some real‑world, low‑fluff tactics for weaving those frayed social threads back together.
Alchemy.
1. Curate Micro‑Communities Around Shared Practices
Most of the Cat’s specific suggestions in this section are based in digital reality; building ‘community’ in cyberia, on Someone Else’s Platform. Maybe that’s almost inevitable, especially when living in a very small town where the opportunities to find kindred in meatspace are so limited.
Inevitable or no, I refuse to initiate a Re-Weaving that requires the participants to create an account at anyplace resembling Facebook or Google or Apple. That’s just too much paradox for my brain to handle.
I think that if Curating Micro-Communities is a viable strategy at all, I’m going to have to build the initial infrastructure for it myself, something that would have been nigh impossible a few years ago. But not anymore. I have Coding Assistants at my beck and call now.
In the meantime: I’m approaching the checkout line at the grocery store with a bit more intention. I’m looking at people differently, and acting differently. Allowing for the possibility, however remote, that the random strangers around me might be kindred on some level.
2. Leverage Structured “Conversation Catalysts”
This section is for later. It contains tips about making good conversation, once … “one or more are gathered” in the name of Community.
3. Design “Intentional Downtime” Sessions
This one is about the shape and purpose of the conversations, with special emphasis on ‘low-impact’ or shared-downtime approaches.
4. Turn Everyday Interactions Into Mini‑Rituals
Again the ‘everyday interactions’ here are assumed to be virtual, like a daily morning text or evening email.
5. Harness the Power of “Collective Storytelling”
Again, my advisor, I am not interested in “Creating a shared Google Slides board” (for fuckssake), but I appreciate the underlying observation that “Humans are wired for narrative–Use that to knit people together”.
***
Begin again. I say: Please entitle this Project Thread: “Loneliness/ReWeaving”.
I say:
To begin, I’ve been thinking a lot about Gabor Maté, who I esteem highly, and his observations on what he calls the Loneliness Epidemic. I think what he’s saying is extremely useful in explaining the truth of this cultural moment, and the banal horror of everyday life in the modern West (and elsewhere). But … with that descriptive framework as a basis … what I really care about is helping to personally “cure” loneliness for myself and others through reweaving community. I mean this in a way that involves a small but cohesive group of real people (probably, of regrettable necessity, online) who can work together in practical ways to dissipate loneliness together, for each other and the good of us all. I am pretty deeply opposed to doing this on someone else’s platform, especially a platform motivated essentially by their own profits like Facebook or Twitter or Google or Apple. To try to set up real Community in virtual space is already inherently problematic in my view. To try to build it on some corporate platform would be to build on a broken foundation of beach sand. And so, we come to the point … I’m primarily interested here in coding and building a community platform myself, one that can maintain its own internal integrity from the start by having motivations based in something more pure and human than profit, and an independent architecture that is not hobbled by the censorious or greedy nature of the mega-corps and power elites. I can easily build a static website myself already, to for example post these very intentions and schemes where anyone can see them. But obviously that’s not enough in and of itself. Other people need to be able to respond and interact, in small digital spaces together … so far, this is only a nebulous and vague dream, but I’m willing to put some effort into realizing it, and that’s why I’m starting this as a Project here today.
Right then.
Genesis 1:1