Immediate community, now
On friendship and pragmatism.
Over the past ten or so years1, many hands have tugged at the wooden blocks of the Jenga tower we call Western society. It’s a Jenga world, really - a globalised system so complex that each subsequent brick removed renders the whole structure more and more delicate. And don’t let me get started on the players of the game, who have arguably never been able to agree on the rules. Some of us live high up in the turrets, far above the physical reality of the table upon which we play, deeply embedded in the imagined systems we live within - in itself a precarious place to be, should a spiteful hand remove a brick below2. Some of us live close to the base of the tower, feet on the ground but supporting the weight of those above.
Now, many of us are feeling the trembles of destabilisation. Tomorrow, the results of Germany’s general election will determine whether another star in the European firmament will lurch to the right, or choose pragmatism over reactionism to heed the warning call that’s been echoing since the 2015 refugee crisis. Trump is once again president of the United States and seems to be operating under an “act now, think later” credo. Environmental policies across the board are on the sunk-cost fallacy back-burner, and wars are still raging in Ukraine and Gaza, although nobody seems to be talking about it anymore. The Jenga tower looks like a block of Emmentaler. It feels like something is going to fall - and although it is incredibly tempting to soothe that hum of anxiety you’re probably feeling as a result of reading my words by heading down the pub, squatting your aggression out at the gym or doom-scrolling, I’d like to offer you an alternative.
We have never had world peace, and we never will. But somehow, people like you and I have managed to stick it out through catastrophic global events for literally thousands of years. Whether it’s a sabretooth tiger attack, an earthquake, a sword-wielding, bloodthirsty knight on crusade, the bubonic plague or an atomic bomb, one thing has kept us going: immediate community. Everybody needs it.
One of the very first things I remember extracting from the warbled and wordy tomes in my MA Sociology reading list is still one of the most resonant and steadfast: strong community ties literally save lives. They’re predictors of physical immunity, life expectancy and psychological well-being3. That warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you hug your grandma or spend three hours yapping about nothing to an old friend? It’s not flowing through your brain by accident.
A strong network of people (and I don’t mean that weird parasocial one we all have which includes your distant acquaintance from middle school) means: a neighbour that is willing to water your plants when you’re sent on an unexpected work trip, a cousin that can watch your kids whilst you’re at work, a shopkeeper that gives you groceries on credit at the end of the month when things are tight.
It also means returning the favour. I, too, am slowly learning the importance of immediate community. As someone who grew up 1000 km away from my extended family and has moved three times in just as many years, that’s not always an easy thing to put into practice. Many of us (especially us bourgeois city kids) were taught never to speak to strangers, focus on institutionally mediated relationships and avert our eyes from the winos in the park down the road on the way to school. And that makes sense, sometimes. But it also means many of us have a shrivelled instinct to help others, be reliable, make sacrifices and inconvenience ourselves when necessary in order to maintain real relationships with the people in our lives. It means we overvalue self-reliance and underestimate just how much people are willing to help.
I’m not saying we all need to form prayer circles or nurse each other’s babies. But we do need to get our shit together and realise that the people around us right now might just be the ones we’ll need to rely on to help us patch up a hole in our roof, give us a lift out of the city or lend us some toilet paper. It’s not apocalyptic thinking, it’s a time-honoured human necessity. Tell your uncle happy birthday, say good morning to your neighbour and be nice to the corner shop man. If not out of the kindness of your heart, then out of pragmatism.
Thank you to George Monbiot’s writing for triggering this piece4, and to Maya for sending me memes about the meaning of friendship.
Of course, this goes much farther back, but the last time I felt the world was ‘normal’ was probably around 2015.
To follow this thought, please watch Adam Curtis’ brilliant documentary film HyperNormalisation.
Ell, K. (1984). Social Networks, Social Support, and Health Status: A Review. Social Service Review, 58(1), 133–149. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30011713
George Monbiot, If Trump causes global collapse, this is how we survive, The Guardian Journal, p.3, 19.02.25