Community, Collective Care, and maybe Utopia

Step into my mental hurricane

Jun 12, 2024

Things that have been gently tugging at my strings for years are starting to insist.

It's time. They call, everything has been leading here. Your box full of tools and experiences and all those beliefs in your head, all of it. Step into the hurricane. Make sense of it. Or just revel in the swirl. No more standing at the edges, arms glued to your side, letting the way it whips your hair be the closest you’ll come to joy.

Open your arms.

There's so much.

Step in.

Take them with you.

I've been thinking about social constructivism a lot lately. If the way we relate to each other informs how and what we learn, doesn’t it also entirely form how we view society? And isn’t society made of how we view it? And if that’s true, isn’t it possible to reconstruct the whole thing?

This mess of society is just social constructivism weaponized; patriarchy and capitalism, the henchmen who maintain the status quo. They (they!!!) have puppetted how we relate to each other - with jealousy, with competition, with comparison, as theys vs uses. And then as they vs mes. They pulled us apart and put screens in our hands on on our wrists, with algorithms built to addict and alienate us. They divided us into a bunch of ones. They shrunk our spaces and took away our dining tables. They made basics harder to get. They created a chasm between the people without and the people with too much. They replaced reciprocity with “mine!”.

They made rules and then pit us against each other to play a game we didn’t sign up for. They told us that if someone else has something that means you don’t, rather than we do. They gave us metrics that devalued us all. They show us how to strip each other of rights, of dignity. They took away our humanness because our humanness is communal, kind, joyful, creative, and wild.

They limited our dreams to dreams of money and property and job.

And we played by the rules they made up and created a society of individual success. Of individual survival. A society of I’m doing my best to get out of fucking bed; I certainly can't stop the theys from destroying the planet.

A society on which it feels like we don't have a say. I lose 1/3 of each hard earned paycheck and then wake up each morning to see how someone most people didn't even show up to the polls for spent it.

Children are being murdered in wars that our posts and letters and calls don't stop. The Supreme Court is playing the opening credits of A Handsmaid’s Tale. People are fighting over everything on the Internet, finding any excuse to be mad and to be right. Depression and loneliness are rampant. City mayors are taking away funding from community libraries and giving it to robodogs and paid leave for people that choke the life out of other humans. I lose 1/3 of every hard earned paycheck and wake up in the morning to see how someone most people didn't show up to the polls for spends it.

And it feels like it's too far gone. It feels that way to me constantly. That there's nothing little me can do.

But

I’m teetering between helpless and revolution lately and the scales are tipping. The shit is getting too heavy. Possibility is rising. It has to.

A couple of days ago, I was reading a section of

Adrian Shirk

’s Heaven is a Place on Earth about the Bible (Acts 2 specifically) that I expected to glaze over during. All of a sudden the young Jesus freak in me was present and in tears.

these uprisings, which have always happened and will continue to happen, these impossible communities that will form against all odds and always have, which will live out a spirit of abundance and solidarity in a world that swears the law is scarcity and rift, are themselves the eternal and ongoing heirs to the true reality, and they shall live, and live abundantly.
It's hard to explain without sounding like a zealot. Maybe I am a zealot.
What I'm saying is, the resurrection, if thought about this way, served as much as an atonement as it did a reminder: do not believe the lies-do not believe the lies that empire tells about what is possible and what is not. Do not give way to evil.

This little paragraph reminded me of the good, beautiful, hopeful, defiant undercurrent of a religion I left over a decade ago due to, you know, all the bigotry and entitlement parts. It grabbed the words I've been saying, “I want to build a church but like not a church church” and smoothed them out on the table for me to better see.

Because —and maybe it's dramatic, maybe I’m a zealot too but— it feels like there's an awful lot of evil slamming grubby fists to already full mouths over and over again, gobbling our society up, leaving a whole bunch of us fighting for morsels.

But it's not hopeless. Oh God, it can't be.

Hope changes the world.

And mine is an on ramp.

And even when I stall, synchronicity keeps pushing me to merge.

It’s time to do something with these hands.

A year ago, I start feeling different, calmer, full of love and with more capacity for the people around me. I get out of a toxic relationship and job. I find rest and myself. I start to wonder how I can give this to other people, how I can help. I design an app, a Slack workspace, multiple websites. I become a moderator in depression Facebook groups and read every post. I stall.

I find slowness and calm instead of hustle.

In October I feel seen and heard at a retreat full of strangers and I feel brave enough to start putting my words here on the Internet. I feel heard and seen here too and I wonder how I can give this feeling to other people.

We were wounded in relationships. We will heal in relationships.

I start showing up differently with my friends instead of jumping back into dating and my cup starts to fill up with something that sparkles. I feel cared for. I allow myself to be cared for. I love deeply.

I start looking for the helpers. I read about Sidewalk Talk. I learn about reflective listening. I practice. I make a sign. I sit in a park.

I take part in a 13-week Artists Way journey and block time for myself that I won't give up for work for the first time… ever? I find music and my voice again. I play. I reverberate in a weekly online “high vibration” community. I create things with my friends. I find time to write and to draw. I find and soak in the creations of so many other people's hearts. It makes me bigger. I want to cross out the words creative and spiritual from the cover so more people will take on this book.

