Fleshing out the background anecdata informing my take here
(Note: I think I’m somewhat responding to a stereotype-of-an-idea in my head more than Maia’s post. I think I’m nonzero responding to Maia’s post itself, but regardless just taking the opportunity to say a bunch of stuff that feels relevant I don’t think I’ve written down before)
(note: these don’t all point in the same direction):
I absolutely have seen a bunch of meetups go well over the timescale of years, with dozens of people participating in a way that was a central facet of their lives. (I think Maia has run such meetups). So the thing I’m expressing skepticism is about not the general idea of a good meetup/community. It’s developing something more like a “congregation”, where a significant number of people and their families go every week.
On the flipside, most meetups seem to go through a lifecycle where there’s a few generations of “leaders with good vision” who make it go well, and eventually those people get what they wanted from being a leader and feel it’s time to move on to other things, and the people who replace them have some vision but not quite as much, and then eventually they get replaced by people who just sort of keeping a shambling shell of a thing going that feels less vibrant.
I think there’s a very small number of people who just earnestly want to keep running meetups their entire life (Maia seems like such a person fwiw), who are also good at it. I think there’s probably enough such-people that it’s possible to build a long-lasting thing here, but, like, the density of such things isn’t high enough to support everyone who wants such a congregation.
I’ve seen a few attempts at intentional community where people commit to participating reliably at events that are aimed specifically at fostering closeness. (
Will Eden’s Tribe. (which went well, but eventually reached a point where people felt like it just wasn’t providing enough meaning to be worth the commitment, and disbanded. I think it lasted a year?)
A few group houses aimed at intentional closeness (I think 2 of these included kids). One of them ended disappointingly early, one ended after a few years (intentionally), I think 2 vaguely petered out over time. I think I know of one of them that’s still going.
I helped run Sunday Assembly NYC, a more typical “atheist congregation”, which started out with 200 attendees, but gradually dwindled. I had thought “I’ve had a good track record running the NYC rationalist group, I should be able to help make this thrive”, but the skills didn’t transfer. It turns out I was able to make rationalists excited to be part of something. But neither I, nor the other 4 SANYC organizers, were able to make something that felt like it was really alive. Everyone showing up seemed to be showing up in the hope that some kind of “real congregation” would emerge, but it never did.
Watching the NYC ethical culture society slowly age and die, without being able to attract new blood because of the cultural/vibe mismatch between what resonated for the older crowd and the younger crowd. And it seemed like this also plays out in, like, quaker meetings I’ve been to (although I’d defer to Maia on how prevalent that is)
By contrast, some US Sunday Assemblies are still alive and kicking. (I think LA, Mountain View, and Atlanta). The Atlanta one in particular I’ve heard about playing roles in people’s lives that feel similar to what NYC rationality community was for me. It seemed like Atlanta-in-particular “benefited” from being in the Bible Belt, where the people attending didn’t have any other option for finding an intellectual community that resonated with them.
I’ve observed that Berkeley-in-particular has a weird mix of “in some sense it feels like a more comprehensive village” but also has weird internal dynamics that make it hard to have one centralized community thing. (This doesn’t seem like it applies to most other city’s communities though)
I think I’ve seen a couple people start explicit “church” things, and my sense is they start for awhile and then just… don’t really provide the value people are hoping to get from it and peter out.
It’s pretty common for people to try one type of meetup they haven’t tried before, go “this is amazing!” and try doing it every week or month, and then find that actually it just isn’t worth repeating that often. (either because they actually wanted the novelty, or they desperately wanted some nutrient, but then they’ve got it, and they don’t need it again for a few months). I think “try out ‘rituals’” is a subset of this. People go to Solstice and are like “oooh man what if this was every week?” but actually people just don’t want that every week, and not enough people event want it every month for it to feel the same.
All of that adds up to:
I think it’s totally possible to have a meetup that is actively great for a few years, and then is at least decent after it settles into it’s longer term configuration.
I think it’s a mistake to target ‘be a church’ rather than ’do something that feels alive to you that you and others find value in.” If you have a particular vision for being a church, maybe lean that way, but I would only do that if you, like, “feel the calling” and if other people do too.
Most of the plan in the above post still seems like a decent plan, since it’s sort of “start with ‘being a good meetup’, and layer some additional things on top to improve it.” I think the thing I’m saying is something more like “I would be aiming the stuff conceptually in a slightly different direction that the post seems to be aimed at.”
Staring at your points, I keep thinking about Mosaic House. Mosaic House was a group house in Boston that ran weekly dinner parties for a year. After six months, they usually had a couple dozen people show up for a random Friday night. Sometimes they had an activity or a topic but the magic ingredients seemed to be that it was the same time, same place. The couple of times they canceled, they still had people show up who hadn’t read the cancellation. Mosaic was great, and only stopped when the group house couldn’t renew their lease.
I’m going to loosely go point by point- not objecting but musing- but I’d be interested in dialoguing about this with you if you’d be up for that.
