Cooperation, Defection, and the Fight for Community
This is something that happened to me about a year ago and I wrote this at the time. I’m going to start with this and then reflect on how I have changed
For the past four years, I co-ran a recurring dinner event in New York City. Every other weekend, we brought together strangers - people who would never otherwise meet. It grew from nothing (there were nights with zero RSVPs) into something constantly oversubscribed. We heard all the time about wonderful friendships and dates and bonds and general exuberance that came from it.
Recently, my co-founder Henrik attempted to unilaterally destroy what we’d built in order to launch something new off the shockwave. No conversation, no attempt to work through it together. Just a declaration of death and an attempt to cannibalize the still-warm corpse for a first mover advantage.
I’ve been sitting with a tangle of competing beliefs about how I “should” feel about this. I think they point at something bigger than my situation, so I want to try to untangle them here.
We live in a world where huge companies have economic incentives to keep us looking at a screen for as long as possible, employing thousands and thousands of people with the sole job of how to increase usage time. I think genuine physical community is one of (if not) the most important thing to human flourishing, joy, prosperity, connection, and meaning. Our culture has lost so many third spaces and they’ve mostly been replaced by algorithms.
So I strongly believe the world is a better place if people take more risks to fight back against this. Doing things is important. And I think anyone who is genuinely trying to build community and connection should be supported. Every single time someone was inspired by our event and told us “hey, maybe I should do this myself,” we always encouraged them, tried to help and advise.
It’s so easy to see the world as zero sum. In many cases, the success of your own project requires you to beat out others - but when it comes to community in the 21st century, the market is so so so far from saturated. We are not fighting over the scraps of meaning and community that huge corporations have missed. We are creating purpose, joy, connection, thriving, etc., out of thin air. Part of the beauty of cooperating is there is unlimited joy to be had.
Starting something new does not necessitate attempting to destroy something old.
I think working together is important. I think being willing to talk through conflicts is important, especially when they are hard. Cooperation is all too easy to take for granted. It’s easy to forget how powerful it is. I’ve recently been doing research on diplomacy and why/how countries manage to not be at war. Today we are 100x less likely to die due to a conflict than we were back in the days of subsistence farming. How lucky we are that the world has become so much more cooperative.
I believe it’s important to strive towards a culture of cooperation and to discourage defection. I think that our world is so much better if we enforce costs on people or organizations that take unilateral action to further their own goals at the expense of others. I understand why defecting is so alluring over the harder and lower payoff cooperate. But a world with more unilateral destruction of existing norms, organizations, and infrastructure in pursuit of personal success is a world I believe is worse for all of us to inhabit.
So which is it? Support the builder, or discourage the defection? What do you do when they’re the same person?
Whatever comes next for this event, it will be different from the past four years. Change is exciting; change is hard.
I think if anything, what I’m mourning most is the lost opportunity for an ending. All too often we rush to the next thing without celebrating what we had. Endings are worth celebrating. Endings are worth recognizing. Gratitude is powerful, and I wish there’d been more opportunity for that.
Where I am now
What was glaringly absent from both this and the original much longer 6 page draft was how I felt about it. My longest friend in NYC had decided to backstab me. I woke up to a friendship in tatters. I still haven’t talked to Henrik about this. I told him I was okay with discussing this with him, but in the year plus since then he hasn’t reached out to me. This hurts. It’s perplexing. Especially since my model is he still considers me a friend! On the other hand, I can relate to not being great at cleaning up messes I have created. This is something I have gotten significantly better at, but there were certainly points in my life where it seems better to simply get better and take it with me moving forward instead of trying to fix the rend1. I am so very grateful that I no longer feel this way, that I prioritize connections and fix when I have done harm. Fixing things is great!
All of which to say, it really really sucks that my friend deciding to end this dinner party has also seemingly really eviscerated our relationship. Henrik was a huge part of my life for many years. So many of my opinions about community and hosting and trying hard to do things for my community have been discussed or argued with Henrik. This person is a part of me. He has gifted me some of his beliefs and they travel with me to this day.
Maybe I could double reach out? There isn’t that much of a cost. Hm. Writing that out hurts. There’s some serious resistance to like why do I have to do this?! I have already reached out the first time! I didn’t even do the bad thing! This sucks! But also, sometimes doing the hard thing is often worth it.
Maybe it will be easier because we no longer live in the same city. I have very few friends that I have had for over 5 years. It would be nice to have more people in my life who have really seen my trajectory. At this point that torch is mostly being carried by my ex2. My family has known me, but not nearly to the same extent. It sure would be nice if someone in my current life really knew both the current me and many of my previous versions!
There’s something about really admitting I have hurt someone that has always felt hard. Especially if I believe I have the moral high ground.
Good thing we still like eachother!