Building our Own Foundations

Communities

When I read Anna Gát’s We’re a Niche, We Just Didn’t Know I started to think more about communities in general: what they’re about, how they begin, how their memberships wax and wane, and how those things have changed over time. Two of the main types of communities are activity-based communities, and value-based communities. Communities are more on a spectrum between these two focuses, rather than only one or the other.

Activity-based communities are created to bring together people that all enjoy doing some activity. The activity can even be something you can do solo, but it can be more enjoyable to do together. Sometimes, the members values are also closely aligned, but that is by no means a requirement of membership.

Value-based communities are not as common as activity-based communities but are generally much larger and much more powerful. The most important part is that all of the members have mutual values in some aspect of their life. This usually leads to participating in activities together but it doesn’t necessarily have to.

Some examples:

Activity-based:

• An after work kickball league
• A rock climbing gym
• A pottery studio with memberships
• A World of Warcraft Clan
• Barry’s Bootcamp

Activity/Value-based:

• Surfrider.org (dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world’s ocean)
• Boys & Girls Club
• Most charities / volunteer organizations

Value-based:

• Religious congregations
• The Bitcoin community
• Burning Man
• Political parties

The I.I. is described by Anna as an intellectually focused community currently growing internationally on Twitter and Medium, by initiating discussions about the values that bring it together, and new ways to explore IRL meetings with each other.

For the past year I have been thinking about how to build new value-based communities for the modern era. I consider myself Agnostic. Many of my friends don’t attend church or consider themselves religious. I’ve noticed some fill the void of Sunday church or daily prayer with religious commitment to a different type of institution or habit. I think most humans like being part of something larger than themselves, and something to put some of their faith in.

With the unbundling of organized religion in mind, I set out to create a structure that could help bring together and grow new value-based communities.

Foundations: A Framework

Foundations is framework. A Foundation, your Foundation, is a self-directed guide on how you live your life. It can be made up of explicit values, habits, traditions, anecdotes, and whatever else you’d like to use to help you live a better life. Each individual is in charge of their own Foundation.

A Foundation is built on fundamental bricks. The single immutable brick of a Foundation is all other fundamental bricks of a Foundation are mutable. They can be altered or deleted, and new fundamental bricks can be added. As the world continues to change both my views and your views will change. At present, here some fundamental bricks that can help provide a framework to build your own Foundation:

• Habits
• Traditions
• Priorities (Values)
• Health
• Education
• Family
• Money & Wealth
• Music, Dancing, & Art
• Love
• The meaning of the Universe & One’s self

Foundations in single-player mode

You are 42% more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down. The act of writing something down in and of itself is powerful. Writing down your priorities and thoughts on important topics like health, money, or love can help you crystalize your views, and see the gap between how you want to live, and how you are living right now. Foundations gives some structure to do so, even if it’s just for yourself.

Foundations in multiplayer mode

My hope is that as people build Foundations for themselves, communities around similar Foundations will form. Because there are many dimensions to a Foundation, my hope is that individuals will be a part of a few different communities, where others in those communities will have overlapping or orthogonal Foundations from which you can learn about perspectives different than yours from people you have something in common with.

The Inter-Intellect and shared Foundations

I think the I.I. and the Foundations framework compliment each other well. The I.I. is the perfect first community to pilot using Foundations as a framework for connecting with each other over shared values; Foundations is a great skeleton structure for bringing members of The I.I. together who are, as of now, connected by not much more than following each other on Twitter.

A Call To Action

The act of writing something down is powerful, but it’s often hard to start.

I’ve created a Foundation template in Notion — anyone can duplicate it and start filling in or adding their own blocks.

I propose people interested in building their own Foundations start meeting for a few hours at a time on a regular cadence (bi-weekly?) to help each other write down their thoughts on a given block (i.e. priorities, health, or love etc).

I will be getting the first group together in San Francisco, meeting in person, sometime in July. If you are interested, feel free to reach out directly on Twitter: BrennerSpear

What are some other ways we can get interested people together, both in person, and/or virtually?