Finally I feel like I'm the curmudgeonly crypto-conservative when I say this because no one else I know seems skeptical of what looks to me to be an entirely hollow discourse.😭😭😭
I loved this blog post. It really evokes my feelings of confusion, frustration and hopelessness about the current state of the world. And I get that we are supposed to “work together” to fix this but HOW in a culture that is hyper-individualism on steroids.
I don’t have any answers, but what woke me up to the conversation was realising that a life of autonomous individualism was going to leave me incredibly vulnerable if I ever faced real crisis, yet having witnessed coercive/all consuming forms of community and the harm that resulted meant I had to explore another way.
Let me know if you find magic answers 😆 Easy ones if possible!
Thanks for this comment. I will say that when the election results rolled in I messaged friends who are vulnerable to abuse by this government and that includes my family as LGBTQ. I said this: I love you, friend. Our family is always here for your family. What is ours is yours. Housing, food, safety, care. I just want to say that, so that you know it’s not asking for too much. Just so you know. … It’s a start. Radical generosity.
Reading this from Australia so slightly different context here (though we’ll see what our next election throws us). Can’t remember who said it, but I heard a quite a while back about how we think we live in community but actually we live in proximity (suburbs, apartments etc), and community takes all the things you mention — hard work, reciprocity, communication, conflict resolution etc. I have a strong friendship community within a 30 minute driving radius, but have been making an active effort this year to be in relationship with neighbours and people on my street and close by. We may not socialise often, but we know each other and can rely on each other in a pinch. I think we can be both globally aware and active, while also establishing community networks locally. And I think capitalism and globalism have really eroded our reliance and bonds with local communities (we don’t need our neighbours because we can just go online and get whatever we need, and as you say we don’t have time for community guiding) so when we take the time to focus energies locally, we divest from those larger systems which are destroying our planet.
I love the distinction between "community" and "proximity." But I guess I don't know what it means to focus energies "locally" when so many local problems are intertwined with the national and global. But the answer is probably tackling all levels...which also sounds hard!
Yes I see what you’re saying — if I’m focusing on the local is that going to help situations like Gaza etc.? I grapple with this too … and don’t have the answer 😅 Have you read any of Helena Norberg-Hodge’s work on Localising? I haven’t read for a long time but perhaps I’ll revisit to see if she poses any answers
Thank you for this. I love the idea of community, I used to have a so-called chosen family community, but as I have stopped people pleasing as much, the community doesn’t feel like it’s actually community any longer.
AND I know we need to work together to stand up to facism, and all community isn’t all things, and somehow I feel like I’ve fallen behind in the community assignment as a busy parent introvert whose job is very social. So—thank you for this message.
You raise other great questions: what should community feel like? And how can we make time to pursue it amidst all the other pressures and obligations we face? It's hard in a society that is built around individualism and nuclear family structures. And as a fellow introverts, I totally empathize with the struggle!
I hear you AKKB. And so often these calls are heard by those like you who are already stretched, those already carrying more of their fair share of community and care.
I don’t know what to do except to keep finding ways of convincing those who aren’t (especially men) that care and connection are everyone’s responsibility.
And to help us realise that this is a system that redirects as much human energy as possible away from Gross Domestic Care, and towards Gross Domestic Product, leaving us with little left over.
Thanks for this Raksha, this isn’t at all pessimistic, it’s real.
If we pretend community formation is all magical and warm fuzzies, rather than complex and filled with annoying humans in the context of a system that would rather us be isolated consumers, then we’ll bail at the first hurdle.
Thank you so much for reading Shane, and for your comments. I totally agree that being realistic about all the hard stuff around creating and maintaining relationships is essential. Like any practice, it requires discipline and maybe even struggle, which I think is often missing from these conversations.
Definitely a compelling argument, and there are so many examples of well-meaning outsiders trying to "help" a community they hardly know and things going horribly wrong. But the reality is that "community" and "place" in the way Cobb seems to define it is missing is a lot: if our tax dollars are funding overseas wars, and our supply chains link us to China and south Asia and Mexico (to name a few), then are they not also part of "our" place? And are we not deeply shaping those places? Cobalt mines wouldn't be devastating the Congo without Westerners' demand for the latest iPhone; Mexico wouldn't be dotted with avocado farms if we didn't gobble them up.
Capitalism has entangled us in mostly terrible ways, and I think it's up to us to figure out how to convert those connections into something that helps more than it hurts.