I don’t think you need the same people to go every week. If I imagine a group of fifty people, each of whom goes to half the meetups every month, that’s more than enough to have a feeling of familiar faces and it’s more than enough consistency for community to exist.
I’m actually pretty excited about mediocre organizers here. I think same time same place and then a solid C+ on the basics (announce the events, have snacks around, have seats and space to mingle, don’t be too hard to travel to) can get a regular crowd. That plus a five minute reading from a script means the group has actual common knowledge. You don’t need ambitious visionaries doing new things as long as you can draw from something exciting. To use churches as an example, you don’t need a pastor capable of writing a holy book and a dozen hymns, because it’s easy to print more copies of the bible and the hymnal.
Group closeness is a little anti-inductive. Aspiring to being best friends seems hard, but aspiring to be warm acquaintances seems doable by just putting people in the same room every week or two and eating together?
I don’t know enough about Sunday Assembly to add anything here.
I don’t know enough about NYC Ethical Society to add anything here.
See 4
You’d know more about Berkeley’s internal dynamics than I would.
I see people start actual churches and they’re still going generations later. I agree with the statistics on overall church attendance declining; I didn’t find a new church when I moved to Boston. I’m interested in how much of this could be mitigated by pointing people at the community wherever they moved away; like, when rationalists move from Boston to NYC or NYC to SF or Boston to Berlin, sometimes they find the local ACX chapter and show up for some meetups.
Some things people don’t want that often, but you don’t need everyone every week, you want people to come often enough they group is full of familiar faces and people can assume some common knowledge. Putting on a whole solstice every week seems hard and like it overfills that particular nutrient, but services can be more like half an hour. “Reading we always do, song we always do, reading that’s new this week, song that’s new this week, The Road To Wisdom, you’re done and the open social is in the room that way” seems fine. Alternately, if it’s a variety issue rotating through four different meetup types every month seems doable.
The thing that’s alive to me is shaped more like a dojo than a church, but I think the bones of both of them (same time, same place, same people) are pretty similar.
Importantly, I think lots of different things can hang on those bones in a way that’s mutually beneficial. To use the church as an example, once you know people are going to be there at that time in that place, you get people saying “it’d be nice to have a book club, but when? Oh, how about the hour before the sermon in the side room?” “Thanks for loaning me that pie tin- I had some spare apples so I baked you an apple pie, why don’t we do a pot luck after the sermon?” “It’d be fun to play soccer. Oh, hey, I’ve got a soccer ball in my car- how about we play on the green by the church after the pot luck?”
Fleshing out the background anecdata informing my take here
(Note: I think I’m somewhat responding to a stereotype-of-an-idea in my head more than Maia’s post. I think I’m nonzero responding to Maia’s post itself, but regardless just taking the opportunity to say a bunch of stuff that feels relevant I don’t think I’ve written down before)
(note: these don’t all point in the same direction):
I absolutely have seen a bunch of meetups go well over the timescale of years, with dozens of people participating in a way that was a central facet of their lives. (I think Maia has run such meetups). So the thing I’m expressing skepticism is about not the general idea of a good meetup/community. It’s developing something more like a “congregation”, where a significant number of people and their families go every week.
On the flipside, most meetups seem to go through a lifecycle where there’s a few generations of “leaders with good vision” who make it go well, and eventually those people get what they wanted from being a leader and feel it’s time to move on to other things, and the people who replace them have some vision but not quite as much, and then eventually they get replaced by people who just sort of keeping a shambling shell of a thing going that feels less vibrant.
I think there’s a very small number of people who just earnestly want to keep running meetups their entire life (Maia seems like such a person fwiw), who are also good at it. I think there’s probably enough such-people that it’s possible to build a long-lasting thing here, but, like, the density of such things isn’t high enough to support everyone who wants such a congregation.
I’ve seen a few attempts at intentional community where people commit to participating reliably at events that are aimed specifically at fostering closeness. (
Will Eden’s Tribe. (which went well, but eventually reached a point where people felt like it just wasn’t providing enough meaning to be worth the commitment, and disbanded. I think it lasted a year?)
A few group houses aimed at intentional closeness (I think 2 of these included kids). One of them ended disappointingly early, one ended after a few years (intentionally), I think 2 vaguely petered out over time. I think I know of one of them that’s still going.
I helped run Sunday Assembly NYC, a more typical “atheist congregation”, which started out with 200 attendees, but gradually dwindled. I had thought “I’ve had a good track record running the NYC rationalist group, I should be able to help make this thrive”, but the skills didn’t transfer. It turns out I was able to make rationalists excited to be part of something. But neither I, nor the other 4 SANYC organizers, were able to make something that felt like it was really alive. Everyone showing up seemed to be showing up in the hope that some kind of “real congregation” would emerge, but it never did.
