so my instinct says, avoid giving ppl recipes, but at least name common pitfalls. lotta people fall in these pits, here's a hazard sign to help you avoid it, and here's a rope ladder to pull yerself out
what's the name for that thing where you learn an abstraction and it makes you intoxicated/ distracted/ overconfident coz you think you understood something but actually you have totally missed the essence of it?
another e.g.: how many groups call themselves non-hierarchical and therefore cannot see the toxicity of their power dynamics
because hey, we chose the One True & Good Abstraction which is a magic amulet against coercion, exclusion, manipulation
if I new the name, I'd be better at spotting it, and better at designing pedagogical methods that avoid the developmental cul de sacs
If you're in a 'teacher' role, how do you approach this challenge?
ok not to sound dramatic but I used to be kinda dumb and now I'm smarter than like 80% of people and I know when & how it happened & I think the same method would work for most people
for me it happened during the Occupy Movement. specifically, participating in lengthy deliberation, with skin in the game, for days on end
prior to the deliberative process, my ideas were just what my friends thought. ,y head was full of slogans. I had no interest in truth, I just believed things that seemed good to believe. I calibrated my inner compass from the people I looked up to and that was enough
"I never would have believed how quickly you can develop trust & belonging with a group of strangers" — we routinely get this feedback at the end of a 2-3hr workshop
I wanna explain how we do it...
people are lonely because they lack the social context that invites meaningful connections, NOT because the "right people" are so hard to find
my friends & I know how to create the ideal social conditions for people to find trust /belonging /safety /connection
for the misfits & awkward freaks who never fit in back home, twitter is the biggest city in the world to move to, find anonymity and, free from the judgement of unloving peers, creative self expression, and eventually, companionship, love, family & self acceptance
this is why the discourse around vibecamp & the other meetups we organise in this part of twitter can feel so high stakes: for a significant fraction of participants these gatherings represent a rare chance to experience a real homecoming, sometimes for the first time
there was probably a moment when you were a little kid, before puberty, where you were totally unselfconscious, utterly secure, completely relaxed in playful exploration, intense curiosity expanding your mind... that is the home you are invited to come back to
maybe you're lonely because you're fundamentally broken or maybe it's because we spent the last 70 years dismantling social structures that took centuries to develop and we haven't replaced them with anything yet
here, have a mass produced microtargeted identity, here's 100,000 people with the exact same values, beliefs, triggers and psychological baggage as you. yummy yummy why don't you enjoy this cozy monocrop community why are you still feeling isolated??
so the good news is: it's not your fault
bad news though: if you want to change this, it is your responsibility
it's too raw to be able to write about well but I wanna hack out a rough thread while it's still fresh
I had a rough couple days, stuck, caught in a loop of feeling bad about a thing, dissociating, feeling bad, dissociating, not getting anywhere
yesterday I tried journalling about it, talking to myself like hey man what's going on how can we fix this let's work it out why is this such a big deal for you cmon we can find a solution cmon lets do it