I read this right after reading Octavia butler’s “parable of the sower” which was perfect timing. Parable does so many amazing things but this is something I kept coming back to while reading: in the desperate times of the book, the bonds + mutuality among the main character’s neighbors are way stronger than in most American neighborhoods, yet it doesn’t save the community from existential violence because the very fabric of society has broken down. How do we avoid getting to that desperate reality in the first place? I think the questions you raise here are a good starting point.
Personally I love Food not Bombs - the whole point is distributing food (we also bring winter clothes and hand warmers etc) to anyone who might need it in the area close to the homeless population. Also gardening with perennial native plants! Seeds for future generations
I'd been contemplating on it too, heard it a lot lately on insta and...on one hand it made me realize how deep the liberal individualism went and gave me access on why the casual acceptance of accumulating wealth, success and status for urself and immediate family gave me this...wrong feeling bcuz what about other ppl ?
On the other...How do u build community with ppl who will hurt u ? Who thinks u shouldn't exist ? I live in a country where the majority is steeped in conservatism, like, this is NOT a country that's even pretending to have progressive politics, we don't even have politics, so that's the angle I'm viewing 'community' from, it's...a confusing dissonance for me
Totally. And I also find people who might be opposed to your identities (e.g. "immigrant," "leftist") in theory may be kind to you in reality. How do we think about and relate to them in our practices of community? I don't have answers, but I'm thinking alot about it.
This was a very affirming lifesaving read for me... So often as neurodivergent, disabled, qtbipoc, working class, living rurally who had responsibilities of active carework for my dying black boricua elders and trans youth in my biofam, albeit dysfunctional and a privilege in its own way, I feel ive lost access to community in a way--near and far. Its a complex grievance and sometimes feels that the rich get richer dynamic, the social capital is rewarded, those who've had to step out of ceremonial activism spaces to tend to the ones we are fighting for, ... without the poetics and platform to articulate it all beautifully, I am working against the feeling of being left behind and punished for doing a version the hospice carework we love to read about... its confusing. yet the devotion to growth, transformation and care, persists.
Thank you so much for sharing this jazmin. A "complex grievance" indeed, and I admire the work you're doing, which often goes unrecognized and unrewarded.
This made me miss kitchen table tea chats and that’s probably the point :) Is it ironic that I spent 20++ minutes of forgotten apple passwords and onboarding subscription errors just to write this comment?
I am so challenged by this. Sometimes I think I don’t get to have it - community - I don’t have kinship or extended care networks. Or maybe it’s because I don’t have a cultural identity and as a revert person of faith I’ll still always be somewhat on the outside. I have Pinterest boards of Irish cottages where I imagine my future self sitting beside my bookshelf looking out the window at my country garden only a short walk away from where my ancestors village is. Are we at the end point of what was the goal? A dismantling and unraveling across time and multiple place migrations driven by various forces and now here I am trying to reach out and put it all back together and then failing what is an impossible task. I can’t make up for what has been lost with this one meal train and I can barely reciprocate half the time from how exhausting it is to try to live without that kind of invisible structure like glue that would hold everything together. So I totally agree that it’s such a flippant thing you hear everywhere. It also feels so distant honestly. I don’t know that I’ve ever lived with it or had it to begin with. Only little glimpses and then slipping through my fingers again.
Whatever I end up with community wise would have to be comprised of good conversations over tea. Too lazy a vision for what feels required 😫 I will send you another rambling voice note soon.
Reminds me of gated communities, or how cliques were in my high school. Radical take: form social crescents rather than social “circles” which are by definition closed at all times, even if they expand.
I think a lot more of “this is what we are looking for” than “this is what we *don’t* want in our community”. A lot more of, someone can invite themselves, than invite only situations. And in a physical sense, quite literally staying open, like when you’re chatting with people in a social setting, keeping your body language open and not forming a tight little circle. It’s not an original idea of mine, I learned it at college orientation and I adored it and it stuck with me
Hey! I love this and the missing skills about how to actually build healthy, just community speaks to what I’m trying to do w my substack- Skills for a Just Society. I’d love to stay in touch!
Exactly. The whole "community" discourse just glosses over that reality.
Finally I feel like I'm the curmudgeonly crypto-conservative when I say this because no one else I know seems skeptical of what looks to me to be an entirely hollow discourse.😭😭😭
"Hollow" is exactly the right word.
I loved this blog post. It really evokes my feelings of confusion, frustration and hopelessness about the current state of the world. And I get that we are supposed to “work together” to fix this but HOW in a culture that is hyper-individualism on steroids.
It’s such an important question.
I don’t have any answers, but what woke me up to the conversation was realising that a life of autonomous individualism was going to leave me incredibly vulnerable if I ever faced real crisis, yet having witnessed coercive/all consuming forms of community and the harm that resulted meant I had to explore another way.
