Forming Social Bonds Without Contextual Support?

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Is it possible to form social bonds without contextual support such as work, school, clubs, organizations, institutions, economic activity, shared interests, etc.?

I have never been able to find anything going on around me that other people are involved in that I want to be involved in, which leads me to think that it is likely that there are also no people I would sincerely want in my life, but I think that everything I have learned will amount to nothing if I cannot apply it for the benefit of a human community. Any thoughts on this? Am I only a piece of litter produced by industrial society?

While it may be possible, it's extremely unlikely, it seems to me. Some people may be able to form social bonds based on pure mutual personal charm and nothing else, but most people, especially most autistic people, would be unlikely to be able to do this, it seems to me.


No, this just means you need to do more work to seek out groups or activities that you do want to be involved in, and where you thus could find the kinds of people you might want as friends. For example, you could join Meetup groups pertaining to your interests.


The longing for community is natural. The problem you need to solve is how to find (or maybe create, if necessary) a community you can fit in with.

What general kind of area (urban, suburban, rural) do you live in? Finding groups of interesting (to you) people will be much easier if you live within easy traveling distance of a major city.

You are assuming that "doing more work" will result in finding people around me who I would sincerely want in my life. This is understandable, since you don't already know how much I have tried to do this. However, I do know how much I have tried to do this, and that is why it seems likely to me that there is no one who I would sincerely want in my life (with the implication that I am talking about people around me who could actually be part of my life, not everyone in the entire world). I live in a urban-suburban area, near a larger urban area, but I am certainly not interested in any person who wants to live in a city lol. Regardless, I am sure there are some people living in proximity of cities who don't want to be there and could be of interest to me, but all group activities that would interest me require invalidating governments and economies and illegally restoring degraded abandoned land into functional ecological habitat, so it is inherently unlikely to find in any modern society, as modern societies are structured to prevent people from behaving this way and from having these values. Longing for community is not a sufficient motivation for me to seek community. The motivation is that community is necessary to move towards the replacement of agricultural "civilization" with local ecological cultures integrated with reality (instead of integrated with delusions, like agricultural "civilization" is).

How about recruiting a large enough group of people interested in LEGALLY "restoring degraded abandoned land into functional ecological habitat"? Wouldn't that be better than nothing? Or have you already tried this?

Or, if it isn't possible for bureaucratic reasons, how about recruiting a large enough group of people to lean hard enough on politicians to make it possible?

Sounds to me like these could be worthwhile activities for lots of people -- and "degraded abandoned land" ought to be unusually cheap land, after all.

You would probably have to seek out interested people online rather than in-person, because there are unlikely to be large numbers of them in any locale (unless they've already moved to some piece of land they are working on restoring, of course).

It wouldn't surprise me if there already exist organizations devoted to "restoring degraded abandoned land into functional ecological habitat." If such organizations already exist, then is there any reason for you not to get involved with one of them?

That isn't an option since I cannot pay the fees demanded to validate other people's delusions, which is how it would become legal, and this would then lay a foundation of lies for every following action. I also have never found anyone around me (while searching both online and in person) who cares about this kind of thing whether or not it's legal.
If you believe that it's possible to convince politicians to invalidate the nonidea of property, then you don't understand what government is.
There are no organizations around me doing this type of work.

None of this is new at all, I have been at this for over 12 years. I've talked to thousands and thousands of people about it. I've reached out to numerous organizations that do things that are somewhat related, although not the same, and none of them ever responded to me, not one time. I've hosted free screenings of a documentary related to this, I've tried to organize clubs, meetings, local projects, etc. but no one cares. Everyone is so flattened out they can only see the surface that they float on, just fixation on surviving in the cult and staying distracted from what they do to survive in the cult.

I agree that it would not be possible to "convince politicians to invalidate the nonidea of property."

But what MIGHT be possible, it seems to me, would be to convince politicians to remove any OTHER kinds of regulatory barriers that might be getting in the way of "restoring degraded abandoned land into functional ecological habitat." Also it might be possible to convince politicians to give degraded abandoned land at little or no cost to organizations devoted to restoring said land into functional ecological habitat. After all, said land is not exactly valuable as property otherwise.

If your approach hinges on getting rid of the idea of property altogether, and if you are unwilling to compromise on that point, even temporarily, then no wonder you're hitting a brick wall.

Are you sure there isn't a less politically radical way to accomplish the goal of "restoring degraded abandoned land into functional ecological habitat," or at least to make better-than-nothing progress toward that goal?

