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  • We are, a lot of us, a great deal sadder, more anxious, more incomplete and more restless

  • than we really need to be because of something very large that is missing from our lives.

  • What’s worse, we don’t even know what this thing is and how much we crave it, because

  • we don’t have the right concepts, experience or encouragement to help us locate it. What

  • we long for and are slowly dying without is: community.

  • They tell us that we are suffering for all sorts of reasons: because were afraid of

  • intimacy or are low on serotonin, are beset by anxiety or trauma or are chronically dysfunctional

  • around attachment or trust. These may be accurate enough descriptions

  • of our symptoms but they arguably leave the real causes of our miseries untouched. To

  • come to the point, it’s worth holding on to a basic historical insight: for most of

  • our time on this planet (by which one really means, for 99% of homo sapiens’s evolutionary

  • existence), we lived in communities. That is, groups of 20 or 30 people who worked together,

  • cooked communal meals, and lived and died around each other. For most of history, we’d

  • watch the sun going down with the same people we knew deeply, trusted, sometimes bickered

  • with but overall felt overwhelmingly connected to. We’d shoot the breeze, we’d comfort

  • each other when we were sad, we’d drop in unannounced on one another’s quarters, we’d

  • chat over our pains and stresses and at special moments, we’d dance together and occasionally

  • fall into ritual ecstatic states where the normal barriers between egos would dissolve.

  • It’s only very late on in history that weve started living in condominiums, commuting

  • to work in offices with people whose values we don’t share and eating for one in cities

  • of ten million strangers. Of course, arguments from evolutionary history aren’t always

  • useful. For most of history we suffered from chronic toothache and didn’t have access

  • to hot bathsbut no one would argue against our abandonment of our natural state in these

  • areas. Nevertheless, holding on to the idea that we were once tribal and now most definitely

  • are not can help us to put a finger on something that we may legitimately miss and urgently

  • need to recover a semblance of.

  • What happens to us outside of life in a tight-knit community? Firstly, we get very concerned

  • far too concernedwith falling in love with one special person who (were

  • told) will end our customary sadness and provide an answer to all our societal needs. Unsurprisingly,

  • this enormous pressure on what a relationship should be is the single greatest contributor

  • to the collapse of unions that might, with more manageable expectations and a more close-knit

  • friendship circle, be entirely viable. We end up having to throw a lot of people away

  • when we want them to be that most cruel of things: everything. Secondly, the very pressure

  • to be in a couple means we bolt into relationships that should never have started and stick far

  • too long inside toxic situations out of terror of singlehood. Thirdly, in our alienated condition,

  • the desire for connection can morph into a longing for extreme success, fame and reknown:

  • we grow materially wildly and insatiably ambitious out of an unquenched emotional need for nothing

  • more esoteric than some good friends. Even if we do have some, theyre liable to be

  • scattered around the world, cocooned in their own relationships or unavailable to us most

  • of the time: weve let our terror of intruding on one another scupper a yet more precious

  • need for an atmosphere of near-constant mutual assistance. Finally, our picture of what that

  • nebulous categoryother peopleis like grows very sombre because we meet one another

  • not in person, but via the media, which constantly gives us cause to believe that other people

  • are fundamentally mad, extreme, dangerous and cruel.

  • Even though we collectively pride ourselves on living in highly innovative times, we remain

  • absurdly traditional in thinking about social set ups. We have a million new apps a year,

  • but no one ever seeks to reinvent how people might live together. Sadly but understandably,

  • communes don’t have a good reputation: one thinks of religious extremists, weird fanatics

  • and messianic leaders. None of the genuine advantages of bourgeois life or simply of

  • reasoned existence seem compatible with communal living. Furthermore, everything legal and

  • commercial seems set up to frustrate any wish to live together: land costs a fortune, building

  • is only for the very brave or the naive, how would one work, who would do the laundry,

  • what would everyone think…? Nevertheless, it’s worth pushing the imagination

  • a little, and sidestepping some of the practical hurdles for long enough to get the mind working

  • (the material questions can always be solved once an idea properly takes root).

  • Imagine, for a moment therefore, what it would be like to live in an ideal kind of community.

  • It might be an elegant set of buildings in a desert or on the edge of a forest. Everyone

  • would have a room, twenty or thirty in all, modest but dignified, laid out amidst an array

  • of charming communal areas. Breakfast, lunch and dinner (simple and nutritious) would be

  • eaten in company at long tables. There’d be a commitment to look after one another,

  • and fellowship based around shared ideals and values. The craving toget ahead

  • would subside: it would be enough just to be accepted by this group. This would be one’s

  • tribeto whom one would open one’s heart and entrust a substantial part of one’s

  • life. We’d have a joint sense of what meaningful labour was and some of the most important

  • work would be offering one another reassurance. We might have partners, but we wouldn’t

  • expect them to be everything; a chance to share thoughts and emotions with others would

  • take a lot of the pressure off couples. We’d have a daily impression of mattering to people.

  • Our impulses to addiction, power and paranoia would lessen. We’d rarely go online.

  • The point isn’t, right now, to have an exact blueprint for a commune but to wake ourselves

  • up to our desire for one; after which everything can flow. Our ancestors were unfortunate in

  • a thousand ways, but they may well have had something were unknowingly dying for: their

  • own tribe.

  • Our perspective cards feature tools for a wiser, calmer perspective on life. They help to restore calm and clarity, even during difficult times.

We are, a lot of us, a great deal sadder, more anxious, more incomplete and more restless

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