It’s Wednesday, July 12th, and today we’re talking about the scary-but-sometimes-awesome ways that community shapes culture.

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The Big Idea

I tweeted this last week… and last year.

As much as I hate to admit it, I get into internet fights. I just can't believe that in the face of logic and evidence, minds can't be changed. If I just say it a bit more clearly…

...ah, the battle cry of the foolish.

Facts do not change minds. Communities do.

The Nazis were a community. The Manson family? A community too.

They were evil, yes. Cults, yes.

But they were also a community by objective standards. Communities aren't about good, they're about change. It's both beautiful and terrifying, but the underlying truth remains: people change each other's minds, not facts. People reinforce and amplify beliefs in others.

Many of us fail to realize just how complex belief systems are.

If you want to change people, evidence and reason are not the way.

Relationship is.

Communities are key to understanding:

• How sociability is the key to how the human mind functions

• Why false narratives are fiercely protected

• How to leverage relationships to make real (and good) change

People are Strange

While not foolproof, I've always found the abundance and strange results of social experiments to be a fun little proxy into the workings of a community.

Suicide Notes

In a study conducted at Stanford University in 1975, students were asked to distinguish between real suicide notes and fake ones. Some students performed exceptionally well, correctly identifying the real notes most of the time, while others struggled and got fewer correct answers.

However, the truth was that the entire study was designed to deceive the students. The scores given to them were not based on their actual performance. The students who believed they were highly accurate were no more accurate than those who believed they were mostly wrong.

In the second phase of the study, the truth about the deception was revealed to the students. They were told that the real purpose was to observe their reactions to thinking they were right or wrong, but this was also another deception.

Then, the students were asked to estimate their actual performance and how they compared to an average student. Surprisingly, the students who initially believed they had performed well thought they had done better than the average student, even though there was no evidence to support this. On the other hand, the students who thought they had performed poorly believed they had done worse than the average student, also without any valid reasons for their conclusions.

Again: these students were lied to, told about the lie, told there was no evidence that they were any better or worse than the others, yet held on to the first narrative.

Fickle Frank the Firefighter

In a similar study at Stanford, another group of students participated. They received information packets about two firefighters named Frank and George. Frank's bio mentioned that he had a baby daughter and enjoyed scuba diving, while George had a small son and played golf. The packets also included their responses on a test about making risky or safe choices.

In one version of the packet, Frank was described as a successful firefighter who consistently chose the safest option on the test. In the other version, Frank also chose the safest option, but he was portrayed as an incompetent firefighter who had been reported by supervisors multiple times. However, midway through the study, the students were told that the information they received was completely made up.

Then, the students were asked about their own beliefs regarding the attitude toward risk that a successful firefighter would have. The students who received the first packet believed that a successful firefighter would avoid taking risks. On the other hand, the students who received the second packet believed that a successful firefighter would embrace risks.

Even when the evidence disproved their beliefs, people often fail to adjust their beliefs accordingly.

Why are we like this?

One of the primary traits that make humans special is our ability to work together. Cooperation is not easy to start, and it's hard to keep going.

Our ability to think and reason didn't develop just to solve math problems or figure out new things. It developed to help us solve the problems that come up when we live and work with other people.

Because our ability to think and reason is something that evolved in response to social situations, what may be deemed silly or stupid through a logical lens is helpful and clever through a social lens.

Most of us have experienced this on a micro level, particularly when we were younger: we change our behavior to find belonging.

I think many of us would like to think that the typical order of events is as follows:

The truth is often closer to:

This is particularly true with politics, religion, and matters of identity, and the weaker the individual's sense of belonging, the more vulnerable they are to forging beliefs under false pretenses.

I mentioned Nazis and the Manson family above. Cults and the group-think behind heinous acts are prime examples of this. I remember reading Albert Speer's Inside the Third Reich in horror. Reading about the ways in which ordinary people who would call themselves “good” can lose themselves in a deadly maze of groupthink is terrifying.

Hang on for Dear Life

But why now? Why, with all that we know, all the information we have access to, and all of the supposed enlightenment we've experienced, do people still cling to narratives in the face of opposing facts?

Well, first, let's just call out the obvious: it is getting stupid hard to get accurate information. There used to be sources of news that I counted on for impartial reporting. Almost all have disappeared, and while a few remain (1440, you have my heart), I've yet to find a way to vet good, objective research on the more deeply human issues of justice and identity that seem to plague us today.

Technology has changed the speed, scope, and scale of misinformation, and I doubt I'm the only one who often gets exhausted just thinking about it. Many just take information at face value and then allow the algorithmic beasts to keep feeding them.

Stakes matter. The more we risk, the harder it is to let go.

Low stakes: I used to love breakfast cereal. Honey Nut Cheerios, Lucky Charms, Life—cereal is delicious. And then I watched a documentary which, among other things, revealed that there is a certain allowance for cockroach parts inside of cereal. I have never been so grossed out. That was the end of my cereal-eating days. One docu, one Google search backing up the claim, done.

Giving up cereal wasn't a risk.

High stakes: Once, many years ago, my old student advisor posted something about race relations on Facebook. I read through the comments and responded to something (don't remember what, but it was probably dumb). Someone replied to me about my having privilege prevented me from seeing the full scope of the situation. I was so upset and insulted.

Privilege? I, who lived in 22 homes? Who was a homeless teen mom? Privilege?! How dare she!

It took years of working through this one small encounter. Of reading, of conversing, of listening. Years. Because so much was at stake if I had to associate myself with the idea of privilege. There are some beliefs that, to question, is to upend your very place in the world. They are questions that lead to more questions and even more after that, sometimes redefining our sense of self.

Enter Community

It was the community that took me over the threshold. In 2010, I opened a dance studio for adults. A vibrant, beautiful place that came alive every night, filled with loud music, live drums, and hundreds of people coming in and out to release whatever they'd stored up that day.

Every day, we faced physical and mental challenges together. We had summer camps, flashmob, and concerts. And because it was designed to be an incredibly diverse space, we had people of all shapes and colors.

All of the studies and books I read couldn't come close to the way my perspective changed just by listening and observing. I fell in love with the dancers around me and, as a result, became invested in their stories.

Their struggles and experiences shaped and reshaped my own identity.

How lovely, but also, how precarious. The idea that direct relationships and social influence are more powerful than anything else is inspiring, but also scares me a little. Community is about change, and change can look like a lot of things.

I've been struggling with coming up with a conclusion to all of this because I'm not entirely sure what it is.

Should we, as community builders, be careful of the pitfalls that come with group think? As community members, should we be careful that we're exposing ourselves to a variance of perspectives and experiences? Do we need to better recognize community is an extraordinary agent for change?

Sure, but I'm not sure I have an ultimate conclusion. This is something I think about daily, and I'm barely scratching the surface myself. If each of us enters into our own communal spaces with a little more awareness and reverence, that's enough of an outcome...for now.

Marinade

A few things I’ve read this week that are worth soaking in:

• Not talked about enough: how to set anti-goals

• How to build community by focusing on practice, not purpose

• If you want to go into the deep end, I watch this episode of Tim Ferriss’ podcast featuring Gabor Mate every year. It’s a doozie

Onward,

April

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