Project Community

This is a manifesto on community I wrote in my sophomore year, outlining something I felt that I was missing and wanted to create. It took a few years to cultivate, but it manifested in The Meraki Collective. I wanted to share one of the early visions I had for a community I felt I was missing.

_________________________________________________

A feeling I have and that I hear echoed a lot is that it is difficult to find a community at Penn. While people have individual strong friendships, it’s often hard to forge those together into a tight-knit group. When we do find communities that offer emotional support, it can often be the case that the intellectual stimulation isn’t a core component. What this group aims to do is provide both intellectual and emotional solidarity and stimulation in an intentional community.

We want this to be inspiring, grounding, exciting, challenging, reliable, and full of growth. There’s an energy amongst those who are trying to change the world and are acting to do so – a feeling of being at, or working towards, the frontier. This is the kind of energy we want to foster.

~

“Exceptional leaders cultivate the Merlin-like habit of acting in the present moment as ambassadors of a radically different future, in order to imbue their organizations with a breakthrough vision of what it is possible to achieve”

~ Pour Your Heart Into It, Howard Schultz

~

What this community looks like:

We envision this to be a small group of people driven by a desire to experience and create strong community bonds to improve themselves and the world. The team would define its own culture, values, and goals. Each person would bring something unique and offer value to the team, as well as gaining a lot from it. We want this to be a place to build a deep awareness of yourself, the world around you, the way you interact with other people, and the ripple effects that your actions can have. At gatherings, the team would discuss and provide feedback on ideas brought up by members – anything from a new initiative, to something they don’t understand about the world, to something they’re struggling with emotionally. Emphatically, the team will be comprised of enablers – everyone will support and nurture each other to grow into the person each of us wants to be. The team will also be a place where people can discuss and (if applicable) perform social experiments and embark on shared projects of self-improvement. The team is not necessarily goal-aligned (in the sense of having the same goals), but is aligned in the sense that one person moving closer to their goal is a win for the whole team. In other words, a key goal of the team is that each member of the team gets closer to achieving their goals; each member of the team will feel accountable for the success of the team as a whole.

We know everyone at Penn is incredibly busy. Rather than being a commitment that weighs on the negative side of the balance sheet as simply a time cost, we hope that this will be an involvement that makes us more effective and motivated for our other commitments. Ideally, time spent with the team will alleviate stress by allowing us to share burdens, reduce blockades and bottlenecks by facilitating feedback, energize and inspire us, and reconnect us with the goals that sit in the back of our mind but sometimes get lost in the hectic environment at Penn.

~

“The Citizen Circles were groups that were committed to cultivating the intimate fabric of deep community, and through our individual and joint efforts to create real change in ourselves and the world around us.” 

~ Pathways to Bliss

~

Why we think this is an important initiative:

Below are the elements that we think are important, and that this initiative would aim to provide. Organically, we often find various combinations of these elements in groups like clubs or social circles. However, it is rare to find all of these in one group, much less in a group that is aware of its function, willing to explicitly talk about and cultivate each of these elements, and comprised of people who are committed to improving individually and as a group.

• Different perspectives – We aim to create space for everyone to share different things they’re working on or ideas they’ve had. This would prompt conversations and explorations of perspectives that others may not have considered. Not only will this be a valuable feedback mechanism, we also think it will provide inspiration. Ideas may not have an impact initially, yet revelations can occur when other stimuli bring those ideas back to the surface in a different light. So much magic happens at the intersections of different fields or ideas, when ideas are connected in new and unusual ways.

• Community building – The community building feedback loop will be a particular focus of this group. As much as is useful, the group will reflect on each individual’s thoughts and feelings about the nature of the community. Questions like, ‘Are you still feeling committed? If not, why, and how can we improve it?’ and, ‘Does it feel like there’s anything still missing?’ will give insight into the process of community building – what works, and what doesn’t. It is likely that during the initial period, many of the big ideas the team will be discussing will be how to most effectively build a team and a community. Given that at so many junctions in our lives we will need strong teams, it seems particularly important to spend time figuring out how to build them.

• Scale – When you are surrounded by people who think on a massive scale, you’re inspired to start and/or continue thinking at that scale. Thinking big (beyond Penn, on a world-scale) is necessary for achieving big. Not only this, the sense of being part of and working towards something that is larger than yourself is incredibly inspiring. We want to have a bias towards action to build visions of the future.

• Divergent ideas – Having a strong support network of people who value divergent ideas will encourage each of us to be less risk averse. This has two key elements: first, an emphasis on open-mindedness, constructive criticism, and ‘Yes, and…’ rather than ‘Yes, but…’ will encourage people to think more radically and to feel safe doing so. Second, belonging to such a group will offer more certainty and validation for ideas that go against the predominant Penn culture. At Penn, there is pressure to achieve ‘within the system’ – that is, doing activities and clubs that people at Penn think are prestigious. The thought of going against this culture and achieving outside of the system is scary as the social validation is delayed, and the consequences of failure seem more damaging. A group of people that provides validation for ideas that are outside of the system will encourage us to act on those ideas.

• Experimentation – This will be a space where the focus is on exploring, testing, and improving ideas. We often find that when we have thoughts about systems we might want to implement to improve ourselves or social models that we’d like to test, we approach people about it individually. Shared projects are often only between two people. It is far more efficient, and also more fruitful, to discuss experiments and trial them with a group.
• Examples: Conversations around our hidden motivations and how to capitalize on them; Trigger Action Plans; self-enforced systems to improve efficiency; game theoretical experiments to figure out how people behave; crafting survey questions to determine whether there is a need for certain things;

• Shared introspection – Sometimes, we need to step outside ourselves in order to better understand ourselves. In this group, we will have the space to, without judgment, ask others to probe us to help us figure out parts of ourselves we may not yet understand. This not only offers different perspectives, but also makes the introspecting process seem less daunting. Having a more accurate model of ourselves allows us to much more effectively leverage our strengths and work on our weaknesses; it also encourages us to treat ourselves with compassion.

• Momentum – It’s so easy to have an idea, to mention it to one or two people, and then let it drift. A group that you can bring the idea to who would flesh it out together and help you to determine if it is something you really want to do, as well as regularly touching base with you on how you’re faring, will help maintain momentum.

• Resource Pool – Having a group where one of the key pillars is helping each other means that we will have access to a larger pool of networks and resources. Knowing what everyone in the team is working on means that when people discover new opportunities or experts, they can direct it towards those for whom it is relevant. Further, we often don’t know who could help us until we ask. This group will encourage us to share ideas we have with people we might not otherwise have approached. 

~

“We’ve got a lingo and a shared sense of purpose. We trust each other.” 

– A Weekend with the Legion, Duncan Sabien

~

Philosophies this is founded on:

• That teams are absolutely vital, and that collaboration is key
• That vulnerability facilitates relationships
• That we, and our minds, are incredibly powerful, and can be honed and improved
• That interdisciplinary approaches are incredibly important for solving issues now and in the future
• That well-thought-out frameworks and ideas are capital
• That doing side-projects, following creative urges, and being our weird selves are all awesome