My (Our) Social Project Manifesto
It’s a simple truth to recognize that we have everything that we need to be happy in this world. The tragedy is that we spend most of our lives lost in an unconscious state, entirely at the mercy of whichever thought next comes barreling into our consciousness. We are almost always preoccupied by anxiety about something that we just did, blame at something that we just thought, or concern for something that might happen in the near future.
More than anything else, we are confronted with a constant sense of shame. Our society doesn’t accept us as we are, and we don’t accept ourselves as we are. We feel guilty about who we are, what we look like, what we did, or what we think. And then we feel guilty for beating ourselves up about it.
On closer inspection, you might think that this state of mind isn’t consistent with the facts of the universe that we live in. Although we have a conception of ourselves as these separate egos — as if we somehow represent own loci of causality in the world, deciding all our actions by ourselves— our consciousness is really just a series of flashes. A thought pops into our head, that sparks a chain reaction of related thoughts. An emotion washes over us, and we become lost in it. We feel the pang on our cheeks at a sudden cold burst of wind. We take in inputs, and it impacts how we live our lives. There’s nothing that remains of ourselves that makes sense to feel ashamed of.
We can see this for ourselves on a visceral level if we turn our attention inwards — to examine our moment-to-moment experience of the world.
How can we live in a state where we can see the world for what it really is? What can we do to break out of this illusion? How can we truly learn to just be happy?
When I first moved to Berlin last April, I often felt overwhelmed by a sense of loneliness. There was a sort of self-shaming going on inside my head, where I felt bad about the fact that I didn’t have anyone to hang out with. I’d typically have a few different friends who I could meet up with for a beer or something, but I didn’t have a proper sense of community. What made things worse is that Berliners are renowned for their flakiness. It’s not hard to take a last-minute cancellation personally — as if everyone just isn’t all that jazzed to see you.
I’d find myself alone on a Friday or Saturday night. The typical circle of thoughts that would run around my head went something like this:
- “You’re living in a fun, awesome city like Berlin — where everyone else is having fun with friends — but you’re all alone.”
- “You’re such a loser. Nobody thinks you’re interesting enough to hang out with.”
- “If you weren’t so neurotic, then people would want to hang out with you.”
- “Because nobody likes you, you won’t be able to pull yourself out of this rut. What if this is just the way your life is now?”
This went on until October, when something happened. I went to a hackathon with a group of friends that I used to live with in Bangkok, where we had a built a vibrant community together. These people all shared the same type of questioning, scheming, entrepreneurial mentality as me. They too were disillusioned with the kind of dog-eat-dog consulting/finance lifestyle that so many of our peers had fallen into. We wanted to do something special with our lives, without sacrificing ourselves to do it. We were all lost souls in our own little way — and we were all searching for answers to what we wanted to do with our lives.
As a bit of context, these two friends at the hackathon are both a little eccentric. They’re big believers in personality testing. They believed in using psychological indicators such as MBTI results to influence how you should treat different people. They used to run a startup trying to match people into friendship groups, based on their personality type. I had met them in my first week in Bangkok, at a party that they were hosting as a way to build traction for this brand, and we hit it off immediately. We would go on to live together in a house of 7 expats, who were selected because they had the exact same personality type. It was pretty weird, but I loved it.
What happened that weekend in October completely saved me. I had a feeling of being unconditionally accepted, part of a group, for the first time since I’d moved to Berlin. We had a community that meant something to all of us, and we actively made the effort to make sure that every member of the group was looked after. For that weekend, I felt like I had all the energy in the world. Creative thoughts were constantly pouring into my head. As I grew more secure in myself, I noticed that I started to develop a genuine desire to start to help other people too. My overall view of the world shifted from one of antagonism — “Everyone out there is trying to screw me over.” — to one of compassion — “Anyone who might try to screw me over, is tragically cursed with problems of their own. I should try to help them to feel better, so that they wouldn’t need to act this way.”
When I came back to Berlin, nothing had really changed with my life situation. I still had a collection of friends that I would bump into every now and then for a beer. Some nights, I would still find myself sat at home on a Friday night, when I’d really rather be doing something else, but it wouldn’t affect me in the same way. I didn’t feel the same sense of insecurity anymore. Whether I was either part of a group or alone at this particular point in time, I still had a feeling of that I was worthy of real friendship. It felt inconceivable to me that I could be unworthy of human connection, after being part of a community like that so recently.
