Each subsociety will be a small-scale social/community group with a direct, principled approach to developing missing personal connections and community resilience — addressing one of our most serious under-recognised societal challenges. The distinctive philosophy could be life-changing for those of us who are chronically disconnected and vulnerable in normal social contexts for various reasons.
You will need to read The CRCRS Manifesto (html) (unstyled pdf, plain text) (≈2600 words, <30 mins) to fully understand and decide whether you're willing to embrace our philosophy. There is also a YouTube video playlist for readings and commentary here.
I want to minimise centralised coordination of CRCRSs, but I will keep a list of local groups that profess to follow the philosophy. CRCRSs are not online communities; online stuff is only for raising awareness of the philosophy and helping people who want to follow it organise locally.
Only join a group if you are in the relevant area!
Please contact me if you want me to list your CRCRS group, if any links are broken or obsolete, or if you believe a group is subverting the philosophy.
If all members will read and follow the CRCRS Manifesto to the letter and in spirit, you can use the name and logo for your local group's meet-up pages online (e.g. "CRCRS your city" with logo for Facebook, Meetup) without asking me, though I'd love to hear about it. I'm opposed to any other use of the name or logo — or publication of anything that implies you speak for me or others following the philosophy — without my approval.
Feel free to contact me if you're unsure about anything: jrkpthinks on Matrix, Discord, YouTube, Gmail
The unique parts of CRCRS philosophy were inspired by hard life experience: observing the complex of reasons for my own and others' isolation, seeing how many of them seemed to be avoidable if only we took the right approach, and thinking & writing for about a year about what can and should be done about it.
I was obviously also inspired by many other philosophies. The following are the most relevant, in chronological order:
Barbara Sher's demonstrations of the power of groups focused on helping each other, as described in her talk Isolation is the dream-killer, not your attitude.
The practical philosophy of Stoic authors, especially Epictetus' Enchiridion:
"Everything has two handles: one by which it may be borne, another by which it cannot. If your brother acts unjustly, do not lay hold on the affair by the handle of his injustice, for by that it cannot be borne; but rather by the opposite, that he is your brother, that he was brought up with you; and thus you will lay hold on it as it is to be borne."
The deep and ironic insights of Alan Watts. Just one example from my favourite talk, Mind Over Mind:
"we are all in various ways self-seeking, lacking in wisdom, lacking in courage, afraid of death, afraid of pain, unwilling really to cooperate with others, unwilling to be open to others. And we all think that’s too bad."
An unintentional contrastive study of two books on the same theme, written independently in the same era by two authors with similar political bias:
Brown's book elicited fierce disagreements and even anger from me (as the author herself predicted), but it has a bulletproof core theme and many important insights spread through it:
"True belonging has no bunkers. … Ideological bunkers protect us from everything except loneliness and disconnection … the worst heartbreaks of all."
"we all love the ready-made filing system, so handy when we want to quickly characterise people, but we resent it when we're…filed away."
"the people we're sitting next to on those snark couches are often not people with whom we feel inextricably connected or with whom we feel a deep sense of community. We've simply started hanging out with people who hate the same people we do. That's not connection. That's 'you're either with us or against us.' that's common enemy intimacy. I don't really know you, nor am I invested in our relationship, but I do like that we hate the same people and have contempt for the same ideas. … counterfeit connection and the opposite of true belonging. … It's fuel that runs hot, burns fast, and leaves a trail of polluted emotion."
"we are all vulnerable to [dehumanization] … all responsible for recognising it and stopping it. … Humiliation and dehumanizing are not accountability or social justice tools, they're emotional offloading at best, emotional self-indulgence at worst."
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson espouses clarifying our personal values and thereby being able to overcome personal challenges.
The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene espouses dealing with our own and others' human dispositions without denial or foolishness. The highest recommendation I can give this work of philosophy is that almost every chapter kicked my arse. It took weeks sometimes to digest: both the uncomfortable truths — which reflected my own observations, if only I had realised it — and the areas of disagreement which I had to reconcile with his insights. The most important themes and disagreements coalesced for me at the closing of the book, in what for me was an epiphany that began hundreds of hours of my own work on the CRCRS project.
Other relevant quotes I like:
"You can be at ease only with those people to whom you can say any damn fool thing that comes into your head, knowing they will respond in kind, and knowing that any misunderstandings will be thrashed out right now, rather than buried deep and given a chance to fester."
