Someone recently asked the following question on my Discord server:
I semi periodically interact with college-age adults who are currently some combination of (sad/angry/feel helpless/etc) given ~~; any advice for things I can tell them to do?
I immediately found words pouring from my fingertips, and I decided to re-share those words here, in linkable form.
Start building real connections with one another. Even if you expect 3/4 of those connections to decay. Build a Dunbar number tribe, or a tight-knit familyish unit. Regardless of whether things turn out good or very, very bad, you’re going to want people nearby to you, people who you know intimately, people who you trust, people who you do things with, regularly. Pour twice as much, three times as much, five times as much energy into intentionally strengthening the ten or fifteen bonds that are closest to you, as you currently do.
Not only will this improve your day-to-day experiences and your mental health, but it will also set you up for the future. The only way to have a friend you’ve known for twenty years is to have friends you’ve known for ten years, and the only way to have friends you’ve known for ten years is to start seriously making friends now.
Seriously. Going out for drinks every week, or to play frisbee, or to do parkour, or to go dancing, or to a martial arts class together, and then hanging out afterward, is an honestly radical and restorative act.
It matters way, way more than you think.
As for more concrete issues like AI ex-risk, or the fall of the American experiment—this won’t directly help with those. But it puts you in contact with more minds, more resources, more experiences. Hive-minds of ten college students are more likely to be able to find Actually Useful Things To Do about those larger problems, because they have more surface area and better networks. And in the meantime, you’re feeding a deeply undernourished part of the human soul.
You don’t even have to think of something clever. Literally Just Go On Fuckin’ Walks With Each Other. Start with a group of eight, and when three or four of them drop out, find three or four new people to add in. It really will not take more than a semester before you have An Actual Group.
(“This is hard and no one will go on walks with me.” A real and valid problem! Find people who seem sad and lonely and angry and link them this very essay and then ask them again.)
Getting jobs in an insane economy? Networking. Networking? Friends.
Finding a place to crash because you couldn’t find a job in an insane economy? Friends.
Having enough crucial mass that you can start something yourself, because there weren’t opportunities available? Friends.
The current shape of our society is set up to shatter your attention and turn you outward, swiping, constantly swiping. Slow down enough to start clumping together. Including people who are not the literal actual best perfect match for you! The people who are around me, now, who have been around me for more than ten years, are not all the ones I would have guessed, and not all the ones I would have picked. Many of the ones I would have picked lacked staying power. Lower the bar. Let people linger. Let people try.
(This is where “join a martial arts academy” or whatever really comes in handy. You spend time around the same people week in and week out focused on something other than friendship, and then you can see which relationships naturally want to expand. “Want to grab some food after?”)
“Focus on your friends” is an option that often gets overlooked and undervalued because, like, it’s not the best way to do anything. But it’s like the third or fourth best way/an extremely relevant factor for just about everything.
You may not be able to fix any of the very large, very scary, and very real problems facing the human species right now, but you could reach out to three or four people that you want to tighten bonds with right now, and see if any of them are free tomorrow night.
And that will help.