Everyone has an inner creative.

I read The Art of Gathering. I attempt an intentional in gathering of friends and I stumble and I think I'm probably not cut out for it while another voice whispers you are.

I amass a list of communities I want to visit, mostly in NYC, but elsewhere too. People are reaching out, people are creating third spaces of every kind: sober dance parties, one-day community choirs, dinner parties, open invitation drawing rooms, writing rooms, reading parties, membership clubs for every interest, churches, interfaith meetups, community centers, play brigades. I want to play in their spaces. I want to build one of my own.

Heaven is a city.

I start reading more books that aren't just escapist fiction. The Other Significant Others arrives as a surprise from a friend in the mail. I get a Library card and the Libby app and I start The Art of Community and Bowling Alone.

Community is revolution.

A friend calls me because she can't get out of bed and we ease her anxiety into the movements that mean showing up for work. My therapist/coach says she wishes I'd just take out a loan and go back for my Masters in Counseling. It sounds exciting even just to be able to talk to other people who care about these things. And maybe then I can build something that helps more than just one friend at a time. Something that gives everyone the regulation and tools to help themselves and each other.

Communities turn from gatherings and cults into utopias. I pick up Heaven is a Place on Earth and can't put it down. I wonder what utopia might be. What do we reward and incentivize? How? What do we actually need? How do we get it? What do we value? What's in a social contract that people sign enthusiastically?

Yesterday,

I make all of the Instagram follows and saves, the countless screenshots, the tags… into a database of people and places and ideas. I go down Internet rabbit holes that I don't hate myself for. I sign up for my first Time Left dinner (tonight! I’m nervous!) I add things to my calendar in a sage color that I've designated for projects, research, creativity, and cup fillers. I add my friends to it in purple, my favorite color. I show up. I consume. Art, theatre, music, the people around me. I sit in the front row and sip a Shirley Temple while songwriters tell the stories of their lyrics. I cry. Lyrics start to drizzle out of me too the next morning. I'm too nervous to voice record them for fear the critic will pull us all over if she hears it back.

I start feeling like all of these things go together. I thought I had to choose, but I can feel them clicking and winking as I rotate and spin them carefully. They've been played with enough that they're finding how they slot into place side by side.

Today, My Utopia

If we construct the society we live in, if utopia might exist if we create it, if we do indeed have the power, what might this place look like? feel like?

What is the true north I want to nudge our collective compass towards, even just a little bit.

It looks like collective care without GoFundMe links, where everyone's basic needs are met without struggle, where we pay reparations for what we have done to each other, where everyone has enough, where waged labor isn't the determiner of success or of survival or the holder of the majority of our time or conversation. Where our dreams are more than money. Where every kids’ future looks nothing but bright.

It looks like joyful ambition and creativity and reckless bravery, and innovation. Like freedom.

It's a place where everyone is safe to be exactly who and how they are, where everyone feels seen and heard, feelings felt. It’s safe to be sad. It’s safe to be ridiculously joyful. People are equipped with the tools and desire to hold space for each other. Nervous system and emotional regulation are taught and valued. It's a place where we heal together, where we rest when we need to. It's a place where burnt out only means you have a lamp or a candle to replace. And you can afford it.

It's a place where people participate actively because they can feel the impact. They vote, they speak out. People listen to each other and use the things they have in common to create space to discuss things the things they don’t. Discourse is civil and moves us forward.

It's a place where you're asked what you love and who lights you up. It's a place where “what do you do” isn't necessarily a question about your job or how you make money.

Where we don’t work so much: https://open.substack.com/pub/stephpf/p/actually-i-dont-want-to-work

It's a place where people are near, where we don't have to schedule time together weeks in advance and travel hours on the train to do it, where we can drop in, where everyone has someone to turn to when they need them. Where we sit around tables too long and know each other deeply. There are shared yards between us that our happy dogs roam in freely and a giant dining table under fairy lights and greenery is our centerpiece.

Where we rethink the family unit - where kids are raised by more than their parents, where romantic partners aren't the only significant others, where adult children aren't they only care their parents have.

But also a place where communal doesn't have to mean eight people to a fridge and bathroom. Where there is space for privacy and retreat and self expression and messiness where it's wanted.

Where the social contract is signed freely and enthusiastically, where the streets and parks are clean because we care about them, where people wave and make eye contact because their hearts are open and their attention is present. Where nature is close by and cherished.

It smells clean and fresh with the faint gasp of campfires and barbecues. It tastes healthy and green and made with an abundance of love and cheese. It sounds like a sigh and also like a. It looks vibrant and full of diversity and color. It feels like the breeze off of moving water. It feels, period.

I wonder what here resonates and what makes people want to run. I wonder if each of our utopias are so different that that’s our real barrier. But I imagine they’re not. I imagine a shared vision is within whispering distance. We co-create.

What does your utopia, your ideal society, look like? Where and how do you want to spend this life?

(Shh, do not believe the lies that say it's not possible. Even if for just this minute in this safe little space, it’s possible...)

Drafts on Being

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