There Are Communities Everywhere for Those with the Eyes to See

Slightly contra Alexander slightly contra Fukuyama

Rationalist Internet blogger Scott Alexander/

Astral Codex Ten

had a popular post recently, arguing that the reason people aren’t in strong communities is that they don’t have the resources to do so, for people who do actually want that to a reasonable degree.¹ This is a fairly common claim elsewhere on the Internet, in various forms, but Alexander makes it unusually explicit. Unfortunately, I don’t think the claim is correct.

My stance is that Alexander, as well as a bunch of other people who have made similar points, are understating how easy it is to become involved in a community. Most people could find a community fairly easily, at least one about as strong as Alexander’s rationalist community. Yes, these people would like a community in the abstract, but there are two reasons that prevent people from joining communities. Firstly, people are picky about what kinds of community they actually want. Secondly, people don’t have infinite time and money, and strengthening a community trades off against other good things.

Alexander ranks a whole bunch of communities out of 10, but doesn’t provide a definition of what makes a community a community. However, based on his examples, combined with what people want in a community, I can take a guess at what the core features of a 5/10 community and above are. These strong communities provide an easy way to hang out with a decent deal of spontaneity. They also trade favors willingly, so it isn’t awkward to ask when you need help.² And they have some things that bind them together as a group.³

In practice, this means that communities live near each other, and don’t just exist online. I think Alexander might put too much emphasis on buying housing near each other; it’s not clear to me that Free Staters, a bunch of libertarians who all decided to move to New Hampshire, fulfill any of the things that people want in a community besides moving some place together. But still, geographical proximity works as a rough proxy for community strength.

These criteria are all a bit fuzzy, but I think it works in practice. Rationalists, at least some of them, are in; atheists, for the most part, are out. The LGBTQ community-qua-community is in; LGBTQ people as a whole are out. Evangelicals who attend frequently are in; people who still sort of identify with Christianity but don’t attend are out.

The issue is that, once you lay it out this way, a lot of Americans are in these communities. My experience, at least, has been that most college and many high school friend groups count. People tend to live near each other, often in the same dorm, so it’s easy to hang out spontaneously, and student identity, often strengthened by membership in an extracurricular or fraternity, binds them into a group. The point about favors is probably the one most narrowly met, but even then I think most college students have a high willingness to do favors for their friends.

I can’t speak from firsthand experience here, but my impression is that retirement communities work similarly. There’s a whole lot of debate on Alexander’s blog about which religious groups count as strong communities, but my guess would be that religion fills that role for maybe half of weekly attenders. Once you add that to the list Alexander came up with, the figure of Americans in a strong community should be well above Alexander’s claim of 10%.

It seems to me that many immigrant communities work similarly, although there’s a lot of variation in how close-knit they are and it can be hard to tell from the outside. For that matter, there’s still a decent number of people who live in close enough proximity to their large extended family that it could be a community, although I’m a bit unsure if that’s the kind of thing most people who claim to want a community really want.

Between all these, there are a lot of ways in which the Americans who aren’t in a strong community could enter one fairly easily. If you’re a student, there are almost certainly communities at your school. If you’re an immigrant, there are almost certainly communities based around your country of origin or ethnicity. If you’re religious, but not that religious, you can probably shift into a strong community while only minimally changing your views.

Even for people who aren’t already adjacent to a strong community, there are a lot with low barriers to entry. Again, I can’t speak from personal experience here, but it seems like many civic clubs — I’m thinking of things like Kiwanis, Elks, and Rotary in the United States, and even groups like the Freemasons — have the potential to be strong communities. Less organized volunteer societies, like writers for a local newspaper or blog, are a bit more hit-and-miss, but even they can work for some people.

Becoming religious isn’t a perfect way to get a strong community, but it might also work for some people. Unitarian Universalists are particularly open to anybody who vaguely shares their political beliefs, but liberal Quakerism also has no formal creed.⁴ Admittedly, Quakerism tends to be more of a 3/10 or 4/10 community than the kind that Alexander is talking about, but you’d expect people to at least go to a meeting to see if there’s a strong community there. Even more stringent religions can work; there are many stories of open agnostics finding community among Christians, and I can only assume the same is true among some less-discussed faith communities.

And then there’s hobbies and ideologies. A number of the commenters on Alexander’s blog point out hobbies that are strong communities, in particular the Society for Creative Anachronism, which I know very little about. I’ve also heard a number of people describe forms of social dancing as a tight-knit community, not just a hobby. Ideologies aren’t always communities, but they often set themselves up well for volunteering opportunities, which are a common way to build a community.

Admittedly, not everybody will have the ability to reasonably join one of these. Many of them are not necessarily accessible to disabled people, or people who live in very rural areas. Student and retiree communities are age-based, and some of the others have similar restrictions. Cohousing communities are limited geographically, and by income. Still, any way you slice it, far more Americans have the ability to be part of a strong community than actually do, even without joining a commune or Hutterite colony.

So why don’t they? I don’t think that people are outright lying about their desire for a strong community.⁵ Rather, there are two intertwined factors that push against people actually participating in these groups. One is that, while most people probably would prefer a 5/10 or 6/10 community, they don’t have a strong enough preference for it to be willing to change their lifestyle to fit in. That, meanwhile, is compounded by the many demands on people’s time and money. When you put the two together, there’s high declared interest in strong communities, but only moderate interest in ones that actually exist.

