The classic forces of community-formation are losing their hold in 1st-world democracies: religion ethnicity neighborhoods professional associations/unions civic society (elks, masons, etc) oppressed demographic extended family nationalism gender

The remaining binding forces include: workplace subculture ideology

However, the strength of these remaining binding forces is pretty weak. For most workplaces, subcultures, and ideologies, your "community" is not going to have your back when times get hard

This might paint a pessimistic picture. But there is actually one strong binding force which remains: friendship!

Friendship – possibly due to its illegibility and informality – has tended to take a backseat to other binding forces throughout much of history. (With notable exceptions – eg sworn friendships in medieval Europe and Imperial China.)

However, now that the other binding forces are disintegrating, friendship has the chance to emerge from the cracks in society

I suspect that the massive trend in preferences for love-marriages vs instrumental-marriages demonstrates a bigger movement in society. We now want to be drawn together by inherent chemistry instead of more formal forces like family ties, ethnicity, or economic advantage

Previous forces of community-formation were typically supported by more formal structures: clubhouses, holidays, rites. The competition of other binding forces has diminished, so now structures are emerging for friendship: Friendsgiving, group chats, coliving houses, "chosen family" commitments, group vacations

Fractal – the thing I'm working on – is one attempt to build communities from friendship networks by experimenting with structures like these (and more)

It may seem like a dark moment in history, where all the forces that bound us obligatorily together are falling apart. But imagine this: maybe, for the first time, we actually get to choose one another. And now we're learning how