A quick Google search has turned up plenty of organizations that appear to be interested in this, such as the Society for Ecological Restoration.


Admittedly organizing is hard work, even with a less politically radical approach. However, with less radical stated goals, it seems to me that you might at least be more likely to get a response from already-existing organizations.

EDIT: I know of at least two other people on this site who are likely to be at least somewhat sympathetic to your goals, and who might be able to make some worthwhile suggestions. I PM'd them just now to call their attention to this thread.

Found some other people here who share your interest in permaculture -- see the thread The Permaculture/forest garden smallholding and AS.

I guess the problem with enabling delusions of property is that my goal is not actually "restoring degraded abandoned land into functional ecological habitat." That is one step that is required to move toward the goal but that is not the goal itself.
The goal itself is to completely replace the cult of the lie of separation and all of its environments and culture with understanding of the truth about the one and the many and local ecological cultures that are integrated symbiotically with the reality of the earth and the larger cosmic environment. Simply restoring degraded land by itself would only be addressing a symptom.

The actual problem goes back thousands and thousands of years to before the dawn of the agricultural revolution. Likely the lie of separation began as a trauma response to extreme loss of habitat and life following natural disasters during the bolling allerod, younger dryas, and the mega floods leading into the holocene. It is even possible that agriculture itself was a teaching intended originally to help people survive in the immediate aftermath: cultivating fields as a way to get food and help kickstart ecological succession. If that was the case, about agriculture, then it was corrupted by the false narrative from the lie of separation and the compulsion to feel in control that lie makes space for. Unfortunately, at this point in time, nearly every field of inquiry is corrupted by this same false narrative, including most scientific pursuits. And since the fundamental truth about the one and the many is not based on anything else, as it is the base itself, it cannot be spread socially. The only way to arrive at it is through the most extreme commitment to high resolution attention and accuracy: it is found by a person, not shown to a person by another person. Restoring degraded land into functional habitat, when done in a context of the most extreme commitment to high resolution attention and accuracy, can provide opportunities for other people to try on a different relationship with the world, but in order for that to possibly be part of addressing the root issue of the lie of separation, the relationship that is offered to be tried on must be uncorrupted by the fundamental philosophical inaccuracy of such concepts that current societies are based on, like ownership (which is essentially only defined in practice as restricted access enabled through domination, while misrepresented as a phenomenon of objective belonging), and like the belief that dependence on trade is necessary and useful (dependence on trade is symptomatic of living in an environment that cannot provide what is needed), and like the idea that centralized institutions should be respected and worked with (centralized institutions are most basically entities of misrepresentation for the sake of feeling in control).

Life isn't a game to be played with. The truth isn't an inconvenience. The pursuit of nested harmonic relationships is not a luxury.

Fundamentally replacing the culture-type that dominates the world is inherently radical to those invested in the culture-type that dominates the world, there is no way around that. Working with what is available can often be very wrong and counterproductive, but it is commonly thought to be justified by the lie of separation which enables selfishness (by selfishness I am not talking about a prioritization of only one self, I am talking about the narrative of independent entities and cause and effect, the conceptualization of selves in the first place) and then includes a method of evaluating quality of life that is based on individual feelings, and often even comparative advantage, rather than nested relational harmony.


All of this said, I do appreciate the responses here and you trying to be helpful to me. I will look into the links provided.

If you are looking to form bonds with people who have the same desires as you, then isn’t that a social context? I’m not being snarky, I really want to understand.

I’m guessing many people here are not going to read the “wall of words” that is your main paragraph. In general, I see posts in this forum stating that.

I did read it all. I’m not sure your understanding of societal growth over the eons is accurate. For one thing, the only way we know anything about previous time periods is through scientific investigation. Our understanding of this past, what our earliest ancestors did with their days, how and why and what were the effects of the development of agriculture, changes as we learn more, or people have new ideas to try out. That said, you’ve clearly been thinking about it, which is a good thing.

But your main point, that we have become divorced from everything around us except money and what we can purchase with it, is a good one.

I agree with you that, probably in order to survive long term, our species needs to learn to value something besides money and things.

I admit that I don't fully understand what you are talking about, and probably not very many other people fully understand it either.

But I strongly question whether this really means your ideas "can't be spread socially." There certainly do exist other people with ideas at least somewhat similar to yours. (What do you think of the web pages here, here, and here, for example?)

