Community

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.

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.

When you have a densely connected network like that, not only are the friendships more rewarding, but everyone else also becomes more important to each other for mutual support, like Metcalfe’s Law. A densely layered quilt is much stronger than a seam sewn by a single string.

In working so hard to become independent, we forget how much satisfaction we get from the sense that others depend on us, and the meaning we can create by allowing ourselves to be dependent on others—if only we have the courage to let them help us.