A direct, principled approach to developing missing personal connections and community resilience. It could be life-changing for those of us who are chronically disconnected and vulnerable in normal social contexts.
You need to read and understand The CRCRS Manifesto(≈2600 words, <30 mins) to know whether you can embrace the CRCRS philosophy. There is also YouTube video playlist with readings and commentary; an unstyled pdf or plain text versions.
(If you won't read about a potential solution to your isolation problem, how will you ever do anything about it?)
We keep our criteria for relationships aligned with the core value of those relationships (deep personal connection and community resilience) and make everything else optional — instead of the other way around. To achieve this, we self-select people who will be aware, principled and manage our dispositions, to avoid the attitudes that often lead to disconnection and vulnerability in the first place. The resulting ethos is paradoxically less restrictive than mainstream norms for those willing to embrace it.
Meet in person, get to know each other well, and help each other out in life. That's all connection and resilience is; that's the core value — and we go straight for it. How to do that ethically, without falling into the usual pitfalls, takes some explaining, because people are just difficult.
Only join a group if you are in the relevant area. (Online stuff is just for raising awareness and helping people organise locally.)
(Please contact me if any links are broken or obsolete.)
There is no central CRCRS "society"; each CRCRS is a subsociety of mainstream society, formed by local people to help gain connection and resilience. Please contact me if you want to talk about starting your own CRCRS, or if you believe a group is subverting the philosophy in a damaging way.
Note that the Manifesto I wrote explains the necessary philosophy, and I will try to influence people to follow it correctly, but I have no real authority over anyone: Members and groups are responsible for their own actions and probable hypocrisy.
As the philosophy is for disconnected and vulnerable people and there will be no centralised control, I had to design the CRCRS philosophy to rule out cultishness. There is nothing to be scared of as long as members stay aware and call out cult-like attitudes and behaviour. Especially note these parts of the CRCRS Manifesto:
Also be prepared for some people to thoughtlessly label your group a cult anyway. I know how hurtful this slander is when trying to make a positive difference, but it's best to just ask why they think that and let them fail to give a good reason.
Feel free to contact me if you're unsure about anything: jrkpthinks on Matrix, Discord, YouTube, Gmail, Reddit.
The unique parts of CRCRS philosophy were inspired by hard life experience: observing the complex 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 should be done about it.
I was also inspired by many other philosophies, including:
Isolation is the dream-killer, not your attitude by Barbara Sher, a talk which demonstrates the power of groups focused on helping each other.
Braving the Wilderness by Brené Brown, which shows how a commitment to shared humanity can help overcome the dispositions that maintain our disconnection and division. It 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 Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene, which 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 my own work on the CRCRS project.
Daryl Davis, who proved we can transcend seemingly impossible differences and even heal extreme bigotry through respectful dialogue. His example restores my faith in people. If we could all emulate the curiosity, courage and character that Davis has role-modelled, there'd be far less division, anger and hatred in the world.
Lost Connections by Johann Hari, which started with insights about the role of connection and community resilience in overcoming seemingly unconnected personal problems, but twisted more and more into a cautionary example of how a commitment to conditionality, superiority and tribalism can overpower the desire to heal disconnection.
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 of his:
"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."
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson, which espouses clarifying our personal values and thereby being able to overcome personal challenges.
Other relevant quotes I like:
"The moral thing I should wish to say… love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world which is getting more closely and closely interconnected we have to learn to tolerate each other; we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way, and if we are to live together and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet."
"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."