I rebooted my social life

>> I think I’m particularly suspicious of community, because as a writer and pedantic arsehole on the internet, I value truth-seeking behaviour. I want people to think and say things that are true, not just things that they have to believe for the sake of keeping their community happy.

Unfortunately, this is what happens with every group of people.

Our individual realities are highly subjective. A group of people who are part of a community construct a shared reality that they can all accept. If you don’t contribute to the shared reality, you are treated as someone who is problematic.

As humans we are social creatures. In our evolution, we develop cognitive systems that help us thrive in social structures. One system is called the social protection system. This system gets activated when we sense tension in relationships and sends a signal of fear to the subject that they risk being separated from a social group. This fear motivates people to maintain connection. So some people are intrinsically motivated by fear to maintain their status, sometimes unconsciously.

Our self esteem comes from two things, relationships and mastery. Healthy self esteem comes from connection to people who accept you for who you are, where you feel visible and accepted with your good and bad traits.

If you have a few people in your life with this type of connection, you will have a healthy social foundation and rely less on belonging to a group.

Groups are valuable in that the human experience is complicated. The best source of information comes directly from other humans and their experiences overcoming complexity.

However, I do agree with the author where certain groups can be problematic, particularly engaging in things like tribalism.

Establishing good self esteem by keeping a few people close to you who see you and accept you as a flawed human is key. The other part is to immerse yourself in activities where you develop mastery and maintain a connection to the activities that are intrinsically motivating and satisfying without distraction from external signals.

I learned this by studying the science of self actualization, from the research done by Scott Barry Kaufman and his book Transcend. He’s a humanistic psychologist who was inspired by Abraham Maslow, one of the founders of humanistic psychology.

I'm thinking road cycling. When I was in grad school, a decade ago, I briefly participated in a student road cycling group. It was very performance oriented as I recall. I was definitely slower than them and my heavy steel commuter bike contrasted strongly with their lighter racing bikes. I talked to some of them, but not during the rides. I was older than the vast majority of them as I recall and in retrospect that might have prevented me from making friends there.

Freemasonry began as a workers' guild, but the accreted "goals and rituals" take a group far beyond the simplicity of a men's shed.

The simplicity of any club rapidly becomes complex when monotheism or henotheism (any theism) is injected:

From Wikipedia:

* Anglo-American style Freemasonry, which insists that a "volume of sacred law" should be open in a working lodge, that every member should profess belief in a supreme being, that only men should be admitted, and discussion of religion or politics does not take place within the lodge.

* Continental Freemasonry or Liberal style Freemasonry which has continued to evolve beyond these restrictions, particularly regarding religious belief and political discussion.

* Women Freemasonry or Co-Freemasonry, which includes organisations that either admit women exclusively or accept both men and women."

[1] _ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemasonry