No, not the M. Night Shyamalan movie. Or the People. I’m thinking about the concept of a village. It’s the one that people mean when they use the phrase, “It takes a village to raise a child.” I touched on a facet of this concept a while back in my post on isolation, but I still have some thoughts left.
The Traditional Village
Let’s start by looking at the traditional, stereotypical village. This is a settlement of around a few hundred people, or as Wikipedia says, 5 to 30 families. These clusters of families usually formed for mutual defense and aid, and because most humans like being near other humans (bonus points if they’re not related). In pre-industrial times, people did a bit of everything: rugged menfolk worked fields and cared for animals, rugged womenfolk cared for animals and made clothes and meals, rugged childrenfolk did whatever was asked of them (and were always seen and never heard).
Your social circle was made up of whoever lived near you, and you probably knew all of them. If you strayed from what was expected of you or broke a social norm, there were social consequences. On the other hand, you could probably rely on the other villagers to lend a hand if you were struggling. So while villages worked for the greater good society as a whole, they weren’t always great for individuals.
The Modern Take
Now let’s fast forward to the modern era. We updated our communication strategies and discovered other people, then we invented industry and sent all the poor rugged childrenfolk through ringers. Next, we got scared of all the “other” people, killed each other a lot, invented weapons that could kill the planet, and now it’s today.
Modern sociability is no longer dictated by physical proximity alone. Now, you have options. Your classmates are not the same people as your coworkers, and neither of those are the people you see in the grocery store. Which ones do you interact with, and which do you choose to make meaningful connections with? Most people have very few interactions with their neighbors, so they’re not relying on that to make friends.
The digital age makes it easy to connect with virtually anyone, anywhere in the world. This means that you don’t have to be friends with Karen from HR if you don’t want to. It means you’re free to ignore the people living around you. You can be friends with only the best people, and if someone bothers you? There’s seven billion more to choose from.
Your Village
The cool part about that is that you get to build your own village. You can fill it with all the people who love and support you, the ones who share your ideals and values, and who like the things that you like. Making these connections is fun. It’s really easy to be social with people who are like you! What’s more, it’s healthier when you have people you can talk to.
Of course this self-sorting has downsides too. If you’re able to choose with whom you interact, most people naturally choose more similar people. It’s the path of least resistance. But, that leads to fun things like increased confirmation bias and groupthink. If your village is based on a certain trait, then that becomes a integral part of your identity. This is what gives rise to the legions of rabid, toxic fandoms: their friends are all X fans, so to stay friends they have to be just as committed to X, or risk being thrown out of the group. So, really, it’s just like a traditional village, only with more memes.
The Answer
https://www.gardenvisit.com/gardens/babbacombe_model_village
Allow me to, in my excessive wisdom, propose an answer. But first, so the answer makes sense, let’s ask the question: why on earth am I talking about any of this?
Humans are social creatures. Yet, in the modern world, lots of social interactions are discouraged: don’t talk to strangers, don’t talk to people on the subway, don’t talk to people in the gym, don’t even look at homeless people. You never know when one of these people might turn out to be a crazy person. It’s safest to keep yourself to yourself. We crave the comfort of the familiar, and create our own fortresses from it.
So I might be talking about this because there is a lot of “othering” happening in the world. My side is right, and your side is wrong, but maybe we should all come together and sing songs in a circle. Maybe I’m talking about this because I’m really hungry and villages always make me think of awesome local bakeries. I’m probably talking about it because I want to reiterate once again that we need other people, and therefore it is in our best interest as a society to make sure that other people are taken care of, even those outsiders who aren’t fans of X.
Really though, I just want to giggle at model villages again.