Watching the NYC ethical culture society slowly age and die, without being able to attract new blood because of the cultural/vibe mismatch between what resonated for the older crowd and the younger crowd. And it seemed like this also plays out in, like, quaker meetings I’ve been to (although I’d defer to Maia on how prevalent that is)
By contrast, some US Sunday Assemblies are still alive and kicking. (I think LA, Mountain View, and Atlanta). The Atlanta one in particular I’ve heard about playing roles in people’s lives that feel similar to what NYC rationality community was for me. It seemed like Atlanta-in-particular “benefited” from being in the Bible Belt, where the people attending didn’t have any other option for finding an intellectual community that resonated with them.
I’ve observed that Berkeley-in-particular has a weird mix of “in some sense it feels like a more comprehensive village” but also has weird internal dynamics that make it hard to have one centralized community thing. (This doesn’t seem like it applies to most other city’s communities though)
I think I’ve seen a couple people start explicit “church” things, and my sense is they start for awhile and then just… don’t really provide the value people are hoping to get from it and peter out.
It’s pretty common for people to try one type of meetup they haven’t tried before, go “this is amazing!” and try doing it every week or month, and then find that actually it just isn’t worth repeating that often. (either because they actually wanted the novelty, or they desperately wanted some nutrient, but then they’ve got it, and they don’t need it again for a few months). I think “try out ‘rituals’” is a subset of this. People go to Solstice and are like “oooh man what if this was every week?” but actually people just don’t want that every week, and not enough people event want it every month for it to feel the same.
All of that adds up to:
I think it’s totally possible to have a meetup that is actively great for a few years, and then is at least decent after it settles into it’s longer term configuration.
I think it’s a mistake to target ‘be a church’ rather than ’do something that feels alive to you that you and others find value in.” If you have a particular vision for being a church, maybe lean that way, but I would only do that if you, like, “feel the calling” and if other people do too.
Most of the plan in the above post still seems like a decent plan, since it’s sort of “start with ‘being a good meetup’, and layer some additional things on top to improve it.” I think the thing I’m saying is something more like “I would be aiming the stuff conceptually in a slightly different direction that the post seems to be aimed at.”
Staring at your points, I keep thinking about Mosaic House. Mosaic House was a group house in Boston that ran weekly dinner parties for a year. After six months, they usually had a couple dozen people show up for a random Friday night. Sometimes they had an activity or a topic but the magic ingredients seemed to be that it was the same time, same place. The couple of times they canceled, they still had people show up who hadn’t read the cancellation. Mosaic was great, and only stopped when the group house couldn’t renew their lease.
I’m going to loosely go point by point- not objecting but musing- but I’d be interested in dialoguing about this with you if you’d be up for that.
I don’t think you need the same people to go every week. If I imagine a group of fifty people, each of whom goes to half the meetups every month, that’s more than enough to have a feeling of familiar faces and it’s more than enough consistency for community to exist.
I’m actually pretty excited about mediocre organizers here. I think same time same place and then a solid C+ on the basics (announce the events, have snacks around, have seats and space to mingle, don’t be too hard to travel to) can get a regular crowd. That plus a five minute reading from a script means the group has actual common knowledge. You don’t need ambitious visionaries doing new things as long as you can draw from something exciting. To use churches as an example, you don’t need a pastor capable of writing a holy book and a dozen hymns, because it’s easy to print more copies of the bible and the hymnal.
Group closeness is a little anti-inductive. Aspiring to being best friends seems hard, but aspiring to be warm acquaintances seems doable by just putting people in the same room every week or two and eating together?
I don’t know enough about Sunday Assembly to add anything here.
I don’t know enough about NYC Ethical Society to add anything here.
See 4
You’d know more about Berkeley’s internal dynamics than I would.
I see people start actual churches and they’re still going generations later. I agree with the statistics on overall church attendance declining; I didn’t find a new church when I moved to Boston. I’m interested in how much of this could be mitigated by pointing people at the community wherever they moved away; like, when rationalists move from Boston to NYC or NYC to SF or Boston to Berlin, sometimes they find the local ACX chapter and show up for some meetups.
Some things people don’t want that often, but you don’t need everyone every week, you want people to come often enough they group is full of familiar faces and people can assume some common knowledge. Putting on a whole solstice every week seems hard and like it overfills that particular nutrient, but services can be more like half an hour. “Reading we always do, song we always do, reading that’s new this week, song that’s new this week, The Road To Wisdom, you’re done and the open social is in the room that way” seems fine. Alternately, if it’s a variety issue rotating through four different meetup types every month seems doable.
The thing that’s alive to me is shaped more like a dojo than a church, but I think the bones of both of them (same time, same place, same people) are pretty similar.
Importantly, I think lots of different things can hang on those bones in a way that’s mutually beneficial. To use the church as an example, once you know people are going to be there at that time in that place, you get people saying “it’d be nice to have a book club, but when? Oh, how about the hour before the sermon in the side room?” “Thanks for loaning me that pie tin- I had some spare apples so I baked you an apple pie, why don’t we do a pot luck after the sermon?” “It’d be fun to play soccer. Oh, hey, I’ve got a soccer ball in my car- how about we play on the green by the church after the pot luck?”