12 ms·

Any communty really. Sport, book or chess clubs too. Theater lessons, shared houses, gay bars, anything where you can recreate a sense of being part of a group

• hirundo 7y ago
  > Any communty really. There are plenty of toxic communities. Belonging to them may salve loneliness without being healthy. If for example the community is built around resentment, revenge, purity, a charismatic leader, etc., fellowship may still provide a strong attraction ... that is best fulfilled elsewhere. If nothing else, better to get a dog than a cult.
  • sametmax 7y ago
    Yes including toxic churches, soccer teams and anime forums. Humans being humans and all that. Plenty of people prefer to be victims in group than alone though. We are weird creatures.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • chii 7y ago
      What exactly is a toxic community? How does one identify that they are in one?
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      • sametmax 7y ago
        Toxic is contextual to an individual. Some products don't affect all life forms the same way, or at the same dose. Same for communities: you know if you are in a toxic one if you can objectively observe it brings unacceptable suffering to you when you are in it. It's not precise science, it's subjective, and sometimes hard to identify. Same with abusing relationships.
  • smacktoward 7y ago
    Cults specifically look for people who aren't already tied in to healthier communities when they're recruiting. They want people who feel alienated and disconnected, because those feelings make them easy marks for what the cult is selling. With participation in healthier communities of all kinds slowly atrophying since the early '90s, the pool of people vulnerable to the appeal of toxic communities has grown. The way to drive toxic communities back to the fringes of society is to build and support healthy ones.
    • hirundo 7y ago
      > The way to drive toxic communities back to the fringes of society is to build and support healthy ones. Also useful gardening advice.
• beasteurope 7y ago
  Much better than community is family. Go to church, meet a nice girl or boy, get married and have some babies. That's the actual solution for the loneliness epidemic.
  • libraryatnight 7y ago
    You do realize that you don't need church for any of that right? Any sort of club or organization will work. This beating over the head that church is the answer is rubbish. I know lots of religious people that are very pleasant and kudos to them for having their own faith while respecting others, I know more that are prejudiced and feel morally superior to those around them, or won't let their kids go on the school trip to the natural history museum - so I'd rather see people not getting sucked into the Church machine like it's an answer when there's lots of ways to socialize without the dogma.
    • beasteurope 7y ago
      No, you don't need religion to hang out and stuff but having matrimony as a sacrament sure nudges people to build families.
      • velcrovan 7y ago
        > having matrimony as a sacrament sure nudges people to build families. Or, you know, a million years of evolution baking the instinct into our primate brains
        • blotter_paper 7y ago
          I'm an atheist. I want to agree with you so bad, but having kids is different than building families. I think beasteurope is correct about religion encouraging families to stay together rather than breaking up. I'm not saying other social structures can't encourage this behavior, but I don't think relying on evolutionary instincts is going to keep families together as reliably as relying on evolutionary instincts combined with a social custom where potential parents promise commitment in front of the whole community (with the magical threat of eternal torture should they part ways for bonus points). Not the world I want to live in, just the world I think I live in. And again, I can imagine other social customs for building families (like matrilineal lines with strong social expectations of uncles participating in childcare, for example -- there's at least one hunter-gatherer example of this I'm forgetting the name of).
• snarf21 7y ago
  Exactly this. It doesn't matter what it is. Join a gym, volunteer, find a meetup, take up a hobby, etc. We all need something to look forward to to carry us past the doldrums. Anticipation and a sense of "belonging" can help so much.
  • cwbrandsma 7y ago
    I've yet to find a community at a gym. Most people are heads down and doing their thing there. Gyms are an introverts paradise.
    • sobani 7y ago
      That depends on the type of gym. I'd say that the chance of finding a community in a gym is inversely proportional to the amount of machines it has. Try a gym that doesn't even have a treadmill.
    • snarf21 7y ago
      It definitely depends on the type. Some gyms are very "class" based. Planet Fitness ==> heads down. Crossfit or Orange Theory ==> much bigger sense of community.
• neap24 7y ago
  I'm not sure that just any community would be a substitute for church. Most churches are not groups in the sense that you're describing above. Yes, most congregations share a common theology, but the people in the group are often very different personalities, ages, backgrounds. Even super conservative less diverse congregations I know preach unity of the international church, go on mission trips, etc. The problem with modern substitutes seems to be that they are extremely narrow and probably very temporal (Keto diet fanatics, cross-fit buffs, even gay bars seem to be past their glory days). Much of the unity of the church body comes from a connection to ancestors and a sense that one is, cultural differences aside, a part of the same thing.