As for where I'm coming from with this: I'm a person who has been intermittently involved in various social reform movements, which have had varying degrees of success. The most successful of these, so far, has been the LGBTQ+ rights movement. I've also done a fair bit of reading about the history of these and other social movements.

So I'm a person with some knowledge about what it takes for a social movement to be successful, although I certainly don't have all the answers. (If I did have all the answers, my current autistic community-building efforts would probably be a lot further along than they are.)


So the question then becomes: How can you best create situations where other people will "find" whatever you are talking about?


Problem is, by willfully ignoring such things as "ownership," you are likely to wind up in prison, or at best being evicted from the land you've been working on and having your work destroyed repeatedly. And it seems to me that this would make it even harder for you to bring about your aims, or to create situations in which other people will "find" anything at all.

Civil disobedience is a strategy that can work well sometimes, but only under the right circumstances. It works best when you already have a large, well-organized movement that can publicize your "Letters from ... Jail," as was the case for Dr. Martin Luther King. It doesn't seem to me that your movement is anywhere near that point yet, although I do suspect it might be a little further developed than even you are fully aware of.


It is "radical" in the sense of requiring a fundamental reorganization of society.

The question is: How can you make progress toward such a fundamental reorganization of society (assuming the reorganization is necessary or at least desirable)?


Perhaps so, but what else is there to work with? You have to start somewhere, it seems to me. You can't just wave a magic wand and make the current world's social constructs disappear.


But how else are you going to achieve "nested relational harmony"?

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 30 Dec 2021, 7:21 am, edited 3 times in total.

I was talking about a specific context of shared meaningful activity, since socializing in itself is not a sufficient shared activity to result in actual bonding, at least for me.

Societal growth over eons is not even really an accurate way to frame how things have happened. Linear development IS a false conclusion that is not supported by the data gathered by scientific investigation of human history (not talking about only written history). The agricultural revolution was not a development, it is a degeneration. "Civilization" itself is a degeneration of human culture and understanding. People frequently conflate technological evolution with human evolution. I have been studying this topic and others related to it quite intensely for over a decade and I am certainly not the only person who understands this, especially now, but even in the last century and before. The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow seems like an indication that some of the understanding (notably recognizing the omnidirectional movement and extreme diversity of and throughout human societies) is starting to become more commonplace in current popular culture, but, despite some of the claims made in that book, those ideas are not remotely new. Some of the earliest philosophers of written history discussed at length the degenerative trajectory of human societies even thousands of years ago and acknowledged the vastness of wisdom and social complexity in those people who are commonly described as our "primitive" ancestors.

I didn't realize that I was presenting money as the main focus of humanity in the present; that was not my intention. My intention was to describe the pursuit of the feeling of control as the main focus in present day societies. This feeling is enabled by a false narrative of the lie of separation.

I know I don't present things "nicely" by common social standards, but this is who I am and the point is that the true recognition of inseparability instantly brings an orientation towards valuing nested harmonic relationships, rather than any kind of comparative advantage or illusion of personal safety.

The dominant culture type right now is quite literally an attempt to break the laws of the universe: an attempt to expand through dissonance. but dissonance contracts, and harmony expands.




The truth about the one and the many is just a phrase I am using to try to gesture at least in the direction of the absolute, since I know from a lot of experience and logic-after-the-fact that it cannot actually be conveyed as it is only the space with which things can be defined relationally in, and not something that is defined relationally itself.

It isn't an issue of spreading my ideas, because none of this is about my ideas. All the things that need to be spread could be found even if I never existed in the first place.
The resistance garden article I'm not familiar with but the linguistic differences highlighted in the title I've certainly thought about before, I'll read that article after writing this..
Rewild.com is a site I am familiar with and I have read that article you linked on it as well. I have actually met Peter Michael Bauer (the teacher of that rewilding101 course and the founder of Rewild Portland) before and attended one of the gatherings he was organizing with Rewild Portland. Though I only interacted with him a little bit in person, from other interactions online afterwards he does seem like someone who shares a very similar orientation to me in many ways, at least when it comes to application. I think we differ on some subtle philosophical issues, and personality-wise I would say we are very different of course lol. Anyway, he is definitely one of the few people I've encountered who I feel there could be a theoretical potential to work with (this is saying a lot, for me, he is someone I would consider admirable for sure), but unfortunately we live thousands of miles apart and I do not think he has access to land where the birthplace of a new culture could be created either. It seems like he is trying to be part of a cultural emergence within the current environmental context they have over there, but I do not really have a lot of faith in the resilience of a culture that is not able to embody its values fundamentally in its lifestyle. To me, this seems like the main culprit for the dissolution of many counter-cultural movements in the past. The values must be embodied fundamentally in habitat design and lifestyle, not only language and social activity. And to be clear, I'm not suggesting that there aren't people who would jump at the chance to do that if they could (including Peter), I'm just returning to the next issue which is...