Around this kind of time, I had been reading a few different books that really colored my thinking. One book which I absolutely loved was The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, which came out recently in 2018. It’s all about how businesses can craft great team cultures. In some companies, employees are excited to come to work everyday, they feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves, and they describe their coworkers with a touching word — family. The basic lesson of the book is that we should strive to create a judgement-free environment, where people feel like part of a group, and where they’re safe to try things out without any danger of being shamed by others.
A culture like this, Coyle argues, is built by sending out “belonging cues” — little nudges to display that we think that members in our group are in our team. These cues could be as simple as maintaining eye contact, being physically close to one another, making sure that we give everyone a chance to pitch into the conversation, and showing that we genuinely care about their point of view.
Another part of this formula involves openly sharing our vulnerabilities. The idea is that, if we can search for moments where we can share our worries and insecurities, we get to a deeper level of connection with one another. Rather than acting as if we’re completely perfect — and hiding all of the shame and self-hate sloshing around inside of us — we admit that we’re all human, deep down at heart, and that we all share in these kinds of neuroses together. A positive side-effect by doing this is that we make the vibe more comfortable for others to share insecurities for themselves.
At the same time, I had been reading all sorts of different parenting books (it’s a bit of a weird story why — I don’t have a kid). I found some great advice about how parents can engender healthy emotional attitudes in their children, which really resonated with me.
There were a couple of concepts that I found particularly useful.
One concept that I like is being accepting to your child’s feelings as they are. A child might say “I hate grandma!”, and the mother’s gut reaction might be to shoot back with, “How dare you say that! Of course you don’t hate grandma!”. The lessons that the child learns through this kind of interaction are:
- “I don’t really feel the way that I think I feel. Therefore, my emotions are to be mistrusted.”
- “Some of my feelings are so shameful, that they shouldn’t be shared with anyone else. I need to bury certain kinds of feelings deep down in the back of my mind. I should feel pretty bad if they ever pop up again by themselves.”
As much as the mother might wish that her child didn’t hate her grandma, that doesn’t change how she feels in her heart of hearts.
Good parenting, then, is all about trying to create an attitude of acceptance of the thoughts that children have, and treat them as they are — just thoughts. If we bring our children up in that world, then they’ll cease to carry this kind of mentality of shame around with them for the rest of their life — and they can start to be happy.
Another interesting concept in parenting is the idea of attachment theory. The idea is that, depending on how a child is raised, they will inherit a certain kind of “attachment style” that dictates how they react to others for the rest of their lives.
For example, if a child needs something, and cries out to their parents, if the child’s needs are consistently met, then they will grow up to become securely attached. There is no fear within them that one day they might suddenly have nobody to look after them. They don’t have any sort of lingering paranoia about whether their parents will truly be there for them. As a result, if they ever find themselves without anyone to care for them, they don’t worry. They are used to the idea that they are inherently deserving of love, and there’s no need to stress about it.
On the other hand, if a child cries out, and finds their needs to be met only some of the time, then they will grow up to be weakly attached. They live with a constant sense of doubt about whether or not anyone will be there for them. When these children grow up, they love in an incredibly needy way. When somebody gives them attention, they crave it like a drug, because they never know when they’ll be able to get their next hit of it.
The final variation here is that, if a child’s needs are consistently never met, then they will become unattached — they won’t expect love from people at all, and they might even just accept that they are completely undeserving of it.
Good parenting, therefore, can be seen as keeping kids’ “attachment cup” full. They need constant affirmation of a parent’s love — and conflicts need to be resolved with reconnection.
This is also something that gets talked about in The Culture Code. Human beings aren’t evolved to take mere words to heart — it has to be constantly re-affirmed. It’s not enough to tell your partner that you love them — this needs to be done consistently everyday, otherwise we start to worry, and we start to forget.
It occurred to me how directly relevant all of this new material had been for my experience as part of a community. After a time, lacking a proper group connection in Berlin, my cup was empty. My thoughts were completely taken up by a sense of shame for who I was and what I was thinking. This state colored my experience of the world, and as that happened, I started to tense up, and see people less charitably. When my cup was full again — when I felt like I belonged to a group that accepted me no matter what — I suddenly had the power and the energy to grow to work on myself, and soon, I naturally wanted better things for other people too.
I came across a lovely story recently:
As the 21st century was beginning, a South African psychiatrist named Derek Summerfield happened to be in Cambodia conducting some research on the psychological effects of unexploded land mines — at a time when chemical antidepressants were first being marketed in the country.
