them different from the long lineage of Small Groups that came before them. It also examines both the potential benefits and pitfalls of joining a Small Group and explores why they might one day be widely embraced by the culture at large.