Which I think I answered theoretically in the text you quoted immediately following that. But...
I do not think that I personally can do anything to make progress towards a fundamental reorganization of society.
Working with what is available for me to work with would not be starting on anything worthwhile, it would just be trying to have a life for myself in this context for no reason and continuing to never get through to anyone and never find anything worthwhile to do. It's not like I haven't already tried to work with what is available. That's what I've been doing my entire life, in many different ways. I've certainly tried to go the route of economic participation and validating other people's violent domination of land to gain permission for access. But I am not the kind of person who can gain socioeconomic status, and I cannot pretend that I am convincingly, and I definitely am not invested in doing that, since I know it is fundamentally wrong and the ONLY reason for me to do it is because most other people are delusional violent morons.

I do not think that I can achieve nested relational harmony. As far as I can tell, this part of reality is simply unworthy of existence but nonetheless necessary because it is possible as an expressional of relational variation. In this case, I see no other reasonable course of action than to try to discard it.

Maybe other people will be able to change things someday before our species renders itself extinct or fails to survive the transition into the next geological age, but I see literally no avenue, legal nor illegal, for me to be part of human progress. It is unlikely that I will even be alive in 10 years since I am only alive now because my parents keep me alive (see: "I've certainly tried to go the route of economic participation and validating other people's violent domination of land to gain permission for access. But I am not the kind of person who can gain socioeconomic status, and I cannot pretend that I am convincingly enough to do so, and I definitely am not invested in doing that, since I know it is fundamentally wrong and the ONLY reason for me to do it is because most other people are delusional violent morons.")

Here is a quote from Plato written 2381 years ago

"in comparison of what then was, there are remaining only the bones of the wasted body, as they may be called, as in the case of small islands, all the richer and softer parts of the soil having fallen away, and the mere skeleton of the land being left. But in the primitive state of the country, its mountains were high hills covered with soil, and the plains, as they are termed by us, of Phelleus were full of rich earth, and there was abundance of wood in the mountains. Of this last the traces still remain, for although some of the mountains now only afford sustenance to bees, not so very long ago there were still to be seen roofs of timber cut from trees growing there, which were of a size sufficient to cover the largest houses; and there were many other high trees, cultivated by man and bearing abundance of food for cattle. Moreover, the land reaped the benefit of the annual rainfall, not as now losing the water which flows off the bare earth into the sea, but, having an abundant supply in all places, and receiving it into herself and treasuring it up in the close clay soil, it let off into the hollows the streams which it absorbed from the heights, providing everywhere abundant fountains and rivers, of which there may still be observed sacred memorials in places where fountains once existed; and this proves the truth of what I am saying.

Such was the natural state of the country, which was cultivated, as we may well believe, by true husbandmen, who made husbandry their business, and were lovers of honour, and of a noble nature, and had a soil the best in the world, and abundance of water, and in the heaven above an excellently attempered climate.”

Most social reform movements can't embody their values fundamentally in their lifestyle. That's why those social movements are needed, in the first place. The whole point of most social movements is that the people these movements represent have problems that they cannot solve by changing their lifestyle.

But this doesn't mean a social movement can't make progress toward its goals. It just needs to come up with reasonable strategies for making progress. It needs to accept the reality that progress will usually be slow and partial, yet there can still be real progress toward eventual success at making significant change.


I think you might still be able to find ways to "get through to" more people. For example, there are plenty of online resources that might be able to help you improve your writing style. It would be be even better if you could do so while, at the same time, living the kind of life that you want.


I would be interested to hear more about your experiences with trying to gain access to land. How did you go about doing this?


... which puts you in the same boat as a lot of other autistic people.

To look out for us as autistic people, we need a much bigger and better autistic community (in the sense of organized subculture) than now exists.

