Celebrate intentional communities to thrive differently

Celebrate intentional communities to thrive differently

Why: Reopening the world, reinventing tourism, and making cities hospitable to visitors and residents cannot happen without accepting the reality that the vibrancy of flourishing cities emanates from the vibrancy of individuals and ideas in a dance of cooperation, collision, collusion, and avoidance.  The global response to the pandemic has initially and necessarily been an uniform safety protocol based on social distancing, a concept anathema to cities and their denizens.  As the world becomes conscious of its new normal, it becomes imperative to recognize nuanced approaches to safe socializing resulting from and respecting the felicific calculus that Jeremy Bentham has recognized in us all.

How can can one possibly understand what makes one happy without necessarily processing everything through one's unique prism of psychology, experience, knowledge, economic situation, and mental and physical health disposition?  A drastic change in any of these factors, for any of us, could change the answer "what makes me happy?" instantly.  And similarly, as the equation changes over time for each of us, a new, more accurate solution becomes apparent.

The uniformly applied social distancing protocol fails to acknowledge the vastly varying psyschologies, experiences, knowledges, economic situations, and mental and physical health dispositions of the diverse people of the world, and as a result, the solution in the long term is ill-fitting, ill-suited, and literally making some of us quite ill.  No city can expect or aspire to be hospitable under these conditions.

I submit that despite the science-driven authoritarian and benevolent policy to distance ourselves, many people will socialize at distances calculated through the prisms of what makes them happy, despite, in spite, and in light of the risks for themselves, and possibly, others.  You can't legislate happiness and you can't expect everyone to have the same mindset, but you can certainly legislate unhappiness regardless of everyone's vastly different psychologies.

I suggest a reality-based approach of social sorting, where individuals are respected to gather in like-minded, felicifically-calculated, shared-risk communities.  As radical and rebellious as this may sound, it's actually a page torn from the history and present day struggle of gay men during the global AIDS pandemic.  Even to this day, the official CDC guideline for this community is "safer sex" with barriers aka condoms, aka a form of distanced intimacy.  To expect that every gay man for the last 30 years has dutifully adhered to this guideline is naive and unrealistic.  The reality is that gay men sub-divided into sub-communities of risk acceptance, whether they admitted doing so in public or not.  There are the men with red ribbons on their lapels claiming to wear condoms always until there is a cure, there are those who concede that sometimes they make exceptions, and then there are those bold bare-backers who seek non-judgmental, barrier-free sex--the kind of sex that humanity has enjoyed for the vast majority of its existence on this planet.

I suspect that this type of social sorting for COVID-19 risks is already well underway despite what the global CDCs dictate.  People will calculate the limit of their obedience, whether itis 6 months, 12 months, 2 months, or already done.  And because of their  vastly varying psyschologies, experiences, knowledges, economic situations, and mental and physical health dispositions, there will be nothing, really, that we can do it about it.  If gay men want to fuck without condoms, they will.  And if people want to gather in groups in cities, they will.

So, what are we going to do about it?  I suggest that we help them find each other.  Rather than judge, we recognize their social sorting and facilitate it, if it's desired.  And in order to do this, we will help people calculate where and how they fit in.  I call it simply, for the lack of a better name, the Theory of X, where X equals the maximum number of months of strict social distancing that you can personally tolerate before you've had enough.  And "enough" is based on your own psychology, experience, knowledge, economic situation, and mental and physical health disposition.  I believe we'll find the groupings helpful in that two over lap and the third does not:

X = 0:  Can't do it anymore

X < 2:  We've done 2 months, maybe can do 2 more, will take it one day at a time

X > 6:  I can handle it, let's do it

Interestingly, people belie their calculus with an identifier.  In the gay community, it's whether or not you possess or insist on a condom.  In the COVID-19 age, it's whether you are wearing or insist that others wear a mask and keep their distance.

Let's take a look at unhappy communities of individuals where their calculus is mismatched.  A business owner is about to go out of business, lose her home, and the ability to take care of her family.  She's read the news, she's google'd the science, she understands the risk, she's worried about the safety of others, and yet, after running it all through her felicific calculus that accounts for her unique  psychology, experience, knowledge, economic situation, and mental and physical health disposition, she has determined that her X = 0.  Unfortunately, most of her employees are X > 6.  Fortunately, there's another business whose owner is X > 6 and most his employees are X = 0.  By facilitating social sorting, both businesses and employees can improve their happiness.  Once a business and its employees are properly socially sorted, then it becomes a matter of marketing to socially sorted customers.  Is this very unlike the red districts, left banks, east ends, and gayborhoods of the world's greatest cities?

In summation, my principle of "celebrate intentional communities to thrive differently" is firmly rooted in the Pleasure Principle and the recognition of and respect for every human's right to calculate their own felicity.