Social Health

The core flaw of hyper-individualism is that it leads to a degradation and a pulverization of the human person. It is a system built upon the egoistic drives within each of us. These are the self-interested drives—the desire to excel; to make a mark in the world; to rise in wealth, power, and status; to win victories and be better than others.

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Hyper-individualism leads to tribalism. People eventually rebel against the isolation and meaninglessness of hyper-individualism by joining a partisan tribe. This seems like relation but is actually its opposite. If a healthy community is based on mutual affection, the tribalist mentality is based on mutual distrust. If a healthy community is based

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Campus provides a low-stakes way to “try on a new way of being”, learn with social accountability, and experiment without hard committing. Each quarter we ask our members for classes, events, bookclubs, or circles they want to host. Many use this opportunity as a chance to engage with an interest more deeply - both as a leader, constructing the... See more

Most of us get better at living as we go. There comes a moment, which may come early or later in life, when you realize what your life is actually about. You look across your life and review the moments when you felt more fully alive, at most your best self. They were usually moments when you were working with others in service of some ideal. That

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why it's hard to make friends as an adult:

where there's shared context (seeing the same people over many months daily i.e. workplaces) there's a lack of shared interests

where there's shared interest (hobby groups, bookclubs, etc) there's a lack of shared context

I think about the relationships I’ve outgrown—because of my personal or political evolution—and how living in cities has meant I could let go of those relationships and form new ones. Whitney makes me wonder if that was the easy way out. I don’t think relationships need to be held on to forever just because they exist. Plenty of us have rightly... See more

what I absorbed was that 1) my parents had social lives, and sometimes those social lives complimented my own (the blessed dinner party that included parents of friends my age) and sometimes they trumped them; 2) sometimes being a part of something meant just showing up every week and doing semi-boring stuff, like setting out the cookies before... See more

he Multiplayer Internet needs a Gradient of Presence.

We can be: ...

Alone in Alone Spaces

Alone in Together Spaces

Together in Alone Spaces

Together in Together Spaces

but the presence is a spectrum:

Lean In (Dominant)

Leank Back (Ambient)