I’ll use myself as an example. I’m sort of an effective altruist, but if I wanted to join the Effective Altruist community in the Bay Area, I think there’s a 5/10 community somewhere out there. The issue is that that probably requires a lot of transit time, since I’m not exactly sure where they are but it definitely isn’t where my apartment is. Even if they were just a few streets over, however, I’d still have to grapple with the fact that I don’t actually want to be surrounded by effective altruists all the time; I like my dose of EA on the internet, but that’s enough for me.

There are a good number of other communities where I’m pretty confident I could fit in if I really wanted to, and that stand a decent chance of being strong communities: the LGBTQ community, rationalism, Unitarian Universalism, Democratic party volunteers, civic associations. But similar factors apply to all of those. I definitely could adopt the party line on astrology, hyperpop, charter schools, or whatever else these communities would demand from me. But even that relatively small sacrifice is enough to dissuade me from trying to find a stronger community out there.

It’s not that I don’t like strong communities; my college friend group would likely rate a 5/10 on Alexander’s scale, and that feels ideal to me.⁶ It is true, however, that I’m not a parent; my impression is that parents gain more from strong communities than the rest of us, since favors are more useful for them and it’s more difficult to plan casual socializing. Even then, I would guess that many parents could, for instance, join a church for the Sunday school programs. This is certainly something that happens, but it’s nowhere near as common as you would expect from the claimed demand for strong communities.

I think the missing part of the explanation is that strong communities are competing against weak communities. If I were to become one of those Catholics who can’t quite actually muster a belief in all of the church doctrine, I’d have to give up Quakerism, and I like Quakerism far better even if it isn’t quite as much of a community.⁷ If I were to go to all the cool EA parties or whatever else those effective altruists do, that’s time and money I can’t spend playing bluegrass, participating in LearnedLeague, or, um, doing effective-altruism approved actions.⁸

Notably, these factors weren’t there quite so much hundreds of years ago, or whenever the advocates of strong communities think our social networks were at their finest. As a general rule, there were fewer people in any one place, and less ability to spend money on esoteric hobbies, forcing people into a single common culture that makes a good basis for strong communities. There are some advantages to this setup, but it also comes from some of the weaknesses of that time period in offering a narrower array of options for a life.

In the abstract, it would be nice if a stronger community formed around Quakerism, or my particular kind of quasi-effective altruism, or trivia. But that doesn’t exist, and the same tradeoffs also apply to strengthening communities. It takes time and resources, and for most people it’s probably easier to find their least bad strong community and make themselves fit in if they really want that experience. I can say I want a 5/10 community, but in the real world I’m picking a handful of 3/10 or 4/10 communities instead, and I suspect other people are making the same decision.

This doesn’t completely invalidate Alexander’s points, but it does suggest some modifications. He does acknowledge that people’s desire for a strong community isn’t infinite, but I get the impression that he thinks that even a modest increase in monetary resources would help a lot. This might be true in the end, but money also makes it easier to have weaker communities that compete with the stronger communities, and I have no idea which one will win out. Maybe the future will be filled with hobbyist city-states, or maybe it will be filled with online networks for obscure musical instruments.

This also doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worry about barriers to community. There are reasons to prefer people to be in stronger communities than they would want to be in isolation; for instance, because it reduces the number of people having to go to the government for help, or because people are shortsighted and unwilling to invest in relationships that will improve their life in old age. If so, increasing urban density and public transit and building more third spaces, like libraries, might be a good investment. More ambitiously, maybe some kind of mandatory national service would help build long-lasting relationships, although it also comes with significant costs.

But I still wouldn’t expect those, or whatever UBI scheme Alexander is proposing, to completely remake our society into a network of strong communities. As long as there are still some tradeoffs, whether that’s time, money, or interests, those 5/10 communities will face competition from their less intensive brethren.

If you’re wondering about the title, “There are Xs everywhere for those with eyes to see” is a common phrasal template on the Internet; I’ve especially seen it used to mock its originator, Jordan Peterson.

1. He’s responding to Francis Fukuyama, and implicitly a whole bunch of other people, who think that community is good, and so we need a form of liberalism that permits communities to form. There’s more to it than that, I can’t fully do his views justice without making this essay even longer, etc.

2. Okay, I’m not actually sure all of the communities on Alexander’s list do this, but it seems like it’s a major thing people want from a community so I’m including it.

3. Alexander places emphases on community institutions, like schools, but I think he’s misinterpreting what Fukuyama and other people with similar arguments actually want in a community, so I’ve broadened this somewhat.

4. My impression, as a Quaker attender, is that we have some things we believe in to the point where it would be awkward and difficult to be a (FGC/Liberal) Quaker without believing them, but they’re pretty vague, especially if you only want to attend meetings.

5. Commenters on the original post pointed out some article that does actually seem to think this, but it’s behind a paywall.

6. My impression is that Alexander thinks most people want maybe 8/10 communities, and I think most people want more like 5/10 or 6/10, but maybe I’m misreading him.

7. To be fair, Quakerism can be a strong community in many instances, but most Quaker meetings I’ve attended aren’t, between people’s membership in other strong communities, time commitments, and different stages of life.

8. Giving to charities, volunteering for their causes, that kind of thing.