The local doctors didn’t know much about these drugs, so they asked Summerfield to explain them. When he finished, they explained that they didn’t need these new chemicals — because they already had antidepressants. Puzzled, Summerfield asked them to explain, expecting that they were going to tell him about some local herbal remedy. Instead, they told him about something quite different.
The doctors told Summerfield a story about a farmer they had treated. He worked in the water-logged rice fields, and one day he stepped on a land mine and his leg was blasted off. He was fitted with an artificial limb, and in time he went back to work. But it’s very painful to work when your artificial limb is underwater, and returning to the scene of his trauma must have made him highly anxious. The farmer became deeply depressed.
So the doctors and his neighbors sat with this man and talked through his life and his troubles. They realized that even with his new artificial limb, his old job — working in the paddies — was just too difficult, that he was constantly stressed and in physical pain, and that these things combined to make him want to just stop living. His interlocutors had an idea.
They suggested that he work as a dairy farmer, a job that would place less painful stress on his false leg and produce fewer disturbing memories. They believed he was perfectly capable of making the switch. So they bought him a cow. In the months and years that followed, his life changed. His depression, once profound, lifted. The Cambodian doctors told Summerfield: “You see, doctor, the cow was an analgesic, and antidepressant.”
— Johann Hari
In the context of self-help literature, the assumption tends to be made that we must first develop a sense of self-esteem, and that will make us worthy of human connection. If we could only force ourselves to treat ourselves with acceptance, then other people will like us too. We need to do this if we want to find a better job, improve our relationships with friends, or find our one true love.
I’ve started to wonder lately if we’ve gotten it the wrong way around. What if first we need the human connection, and then we have what it takes to find our self-esteem?
What if we could design a structure for a new type of group friendship — one predicated on support, compassion, and acceptance? What would be possible in a world where everyone was part of a group like that? How much energy would people have to change themselves for the better; to do what’s right for themselves, for their friends — maybe even for the whole world? How would we do that?
I think that a key component would need to involve the use of rituals, to turn our day-to-day routines into something that improves us for the better.
I once took a fantastic class at university on Chinese philosophy, where this was stressed to a monumental degree. It all starts with the Analects — a compilation of statements by/about Confucius, put together by his followers after his death. Western philosophers tend to view Confucius as a sort of extreme conservative. He would value practices such as submissively paying reverence to your parents, without any particular justification. Indeed, reading the Analects on a surface level might seem confusing. It’s full of random statements like “Confucius said X…”, and “One day, Confucius did this…” — all without any cohesive theme. Sometimes, these stories would even contradict themselves. Confucius would condone an action in one chapter, then say the exact opposite somewhere else. It’s also filled with seemingly irrelevant information, that doesn’t appear to be an allegory for anything deeper. There’s even a verse that talks about how Confucius straightened his mat every morning in a particular way!
In reality, Confucius was deeply interested in the power of rituals, and the Analects pays homage to how a great man worked this commitment into his daily life. What is a ritual? It’s a pattern of behaviour that we establish as a society which, when done right, should teach people to improve themselves.
For example, imagine that you’re walking about around town one day, and you clock a friend about 50 meters ahead of you. You both see each other. You gradually approach. You look down. When you are about 5 meters apart, you both look up, awkwardly give each other a wave, mumble, “hey… how’s it going?…”, and keep walking.
Why do we do this? Because it’s the only way to be normal. Society has thrust this obligation onto us, and at this point, it would be simply too weird not to play by social convention. What we have here is a ritual. A ritual that we perform badly. A ritual that we perform badly, which we’ve forgotten the point of. A ritual that we perform badly, which we’ve forgotten the point of, and that we still continue to do anyway.
What would it look like if we managed to do this ritual the right way? Why do we even say, “hey… how’s it going?…” at all?
At some point, when this convention was first established, you might think that it came out of a place of care for the person that you’ve just bumped into. You want to know how they’re doing, and you’re going to try to impact the trajectory of their day for the better as a result of this interaction. When viewed like this, every chance encounter that we make could be an opportunity to make the world a better place.
If there is a world that we can live in, where we refuse to let these kinds of rituals be performed badly, then what would this look like? How would you try to make somebody’s life better, if you could, by a simple, “hey… how’s it going?…” done right?
