Obviously this is a broad and controversial topic (especially since I’m asking about both on and offline) but as individualism and isolationism seems to be increasing in the western world, I’m wondering what can be done and what others have done to counteract this trend.
Edit: Obviously, there’s broad things like participating in hobby groups or being nice to neighbours, but I’m especially interested in discussion of specifics, such as ways to set up these groups, organisational structures, or ways to expand connections from a hobby group beyond just the hobby.
and further there will be other consequences for social non-conformity with say beliefs, activities, etc.
I was a part of a community that seemed really cool for years, but it decided it was going to start imposing these rules on people about how they had to dress/talk/look/think because newer people decided they had a ‘right to feel safe’ and they wanted to ‘circle the wagons’ so to speak, so I left. Because fuck that shit.
Yes, although I think conformity has more to with maintaining an existing community and/or influencing its behavior than it does growing a new community. It is certainly almost a required feature of religious groups.
Problems come when a community starts to be exclusionary/elitist, and starts drawing lines between “us” and “them”. I’m not really sure how you avoid that stage, it seems to happen with most groups once they grow to a certain size.
yeah, that was the issue with mine, it grew and it started to suck because insecure people joined and insecure people can’t help but impose their insecurity on other folks by drawing arbitrary boundaries… also we went from no money to having some money and that completely changed people’s behaviors…
personally I just don’t get it, but I’m not into identity politics and all that ‘my fragile self-image must be protected from the bad people’ nonsense.