The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm thinking more and more I want a tribe, but as a grown-ass adult, everyone seems so atomized, I don't know where to look.
What I mean by a tribe is: a group of people with common identity who meet over and over again non-competitively to accomplish a shared goal. Traditionally, this would be foraging food, but we obviously don't do that anymore. Defecting from a tribal group ranges from forbidden to frowned on. I think this type of group is ideal for human, or at least my, happiness.
Examples that persist in modern society:
Military units
Musical bands / performance arts troupes
School classes, especially if there are collaborative projects
Sports teams
Creative development teams (eg indie games studios)
Informal groups of neighbor parents who take care of each other kids. This lasts while the kids are still young.
Advocacy groups and volunteer groups.... sometimes. The ones I've been in don't feel like tribes because there's no shared rituals or pressure about backing out.
Church.... sometimes.
Work, but very rarely. For the most part everyone is gaming work for maximum personal gain, and are competing with their coworkers for resources, so it's not a tribe.
Am I mising any? Are there ways to predict which volunteer groups, churches, and working environments will be tribal rather than atomistic?
I've wanted to create my own tribe for quite a while, one which could probably best be described as a conspiracy. I think that with very high levels of effort/engagement, a small group of people (5-20) can do incredibly large things. A few people to make the money, a few people to build connections, and the rest leverage skills as needed to get stuff done.
As a random example (more unethical than what I'd want to do) let's say you want some ideas to make their way to the state governor. So you send a few people to move into the guy's neighborhood and join his church, a few more to track him and find spots he visits (maybe a favorite bar?), maybe you send a few people to befriend his kids or something. Then talk about those ideas within earshot, so that they sound like they're coming from all sorts of different sources and are something he should be thinking about.
I guess I'm just saying, I and many other people are more than smart enough to do something about politics rather than talking about it. My actual approach would probably be something like
Build a highly successful business to get crazy amounts of money
Go from there
I'm sure there would be quite interesting options once there, but right now I'd be interested in developing or promoting free school curriculums (Eureka Math in particular is terrible) and funding certain litigation. Step 1 is the hard part, of course.
I have no idea how to get this started. I've spent my whole life looking for people who fill the exact niche that I need with little success--people here on themotte are the closest so far. Seems like the real way to do this is to either get rich and fund an organization, or join an organization funded by 1 rich person.
Step 0 is actually the hardest part. Step 0 is finding the right group with the right shared memes that they won't defect, even when the tribe has lots of capital that can be siphoned off for individual ends. An unbelievable number of starry-eyed do-gooder organizations have completed Step 1, but became corrupt, full of sinecures, and spent most of their energy on self-perpetuation rather than their sticker goal.
Take Christianity in the second century, which looks like a kind of confederacy of tribes. Christianity took over the world because it instilled an ideology on its members where they would not defect, where they continued to tithe their spare income, spread the good news, and obey their pesbyteroi no matter what. They refused to compromise on doctrine. Even when Diocletion and Galerius forbid Christians from careers, tortured them, killed them they did not defect. This is the nature of conspiracy that completed Step 0 successfully, then took about 250 years to do Step 1.
I would recommend, if you want a tribe with the level of cohesion to change the world, you must first become a prophet. As for making such a tribe out of The Motte, that may be like herding cats. Contrarianism is good for perceiving truth, but it makes for easy defectors.
That said, tribing up with rationalists is interesting idea. But they're very spread out and tend to have good things going where they are.
Good point. I do think that it's much easier to change the world nowadays--those with intelligence have much larger levers than they used to. So hopefully step 0 will be made easier because the group will be so much smaller.
TBH I've pretty much given up on the dream, and am now hopeful to just grow rich myself and then go from there. I've been wanting to do a big effortpost on this for a while, but too busy getting rich lol. Seems like the modus operandi of billionaires is to surround themselves with intelligent people who help them manage everything, and that sounds like a perfect starting point to me, if sadly lacking in true loyalty and unity of purpose.
I wouldn't want to team up with rationalists so much as TheMotte rationalists in particular. I think the former has essentially lost to Berkeley (great essay btw if you haven't read it) and attempts to resurrect the original purpose now seem quite prone to entryism.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This sort of commune style living situation has always interested me, but I honestly think I don’t have the social chops to make such a thing work for me. Did it feel like there was any sort of hierarchy within your commune? Was there anyone who seemed/felt like an outcast? I suppose the interview process would take care of that sort of thing, but I am curious. I could see this being one helluva good time if everyone was on the same social status playing field. I also start to really get annoyed by people (even good friends) within a day or so, so that would also be an issue for me.
More options
Context Copy link
Thanks for the idea. That does get my blood flowing.
I suspect in the end @naraburns is correct that I'm pining for a family, but I feel I need some kind of... something to tide me over while that's in the hopper.
More options
Context Copy link
It sounds like what you're looking for is, first and foremost, a family. Family is the ultimate common identity; cohabiting and working together to maintain a household is the ultimate meeting and shared goal. Defection is deeply disapproved. This type of group is ideal for human happiness in all but the edgiest of edge cases. Even your example of "informal groups of neighbor parents" is a step or two removed from just having a bunch of kids and grandkids--which is, of course, what "tribe" largely connotes (plus or minus a degree of consanguinity here and there).
Such groups pose some threat to both the idealized atomism of contemporary liberalism and the apotheosis of government that rests at the heart of contemporary collectivism, so the fact that families continue to exist at all strikes me as strong proof of their being rooted in human biological reality.
If you haven't already got a close knit family, then making one takes a lot of patience and the cooperation of at least one other person--a spouse. In my experience, the most functional "ready made" tribes are probably church communities, due to the ease of joining and the (usually) clear conditions for good standing. Churches (provided they are not progressive-oriented churches) are also often good places to find people who value traditional family-style tribes, thus increasing your chances of finding a spouse, if you haven't already got one. The other groups you named can also function in this way, but you run the risk of being accused of misusing the group (workplace romances are often discouraged, people may complain that they didn't join the band/team/advocacy group to get hit on, etc.). But if you're not personally religious, of course, faking it for the benefits is also often frowned upon.
One thing that isn't explicitly on your list is just hobby groups, like board game groups or rationalist meetups. Another, perhaps less healthy version would just be "drinking buddies"--or, I suppose, some kind of organized crime (like a gang), if we're looking to make an exhaustive list.
But if it's at all possible for you, I personally do highly recommend the project of raising a bunch of children.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link