Community Saves Lives
We need to talk more about the true meaning of life.
I normally use a reference in a book as a jumping off point for these posts, so here’s one of those from someone who maybe isn’t typically associated with business leadership.
“It was a community and that is how human beings were designed to live.
“Anytime you wanted to be alone you simply close your door and anytime you wanted to be with people you would open it again.
“If there’s a better recipe for happiness then it hasn’t been seen yet.”
This quote is from Thursday Murder Club, a best-seller but I don’t think Richard Osman was going for the urban regen market in his tale of property developers targeting heritage sites with dirty money.
There are lots of quite strong signs that community is a vital, and vitally under-appreciated, component of a good life well lived.
I think it’s the secret behind the meaning of life.
Communitas
When we are in a community we feel it, we feel the communitas - the spirit of community. It’s a powerful sense of togetherness, solidarity, and social connection.
Sometimes it’s more obvious than others, maybe when we’re at a concert of our favourite band, or on a protest march.
I talk about Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal a lot, but she really hit the nail on the head here when it came to the itch that social media scratches well. It is ambient sociability, the ability to tune in and tune out of social interaction as we see fit.
That’s what Richard Osman is describing.
It’s this idea of being alone, together.
It is something which freelancers and entrepreneurs can relate to, and why coworking spaces and community workspaces are so vital to create this new social infrastructure.
I’ve talked before about this pervasive idea of independence and how dangerous it is.
Too many people think entrepreneurship is about going it alone, doing everything yourself.
We’re interdependent beings, our survival depends on us understanding this.
Our society needs more focus on enabling and fostering interdependence, and regularly building relationships with new people.
Survival
In Palaces for the People, Eric Klinenberg talks about the 1995 Chicago heat wave, and how community played a role in the fatality rates.
People were more likely to die if they were socially isolated. When controlled for everything else the number of friends and social contacts was the main determinant of whether elderly people would survive.
This ended up being more of a social disaster than natural disaster.
As heatwaves and extreme weather events become the norm rather than once in a generation occurrences, this tells us how much we need to consider investments in social infrastructure.
Increasingly this is being backed up by research on loneliness in other aspects of our lives.
The campaigns for eating more veg, cutting down on smoking, or getting our 10,000 steps in have succeeded as pervasive and recognised ideas.
Loneliness is as dangerous as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day when it comes to the impact on life expectancy.
We don’t have national campaigns highlighting the importance of elderly people building communities and networking. We don’t see it as being essential for men in their 30s to carve out time to socialise without alcohol involved.
Slogans like “5 a day” are now parroted as being a truism. The bed shop Dreams introduced this idea that we need to replace our mattresses every eight years because nobody had a fixed idea of how long you should keep a mattress before you replace it.
How often should we prioritise meeting friends? Five hours with friends a week? What’s the equivalent of 10,000 steps or 30 minutes of exercise?
We need a slogan for socialising to highlight how vital it is to our health - mental or otherwise.
Big ideas like libraries or youth clubs don’t seem to be gaining as much traction or support from the state or philanthropy as their potential impact should demand. The Men’s Sheds movement is vital, but youth centres don’t appear to have had their 21st centre evolution.
YOUmedia in Chicago gained prominence when artists like Noname cited it as being crucial to her success, having access to resources and communities of people (serious people - like Chance the Rapper) who helped them to work on their craft and make a career out of it, before cuts and layoffs weakened the programme.
After school and work we tend to be short on ideas for how to make friends and grow our communities.
This isn’t networking. It isn’t about building our circle for some future economic benefit. It isn’t a transaction. It’s building meaningful relationships that make us feel connected and valued.
Long-life Ilk
In Nicoya, Costa Rica, they have become world famous as a “blue zone” by defying the wider national average life lengths.
Blue Zones are regions where people live better, longer lives. It’s a 20-year research project which looks at systems-level changes required to create better living environments.
There are many theories as to why Nicoyans are living such long lives, with an eye on having a diet which features less processed food, and even looking at their genetic make-up.
The leading belief is that it’s the close inter-generational relationships and tightly-knit communities that create the conditions for a long and well-lived life.
There’s even more evidence of this closer to home.
Men are 70% more likely to die within the 100 days after losing a spouse, it’s known as the widowhood effect.
6,000 people per year have what is known as a “public health funeral” or a “pauper’s funeral” a funeral for people who die with no next of kin.
This is one of the most tragic, under discussed crises in the modern world.
If you’ve worked in retail for five minutes you’ll know how much people value coming in as part of a routine or just to have someone to speak to. The closure of banks for “efficiency” gains, without recognising the wider role they play in society feels symptomatic of an extractive mindset that leaves nothing but a void when they’ve taken all they can from a community.
We owe a lot to people who have no places to meet, connect, and chat without spending on cakes and cappuccinos.
This one ended up getting a bit long, so I decided to split it into three parts.
I’d love to hear from you on this topic, what is your view on community?
Click here to read part two, on about shared journeys, fiero, and the futility of hoarding time.
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