Let me know if you find magic answers 😆 Easy ones if possible!
Thanks for this comment. I will say that when the election results rolled in I messaged friends who are vulnerable to abuse by this government and that includes my family as LGBTQ. I said this: I love you, friend. Our family is always here for your family. What is ours is yours. Housing, food, safety, care. I just want to say that, so that you know it’s not asking for too much. Just so you know. … It’s a start. Radical generosity.
Well thought out.
Reading this from Australia so slightly different context here (though we’ll see what our next election throws us). Can’t remember who said it, but I heard a quite a while back about how we think we live in community but actually we live in proximity (suburbs, apartments etc), and community takes all the things you mention — hard work, reciprocity, communication, conflict resolution etc. I have a strong friendship community within a 30 minute driving radius, but have been making an active effort this year to be in relationship with neighbours and people on my street and close by. We may not socialise often, but we know each other and can rely on each other in a pinch. I think we can be both globally aware and active, while also establishing community networks locally. And I think capitalism and globalism have really eroded our reliance and bonds with local communities (we don’t need our neighbours because we can just go online and get whatever we need, and as you say we don’t have time for community guiding) so when we take the time to focus energies locally, we divest from those larger systems which are destroying our planet.
I love the distinction between "community" and "proximity." But I guess I don't know what it means to focus energies "locally" when so many local problems are intertwined with the national and global. But the answer is probably tackling all levels...which also sounds hard!
Yes I see what you’re saying — if I’m focusing on the local is that going to help situations like Gaza etc.? I grapple with this too … and don’t have the answer 😅 Have you read any of Helena Norberg-Hodge’s work on Localising? I haven’t read for a long time but perhaps I’ll revisit to see if she poses any answers
Thank you for this. I love the idea of community, I used to have a so-called chosen family community, but as I have stopped people pleasing as much, the community doesn’t feel like it’s actually community any longer.
AND I know we need to work together to stand up to facism, and all community isn’t all things, and somehow I feel like I’ve fallen behind in the community assignment as a busy parent introvert whose job is very social. So—thank you for this message.
You raise other great questions: what should community feel like? And how can we make time to pursue it amidst all the other pressures and obligations we face? It's hard in a society that is built around individualism and nuclear family structures. And as a fellow introverts, I totally empathize with the struggle!
I hear you AKKB. And so often these calls are heard by those like you who are already stretched, those already carrying more of their fair share of community and care.
I don’t know what to do except to keep finding ways of convincing those who aren’t (especially men) that care and connection are everyone’s responsibility.
And to help us realise that this is a system that redirects as much human energy as possible away from Gross Domestic Care, and towards Gross Domestic Product, leaving us with little left over.
Thanks for this Raksha, this isn’t at all pessimistic, it’s real.
If we pretend community formation is all magical and warm fuzzies, rather than complex and filled with annoying humans in the context of a system that would rather us be isolated consumers, then we’ll bail at the first hurdle.
Look forward to reading what’s next!
Thank you so much for reading Shane, and for your comments. I totally agree that being realistic about all the hard stuff around creating and maintaining relationships is essential. Like any practice, it requires discipline and maybe even struggle, which I think is often missing from these conversations.
I think I linked to it in here, but @Elise Granata’s piece on “What we are willing to feel” was so good on this! https://open.substack.com/pub/theuntethereddilemma/p/nuclear-implosions-and-little-rays?r=1f7q2z&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Thank you Raksha. Beautifully written and provocative
Thank you for reading Royce ❤️
Zita Cobb of Shorefast believes that community is rooted and grounded in place -- that you have to have a shared vested interest in the opportunities and calamaties connected to that place. Not saying I agree entirely, but it's a compelling argument: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sorensonimpact/2023/03/10/zita-cobb-on-why-place-is-our-most-important-economic-gift/
Definitely a compelling argument, and there are so many examples of well-meaning outsiders trying to "help" a community they hardly know and things going horribly wrong. But the reality is that "community" and "place" in the way Cobb seems to define it is missing is a lot: if our tax dollars are funding overseas wars, and our supply chains link us to China and south Asia and Mexico (to name a few), then are they not also part of "our" place? And are we not deeply shaping those places? Cobalt mines wouldn't be devastating the Congo without Westerners' demand for the latest iPhone; Mexico wouldn't be dotted with avocado farms if we didn't gobble them up.
Capitalism has entangled us in mostly terrible ways, and I think it's up to us to figure out how to convert those connections into something that helps more than it hurts.
Excellent points. And as exhausting as it all is, I fully agree about engaging. Thanks for the response.
