Community

To spot weird signals, you need to go down rabbit holes. Follow your intuition. And remember, pursuing rabbit holes is not always an act of procrastination. Sometimes, it’s simply your mind telling you to follow your curiosity.

Stop trying to make social networks succeed, stop dreaming of a universal network. Instead, invest in your own communities. Help them make long-term, custom and sustainable solutions. Try to achieve small and local successes instead of pursuing an imaginary universal one. It will make you happier.

It will make all of us happier.

There’s one other thing related to the questions of civic life and democracy that we have been talking about. If democracy is this challenge of people coming together to figure out the kind of shared lives they want to forge, then the behaviors that they use to negotiate difference are going to flow from the commitments they have to each other. So... See more

Over the subsequent years, Feÿtopia evolved into a community of people who live at the castle in the ‘off season’, roughly November-April, for anywhere from a few days to the whole season. Community members are encouraged to co-create the experience of living at the castle: meals, parties, and improvements to the grounds can be planned by anyone.

The club model teaches us something: organizations that endure don’t try to include everyone. They’re clear about their identity, even as that identity evolves. Some clubs that were men-only for centuries now welcome women. They haven’t survived by being vague, they’ve survived by being clear, then changing what that clarity meant over time.