Preferably in real life and without religion or alcohol.
You build it yourself one step at a time.
I don’t feel that our society is atomized or individualistic, but that’s going to depend on what kind of life you live. Standard advice is to join clubs or volunteer, and after a month or 6 months at any given place, sit down and think about whether it’s helping you achieve the social goals that you want to achieve. If it’s not, walk away.
What have you tried so far?
Society, community… these are abstract terms. You cannot talk to them. The cannot love you.
Life happens when you meet people (not abstractions).
How does this codswallop have eight upvotes? OP asked a perfectly reasonable question and this is word salad.
Neo, you dingus.
Codswallop, dingus… these are abstract terms. You cannot argue with them. They cannot hate you.
Disagreements on the Internet happen when you argue with people (not abstractions).
(Sorry, I couldn’t resist)
Well then, I guess if I were to rephrase the question, I’d ask:
Where are some places or contexts where you can find a group of 5-30 people who meet regularly, generally feel connected to one another, and won’t spend the whole time staring at their phones?
Hobbies are the best way to meet people wanting to do something (beside looking at their phones, I mean).
- I was into scale models, people would meet to do (and to talk) scale models.
- I play chess (irl), people will meet to play (and to talk) chess
- Sketching/painting/photo/art. Here in my city it’s not hard to find people that like to do urban sketching or go out to take pictures, or go to expo, museums and so on.
Have you look around what IRL activities are related to hobbies you may be into? You may also ask your local public library, if they do not organize activities themselves they will probably have info on some other org doing it.
How about hobbies? If everyone in the group is passionate about fishing, model airplanes, wood working or something like that, you’ll have plenty to talk about. If you talk to people, and get to know them a little better, you’ll suddenly begin to feel more connected.
Sports/music
Join a club
Like u/NeoNachtwaechter rightfully said:
Society, community… these are abstract terms. You cannot talk to them. The cannot love you.
Life happens when you meet people (not abstractions).
So, when you write:
Preferably in real life and without religion or alcohol.
Don’t see anything personal in the following remark (I don’t smoke and don’t drink, I quit both many decades ago, and I don’t give a flying fuck about religion myself) but you can’t expect to meet people that fit your expectations.
Life does not work like a dating app (luckily).
You will meet people, a few of them you will appreciate more than many, many others. All of them, even the ‘nicest’ ones, will still annoy you one way or another. Like you will annoy them, or like I do. We all.
My spouse and I have been together for 25 years and counting, we’re glad to be together but I can assure you we also both have traits or habits the other don’t like at all, and that’s fine. My best friend and I have been friends for well over 40 years and we’re at the complete opposite politically speaking, we always have been. Like we never agreed and we never will. We’re fine with our lifelong disagreements because we have many other common interests (and he is a very interesting guy even if his politics are shit ;)
So, the first thing I would suggest would be to accept that people will not be what you want them to be, or how you want them to be.
And then to let things happen, or not happen. That’s my second advice: be ok with nothing happening or with failing when trying to make them happen. Most of the time meeting people won’t go anywhere and that’s to be expected. Don’t give up, keep on meeting people and spend some time with them.
I know those advice may sound a bit… generalist but you did not share a lot of context yourself to give you a more specific answer either. And, generalist or not, those are still two advice I follow myself.
The workplace?
The closest I had to this actually was my old workplace, but power dynamics, workplace stress, and a lack of shared purpose were my biggest problems.
Having your behavior controlled by management, friendly coworkers who suddenly become cold-hearted backstabbers if they find out they can gain financially from it, etc
Stressful days where we were overworked also brought out the worst in everyone, including me at the time, which was also not fun…
Depending on the job, there could also just be a lot of people who don’t want to be there other than for the money, and in those cases, there isn’t really a uniting greater purpose that everyone believes in.
I think it might work for some people, but the conditions have to be right. For me personally, the corrosive and anti-social influence of money makes me wary of really trusting or connecting with people on a genuine level in work environments.
I found one in community dance, specifically local folk dance. The median age is probably 65, so it’s adaptable to a wide range of athleticism levels, but it does require significant mobility.
I absolutely loved it until covid, and then I moved, but it was a wonderful group of people through whom I met dear friends, found a job offer, learned a bunch of things, and found a home.
Meetup has helped - especially around RPGs and board games. Having a weekly group of friends meeting up with a shared topic helps.
You don’t. Simple as that
Hey, I’ve seeing you around before.
Perhaps it’s a bit nosy of me, and of course I don’t fully know what you’re going through, but I know there’s a real person on the other side suffering, and that’s the only thing that matters to me.
So I wanted to say that I’m thinking about you and I care about you. You have intrinsic worth no matter what anyone says. Even if you get a bazillion downvotes or hateful comments on the Internet. It doesn’t change that fact one bit.
I remember years ago when I was in a really painful headspace, I would attract negative attention on purpose in order to make other people affirm my self-hatred and belief that I deserved to suffer. But was I hyperfocused on the negativity. I ignored the people who were concerned about me and still cared because it didn’t serve my internal narrative that everyone hated me and therefore I should hate myself too.
Most people who feel for you won’t speak up. That’s one of the reasons I believed nobody cared about me: I couldn’t see the evidence. People have to step up and be part of the evidence, so I might as well be one of them. Real life evidence is worth a lot more than Internet comments, but if my words have even a chance of helping you in some way, then writing this all out was completely worth it.
The single most healing moment in my life is when someone in real life offered to be that person for me, and she told me all of the things that she genuinely liked about me, even though I avoided talking to anyone and felt like nobody could ever like me. Her compliments canceled out all of the insults and rejections I had ever received and made me confident in myself for the first time. I have hope you can meet someone like that too. Mine showed up when I least expected it!
So maybe it’s none of my business, and maybe many of the things I said don’t apply to your situation, but I want to make it absolutely clear that, whoever you are, I care about you, and many other people do too. You deserve love, healing, and support. And I truly wish the best for you.
Hugs~
Great message my friend.
If you’re physically able, go somewhere people are willing to teach you something :) Try a climbing gym.
The first hurdle will be working up the courage to ask for advice (on a route, on equipment, about an event) and the next will be showing up often enough that you’re a recognizable part of the community.
Do mutual aid
This
I’m having some luck in building a community through my yoga practice. It’s challenging as a beginner because everyone just goes to yoga and then jets off to their next thing.
But I have become very serious with it and am preparing to get my teacher certification. Now I am starting to connect with people who share thtat level of dedication.
Now you could say this is religion technically, but it is so vastly different from the defective and derivative brand of xtianity I had pushed upon me as a youth that it doesn’t feel that way. Practicing Mormonism never gave me lickable abs.
Scouting helped me a lot with this. It’s an active community, and not just for kids. And it’s worldwide, so wherever you go, there’s a community you can visit, or recognize
I once went to a woodworking store to get supplies for one of my brief ADHD hobbies, and the guy there mentioned that they have classes and there were some carvings on display that people made. It sounded like a nice, small group of people and if I wasn’t so lazy and socially anxious I might’ve enjoyed joining.
