villager

I’ve been sitting with this idea that we aren’t designed or equipped to care about people “out there,” far away, who we share no apparent connection with... and well, I think it’s fundamentally off.

The logic follows that, because humans used to operate in tight-knit groups, our brains are exclusively wired to focus on a small, intimate circle of people. Our village. Psychological terminology like information overload and compassion fatigue suggests that caring for too-many others puts us in a cognitive deficit. In addition, the "identifiable victim effect” explains that we struggle with stories about large, faceless groups and are more likely to feel deeply for a story about one single person.

OK, sure. But this wiring for most of us seems to be misfiring, because as columnist Cassie McClure says, “everyone wants a village, but no one wants to be a villager.”

We’re failing at the villager model because of a foundational flaw - its “us vs. them” frame. If we believe it, we become protective of our care like its a non-renewable resource and it causes us to approach life with caution. Care in this context can become distorted. Our ability to use it as a tool - not a weapon - is compromised.

Good news, though. Neuroscientist David Eagleman’s research shows that our brain is livewired, meaning it’s a dynamic organ that’s constantly evolving in response to the world it interacts with. You needn’t look further than your own personal history for proof that your brain’s capacity to change is boundless. Over time— from telescopes to vaccines, the printing press to the internet — human invention changed the landscape of the world and we self-organized into societies that bolstered these new inventions because it seemed to benefit us.

We’re being undersold the scientifically proven, foundational truth about our interdependence: that it gives us meaning and a sense of purpose. Getting plugged into relationships makes us the best of who we are. On the flip side a recent study found that loneliness has been estimated to shorten a person’s life span by as many as 15 years.

Being part of a village requires skills like curiosity for other’s struggles - ones that think differently than us - and we just aren’t motivated to build them when we don’t see what’s in it for us. Like language, we have the infrastructure for empathy of this flavour because it is significantly useful to us, but it needs to be fostered. And we don’t do near enough to foster it at a village level because we don’t believe that we should. The benefits are largely absent from our algorithm because ‘aint no one making money off you getting all resourced and fulfilled.

So let me tell you about American sociologist Eric Kleinenberg. In his research into the deadly 1995 Chicago heat wave – which led to 739 heat-related deaths in five days - Kleinenberg found that in neighbourhoods with strong social networks, far fewer people died. Fewer people died because people checked on each other. Community saved lives.

Here’s a pretty easy entry point to be a part of your village: spend more time talking to people. Listen to their experience. Like the queer tween Allen that you’ve spoken to in passing to at the coffee shop. Maybe you could learn about the harassment he’s facing at school. Or your colleague Bryan who experiences significant barriers navigating uptown due to the limits of our municipal infrastructure.  Or your neighbor Elise, a single mother who’s devastated by the federal budget cuts that have severed her access to local (and essential) autism support services for her daughter, May.

When we willingly engage in this kind of care, we connect to a web of life that’s invisible until we activate it: then, it is undeniable. The connections between disconnected, far away issues are suddenly immediate. Personal. Visceral. We are implicated in them when we become willing to accept we have skin in the game. Only by way of our willing-ness to direcly experience life with others in it do we complicate and recalibrate the categories we’ve arranged the world by - locally and globally. We see that our ideas about backyards and borders are relics of our primitive, fear-based software that makes us weak in the face of threat. As writer Mishel Noor says:

“’It doesn’t affect me’ is not a statement of fact [but] disconnection – and disconnection, left untreated, compounds to apathy. Everything is connected… the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the mass atrocities in Congo… these are not distant tragedies. They are shaping the world your [children] will inherit. The policy that comes from this conflict shapes the economy, that shapes the neighbourhood, that shapes the classroom, that shapes the child.”

In a warming world run by a global elite that refuses to face its toxic relationship with toxic depleting resources, we are the collateral damage. We each need to build social infrastructure so that if power lines go down, or the air conditioning/heat is unavailable, or if there is a water shortage (because these are new realities we need to face are highly possible), we’ve got each other’s backs. Not when disaster strikes, but before: so the networks are strong, viable, and visible.

So listen to your neighbors. Attend a thing - any thing - where you meet them. Become a friendly stranger by smiling at people you see in your daily travels. Check out this resource, Activate Your Neighborhood, a practical guide for helping “reimagine, rethink, repurpose” and encourage social connections.

These skills matter. Community is how we survive the unknown fate of our planet. Building it is the thing we can do when we feel helpless and overwhelmed because it will help us feel the opposite.

That, my friends, is really truly what we’re wired for.