(Imp question: where does all these theses come from?

A: i know hardly any of this is backed by scientifically collected data as of now. All of this is anecdotal. I’ve LIVED with over 1700 people from 63 countries over a period of 5 years. My diary has actions/anecdotes from so many people that patterns started to emerge. Like biological evolution was observation at first, I think I will soon fund and/or conduct a study on values across cultures and geographies. For now, bear with these theses. Feel free to rip them apart. It will add more nuance)

Why are we here?

• To understand the mechanics behind communities
• To make our values & beliefs tangible
• To create our trust network

History -Tribal Codependence

Throughout human history, we've lived in tribes and there was always a need for codependence.

A human being, on their own possesses very little physical, intellectual or spiritual power to have an impact on our environment. But when we coordinate, like ants, nothing is impossible.

This presents a coordination problem. Who takes decisions, what roles to be played, by whom, how are resources to be split, and what are the rules of coordination?

The higher the consensus on more tribal decisions, the better coordinated the tribe is. These decisions need to be reinforced in form of symbols and rituals. What we call culture is just consensus on various cultural pegs.

The most important consensus is on who is an insider, who is an outsider, and what are the parameters of success in the tribe. A community is essentially a boundary between people you default trust and those you don't. The job of a community leader is to get resources from outsiders and distribute it among the deserving insiders.

Community maybe the way we coordinate to gather resources and ward off threats, but there are other reasons we need communities.

• the need for belongingness is so embedded in our biology that we feel anxious without it. Community is the feeling of safety
• helps us with specialisation of labour, where each person in each role can do their jobs much better than if everyone was doing everything. ☆ Throughout history, we've lived in such small tribes. But last few centuries have seen technology make us significantly more mobile and information flow at a rapid pace
• Because, most our learning "is memetic, it is important to have good culture for a prosperous next generation

This allowed us to be free of our "inherited culture". we could see a variety of cultures on Netflix, or by taking a flight to Japan. Last hundred years have been amazing for diversity.

We went from extreme tribalism to extreme universalism in a blip.

This presents us with a unique problem. Although we've successfully developed systems like Uber or rental apartments or casual dating via apps or friends via hobby clubs, it is incredibly hard to build deeper trust with people with such diverse values.