  • c0vfefe 7y ago
    Plus there's a shared sense of fundamental worldview values in a congregation that you don't get in an affinity group like chess club.
  • marnett 7y ago
    do not forget an explicit focus on spirituality. other groups might have some modern, diluted equivalent as a second order effect, but religion contains spirituality and spiritual rituals right in the forefront.
  • hawaiianbrah 7y ago
    What do you mean that gay bars seem past their glory days?
    • amiga-workbench 7y ago
      Dating apps obsoleted them in some ways.
  • lazyasciiart 7y ago
    > Even super conservative less diverse congregations I know preach unity of the international church, go on mission trips, etc. This kind of thing is actually more common in more conservative churches in my experience. More progressive groups don't focus on evangelism/conversion as much.
• 1337biz 7y ago
  Strongly disagree on that. Been to a member of a bunch of sports clubs. Many people actually go there to do sports and nothing else.
  • matz1 7y ago
    While it's true that most people go to sports club for sports as their main purpose but it also open up opportunity to form friendship.
  • sametmax 7y ago
    Same for churches all around the world. Many people just go for duty, by habits or social pressure and no community is created. The point is not to find a sure receipe for a community generation machine, but what are importants ingredients to have more chance of one.
• weberc2 7y ago
  Membership in a community is one benefit that churches/religions provide. Another is a worldview that values selflessness, altruism, and honesty. I don't think those things can exist apart from religion (at a cultural level, anyway), because as soon as you decide morality is relative then everyone is free to choose the morality that is most convenient for them/their tribe. I think this explains much of our political divide and the "post-Truth" era generally, and we're only a decade or two into mainstream moral relativism. This is, of course, speculation so take it for what it's worth.
  • jmcqk6 7y ago
    > because as soon as you decide morality is relative then everyone is free to choose the morality that is most convenient for them/their tribe. I don't think I'm a moral relativist, but this is a non-sequitur. It's possible for morality to be relative, but still have guiding principals. >we're only a decade or two into mainstream moral relativism. No, people have always found a way to justify what want to be right regardless of the underlying ideology. We've just become more explicit about it in some cases. People's beliefs about what is right tend to be very convenient for them regardless of what they claim their beliefs to be. I think it's the equivalent of a 'code smell' if you find yourself going through life without being challenged about what you think is right and wrong. I think it usually means you have come up with a convenient set of rules that allows you to ignore nuance and details so that you don't have to constantly struggle with what's good and bad. Of course, I'm speculating too.
    • wellpast 7y ago
      > No, people have always found a way to justify what want to be right regardless of the underlying ideology. We've just become more explicit about it in some cases. People's beliefs about what is right tend to be very convenient for them regardless of what they claim their beliefs to be. This is probably true in cases. But I suspect that widespread cultural alignment to a general perspective/worldview must have an overall mass effect.
    • weberc2 7y ago
      > I don't think I'm a moral relativist, but this is a non-sequitur. It's possible for morality to be relative, but still have guiding principals. At an individual level, I agree. But I stipulated "at a cultural level", by which I mean something like "if the culture is morally relativistic, I don't think you'll see a critical mass of principled individuals that would prop up a principled culture". I don't think moral relativism is compatible with a principled culture, at least not given the parameters of human psychology. > No, people have always found a way to justify what want to be right regardless of the underlying ideology. To be clear, I didn't claim moral absolutism generally or religion in particular is a panacea against this sort of self-dishonesty, but I think you see less of it and instances are less pronounced if only because that individual will lose credibility with his peers. In a morally relativistic culture, the offender only needs to argue "that's your morality, not mine" or "that's your truth, not mine", which is roughly what we see today. > We've just become more explicit about it in some cases. People's beliefs about what is right tend to be very convenient for them regardless of what they claim their beliefs to be. I think there's always a temptation to convince oneself that what they want is moral, but I think that temptation is inhibited because he knows his community won't let him get away with it (his reputation would be damaged if he advocated for a few overtly immoral things or many subtly immoral things, consistently). Further, with religions in particular, there is often a text that lays out the morality and there is only so much word lawyering someone can do without overtly running afoul of it. It further constrains the impulse. And with religions like Christianity in particular, a central activity is reflecting on one's selfishness and working against it (the concept of "dying to oneself"). Like I said before, it's not a panacea (there are many religious people and indeed Christians who subvert it), but I think it is a bulwark that we tear down at our own peril.
• veddox 7y ago
  > anything where you can recreate a sense of being part of a group and not just being among people I like that observation! Also the point that leaders matter a lot - or rather the community culture they manage to create (or not).
• seppin 7y ago
  If you are new in a city, go find a local church. Specially if there's a national identity behind it, instant community.