If you try this ritual for yourself, you might soon realize that you don’t quite have the social skill to do this well. For one thing, you might misread the mood that your friend is in on a particular day. If somebody is in a rush, then they might not want to be apprehended, and coerced in a long conversation about their feelings! Your friend might not have been raised in an environment where they feel comfortable talking about their problems, so this might make them uncomfortable. You might even just lack the level of mindfulness to regularly pull yourself out of your own barrage of thoughts, to say something that inspires true connection.
For Confucius, a ritual that is done well should help us to develop the sensibility to be able to tailor our actions to different circumstances.
Maybe the first time you try this out, it comes across as a bit weird. The encounter might go something like this:
You: [Super enthusiastically] Hey!!! How’s it going!!!???
Friend: [Looking glum] Hey… Uhhh… Not bad… How are you?
You: I’m not too bad at all! But I really wanna help you feel better with this interaction. Are you sure that you’re feeling “not bad”? Is there anything going on with your life that’s bothering you?
Friend: [Weirded out] Uhhh… No, I’m fine… Really…
You: Okay… If you say so…. Have a nice day!
This interaction could have gone better. You were a bit too obvious, and a bit too weird for this friend at this particular time. They didn’t open up to you, because you seemed too outlandish to be taken seriously.
Not to worry. Next time, you’ll do things differently. If every time that you perform this ritual, you do a little bit better, and if every “hey… how’s it going?…” becomes an opportunity to improve, then soon enough, you will manage to go deeper with it every time.
Eventually, the dialogue might look something like this:
You: [Warm and sincere] Hey! How’s it going?
Friend: [By default] Hey… Not bad…
You: [With a genuine interest] No, really… How is it going? You look a little off today.
Friend: Well, yeah… I mean things have been a little rough lately. Things aren’t going too well with my girlfriend at the moment, and I’m really swamped with work.
You: I’m really sorry to hear that. I know how that feels, and it’s never an easy process. In truth, I struggled for quite a long time myself a few months ago. Do you think it’ll be okay?
Friend: [Relieved] Well, yeah, I mean, I think it’ll all be fine. The project that I’m working on right now is really tough, but I’m optimistic that things’ll look up in a few weeks’ time. And I think that everything will be fine with my girlfriend. We do really love each other, after all.
You: I’m glad to hear that. It’s never easy going through a rough patch like this. You know, I’m always there for you if you need me, and if you ever need to talk about this stuff, I’m all ears.
Friend: Thanks buddy. That really means a lot to me.
In Confucian terms, there is a word for somebody who reaches this kind of mastery — a sage. A sage can judge the environment that they find themselves in, tailoring their actions perfectly to match the mood of those that surround them. As if by magic, as they float along through the world, their calm and positive demeanour becomes infectious. Step by step, they lift up those around them, and bring them to a new level of being.
So, on a practical level, what should an ideal community look like, and how might it work?
How about this for a dopey idea…
A group of 3 or 4 friends commit to establishing a powerful community. The goal is to get to a place where we truly connect with each other. We agree to treat each other with the sort of care that we would reserve for one of our children. We fill up each others’ cups.
We make sure that we all feel accepting enough of our own state of mind, and that we don’t need to live in a constant state of shame. In this state of comfort, we start to grow. We share advice, books, and resources, giving ourselves the knowledge to help each other in every area of our lives.
We create rituals that reinforce this sense of community. We constantly give out belonging cues, share vulnerability, and take every interaction as an opportunity to practice. We start to feel better. We actually start to feel great. We start to care about other people more. We unleash a positive feedback loop, where we become more engaged in our own rituals, as we see the effect that they have on ourselves, and on others.
After a while, we start to bring others in. We attend an event as a group, and start talking to strangers. We subtly invite them into our conversation circle. We expertly dish out a flurry of loving statements that make them feel at one with the world, for the first time in a long while. They become completely enamoured by us. They notice how they feel when they’re in our company. They suddenly feel like they can do anything.
At some point, they start to notice the weird little quirks with how we interact with each other. We might decide on a ritual that says that we should give each other a hug whenever we greet each other. This might not be a normal hug. This might be a hug where we enforce a real sense of presence to the moment. We might insist that this hug should mean something — that it be a genuine expression of gratitude that a friend exists in our life. The strangers, if they don’t immediately find it to be just way too weird, might want to get involved with this.