The autistic community I envision would include not only a much bigger and better-organized autistic rights movement than now exists, but also lots and lots of different inter-connected groups, including (among many other kinds of groups) some groups of autistic ecology activists, possibly including one or more groups with the aim of creating the new culture you are calling for.


Discard it how?


Yikes!

Are your parents in any position to help you find suitable land?

If you could find enough other autistic people in your general geographic area with values similar to yours, perhaps you could also find someone to raise enough money to put the bunch of you on a suitable plot of land, perhaps with help from relatives of everyone in the group?

Social reform movements have to be changing lifestyles collaboratively, or else they're just people yelling about things pointlessly. In this particular example, the entire problem is about people's lifestyles so of course the problem can be solved by people changing their lifestyles.

I have no need to improve my writing style, and I have no choice to live the kind of life I want.

I've tried to gain access to land by reaching out to many organizations and communities (all of which ignored me), by trying to illegally inhabit degraded abandoned land (of course this didn't work because of the police), by traveling around north america while living in a car and volunteering and going to events to try to find anywhere I could fit with other people or begin to create a life for myself (never found any such place), by spending years trying to find ways to make money to save up to pay other people for support from government violence (which didn't work because as I said I am not the kind of person who can participate economically), etc.

Except that most people still frame not being able to participate in the economy as a problem, or a disability, when it is in fact an ability to not be trash. Rights are laws, and they are toxic.

Discard life by not living it. No my parents cannot afford to pay people to support a claim of ownership through violence. All the other autistic people I've met around me were more worried about how to live their own life by adapting to the way things are than how to be part of a real difference in humanity. but it's irrelevant. autistic people are just as unrelatable to me as people who aren't autistic.

But here's the problem: Most people don't have complete control over their own lifestyles. Our choices are constrained by the society in which we live. So, unless they happen to be wealthy, most people can make at most small, incremental changes to their own lifestyles. Even wealthy people's choices can be constrained (e.g. by fear of being disowned by their parents if they do or don't do XYZ).

So, how can one create a social movement powerful enough to give people new options? To do that, people have no choice but to work within the current system, at least to some extent.

Any progress is better than none, as long as it eventually helps you make further progress and you don't just rest on your laurels after making a little bit of progress.

It's certainly better than just giving up.


If you were willing to engage in incremental community-building, an improved writing style could indeed help you do that.


You're certainly not alone in that regard. Exactly my main point.


Have you tried Gaia University, which offers this free online course as well as a few other free online services?

[EDIT: Have you looked into the following Ohio-based resources? Cincinnati Permaculture Institute and Midwest Permaculture.]


Right.

This could conceivably work well, as a form of civil disobedience, but only as part of an already-well-organized movement with good connections to the ecology movement as a whole. It might work even better if it had good connections not just within the ecology movement but also within the housing rights/advocacy movement.

Individuals doing it alone obviously doesn't work.


Perhaps you might be able to fit with a group of autistic ecology activists, if such a group existed?


If you've never been able to hold down a job, have you looked into applying for SSI or SSDI? (Note: you would probably need to hire a lawyer, who would be paid via a cut out of your first several years of SSI/SSDI payments.)

Question: have you been diagnosed with depression as well as ASD? I ask because a long-enough history of crippling depression, such as I suspect you might be suffering from, can be a justification for receiving SSI.


That depends on the specific reasons why you are unable to participate in the economy.


Rights are actually a mix of law and custom. If, on principle, you dislike the idea of agitating for changes in laws, you could opt for promoting changes in popular attitudes instead.


In other words you are contemplating suicide? Please don't do that.

I think there are ways you still can both survive and make a least a small contribution to making the world a better place.


Have you ever encountered a group of autistic ecology activists? At least some (though probably not all) such people might be more relatable to you than either (1) a group of autistic people who aren't ecology activists or (2) a group of ecology activists who aren't autistic.

EDIT: Perhaps "ecology activist" is the wrong term for a category of people that includes you? If so, what would be a better term? "Re-wilding proponent," perhaps? "Green anarchist," perhaps?

EDIT: Another question: Do your parents live someplace where you can at least maintain a small garden, even if it isn't anywhere near big enough to provide all your food? And what is your parents' living situation like, more generally?

It would be extraordinarily hard for a neurotypical person to establish social bonds without involvement in the world. One could be the most handsome and charming man and yet without work, school, church, social organizations, commerce, or shared interests, he's going to be a lonely man.

You cannot be antisocial and expect people to be social with you.

There's nothing about autism which causes a person to be antisocial.