Thank you for thinking deeply about this topic, and sharing Cobb's perspective! It's definitely an important one.
I read this right after reading Octavia butler’s “parable of the sower” which was perfect timing. Parable does so many amazing things but this is something I kept coming back to while reading: in the desperate times of the book, the bonds + mutuality among the main character’s neighbors are way stronger than in most American neighborhoods, yet it doesn’t save the community from existential violence because the very fabric of society has broken down. How do we avoid getting to that desperate reality in the first place? I think the questions you raise here are a good starting point.
I need to read that. Been on my list for many years but will bump it to the top.
it's brilliant, but definitely check out content warnings if you need to!
Personally I love Food not Bombs - the whole point is distributing food (we also bring winter clothes and hand warmers etc) to anyone who might need it in the area close to the homeless population. Also gardening with perennial native plants! Seeds for future generations
I'd been contemplating on it too, heard it a lot lately on insta and...on one hand it made me realize how deep the liberal individualism went and gave me access on why the casual acceptance of accumulating wealth, success and status for urself and immediate family gave me this...wrong feeling bcuz what about other ppl ?
On the other...How do u build community with ppl who will hurt u ? Who thinks u shouldn't exist ? I live in a country where the majority is steeped in conservatism, like, this is NOT a country that's even pretending to have progressive politics, we don't even have politics, so that's the angle I'm viewing 'community' from, it's...a confusing dissonance for me
Totally. And I also find people who might be opposed to your identities (e.g. "immigrant," "leftist") in theory may be kind to you in reality. How do we think about and relate to them in our practices of community? I don't have answers, but I'm thinking alot about it.
Thank you 🙏🏾
This was a very affirming lifesaving read for me... So often as neurodivergent, disabled, qtbipoc, working class, living rurally who had responsibilities of active carework for my dying black boricua elders and trans youth in my biofam, albeit dysfunctional and a privilege in its own way, I feel ive lost access to community in a way--near and far. Its a complex grievance and sometimes feels that the rich get richer dynamic, the social capital is rewarded, those who've had to step out of ceremonial activism spaces to tend to the ones we are fighting for, ... without the poetics and platform to articulate it all beautifully, I am working against the feeling of being left behind and punished for doing a version the hospice carework we love to read about... its confusing. yet the devotion to growth, transformation and care, persists.
Thank you so much for sharing this jazmin. A "complex grievance" indeed, and I admire the work you're doing, which often goes unrecognized and unrewarded.
This made me miss kitchen table tea chats and that’s probably the point :) Is it ironic that I spent 20++ minutes of forgotten apple passwords and onboarding subscription errors just to write this comment?
I am so challenged by this. Sometimes I think I don’t get to have it - community - I don’t have kinship or extended care networks. Or maybe it’s because I don’t have a cultural identity and as a revert person of faith I’ll still always be somewhat on the outside. I have Pinterest boards of Irish cottages where I imagine my future self sitting beside my bookshelf looking out the window at my country garden only a short walk away from where my ancestors village is. Are we at the end point of what was the goal? A dismantling and unraveling across time and multiple place migrations driven by various forces and now here I am trying to reach out and put it all back together and then failing what is an impossible task. I can’t make up for what has been lost with this one meal train and I can barely reciprocate half the time from how exhausting it is to try to live without that kind of invisible structure like glue that would hold everything together. So I totally agree that it’s such a flippant thing you hear everywhere. It also feels so distant honestly. I don’t know that I’ve ever lived with it or had it to begin with. Only little glimpses and then slipping through my fingers again.
Whatever I end up with community wise would have to be comprised of good conversations over tea. Too lazy a vision for what feels required 😫 I will send you another rambling voice note soon.
Agreed on all fronts. Seems like something that I've only glimpsed and knew even then was ephemeral. Still, tea time and rambling voice notes forever💓
Hmm ephemeral is exactly right. And yes! 🥹
Reminds me of gated communities, or how cliques were in my high school. Radical take: form social crescents rather than social “circles” which are by definition closed at all times, even if they expand.
Interesting. How would that look or work in practice?
I think a lot more of “this is what we are looking for” than “this is what we *don’t* want in our community”. A lot more of, someone can invite themselves, than invite only situations. And in a physical sense, quite literally staying open, like when you’re chatting with people in a social setting, keeping your body language open and not forming a tight little circle. It’s not an original idea of mine, I learned it at college orientation and I adored it and it stuck with me
Hey! I love this and the missing skills about how to actually build healthy, just community speaks to what I’m trying to do w my substack- Skills for a Just Society. I’d love to stay in touch!