“Why do you guys do that?” — they might ask. We might explain our reasoning, and they might like where we’re coming from. They might want to join our social project themselves. They might have their own creative ideas for rituals that we could do to bring the group together. They might want to help to spread this message even further. They might organize a barbecue, which is open to everyone, or they might throw a party at their house.
Alternatively, they might think it’s super weird. They might think that we look a bit like a cult, or worry that we might try to convert them to some weird religion. If that’s the case, then we might try to make our rituals a little less intense the next time we go to one of these events. We might take every event that we attend as an opportunity to do better and, eventually, it might actually work.
One day, 5 years from now, there might be a million people acting like this. People might organize themselves into decentralized groups — gathering regularly all around the world — spreading the gospel of human connection. We might all be excited to try to make the world a better place.
Imagine what kind of world that might be.
We could have gone another way with this. We could have decided to preach to people, in very logical terms, that there is a better reality that they could live in, if only they gave it a proper try. We might say that they ought to read 10 books that would give them the a theoretical understanding of why this makes sense. We might alienate people with abstract notions of “belonging cues”, “attachment theory”, and “rituals”. They might not think it’s worth the hassle.
We could also have wrapped these ideas into a company, charging a high fee for the potentially life-changing effect that this kind of community might bring them. You tend to see this a lot with “self help” people. “Gurus” and “life coaches” will charge you $4,000 for a week-long workshop to build your self esteem. It might even be worth the money if you take it seriously enough.
I think that this distorts the pure intention that they claims to motivate their actions. It immediately alienates large swathes of people, and it sows the seeds for a general feeling of mistrust.
I’d like to treat this as an open source project. I want to say that, rather than pursuing this out of a need for personal gain, we should try to leave a lasting impact on the world. Like the development of the Internet, Wikipedia, or Linux, I want us to come together to give something positive back to the world around us.
Ultimately, a true gift made by a friend should never come at a cost.
As a kick-off for this project, I’m starting off with a super simple framework. I’ve made a GitHub page for a new open source initiative — OurSocialProject. In true open source style, this will all work through Git, a version control system that we programmers tend to use. I’ve come up with a rough mission statement, a set of values that I think this community should live by, and some example rituals that I want us to try out. For now, I imagine that I’m missing a lot of obvious stuff.
Everyone is encouraged to fork (make a copy of) this repository for themselves, and do whatever they want with it. I want us all to start out by creating our own “My (Our) Social Project Manifesto”, which will be helpful to structure our own thoughts about what good community means. If you feel comfortable with it, then you can even share your manifesto on Medium, and we can feature it here on the OurSocialProject channel. You can either take my mission statement, values, and rituals as your own, or you can tweak them to fit with your own ideas.
Once we have all of this set up, then we can sort ourselves into local hubs of action. I’d like to be as flexible with this as possible. You might decide to club together with an existing group of friends, making a conscious decision to approach your community with a greater sense of intention. Alternatively, you could join the OurSocialProject Slack channel, and look for a group of people in your local area. You might even decide to share your own My (Our) Social Project Manifesto here, to give an opportunity to show these new people what you’re all about!
You can meet up with these people, and see if you can forge a better human connection with them. You might find a really cool Meetup event that you might want to attend. You might go to an art gallery opening that looks interesting. You might even just go to the pub for a pint. Either way, make it weird, and see if you can see any benefits for yourself. Maybe you’ll have a good time, or maybe it’ll bore you to death. But hopefully, after a few tries at getting better, you‘ll find some strategies that work for you.
If you end up doing this for yourself, then I would be curious to see how you get on. Which rituals did you find the most enticing? How did everyone feel about it? Was it an awkward thing to do? Would you do it again?
I’m extremely self-aware in realizing how cultish, wacky, and just plain weird this whole concept is. In actual fact, I’ve tried to design it to be that way. I want to see a world where only the people who take these concepts seriously will actually try to put them into practice.
If you don’t have a technical background, it can see like quite a faff to go through the effort of forking the repository, editing the README, and writing a whole manifesto (especially if it’s as long and waffley as this one!). I’m also encouraging you to be bold with this. It’s really a lot of effort to jump through this many hoops, and to share things about you like this in such an open and vulnerable way.
My hope is that, if only a few people are excited enough by this project to do this, then those people will be great friends to have as part of a local community. If only a few groups actually latch onto this, and make this a priority, then we can already have a huge impact. Over time, as more and more contributors get involved, we might make a more mainstream version. But saying that, I’d still encourage you to get involved now if this sounds like a project for you.
