Dunbar on Friendship

Robin Dunbar (of Dunbars number fame) has new work on friendship

Takes ~200 hours to move someone from stranger to close friend

7 factors for friendship compatibility are: language, place of origin, education, hobbies, worldview (religious, political), music taste, and humor pic.twitter.com/734SNYFHjx

— Patrick OShaughnessy (@patrick_oshag) August 21, 2021

Find Your Tribe and Build It Up

"Neither capitalism nor socialism can save you when all hell breaks loose. People—your family, friends, neighbors and sometimes, total strangers—can."

Read about the civic synergy program on our website:https://t.co/UD5rUmtQYk

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) July 15, 2021

Robert George's "Wisdom" on Friendship

2/ Friends love each other despite disagreements and honor each other's right to freedom of thought and speech. Never demand conformity to your own opinions as the price of friendship. Never submit to someone's demand for conformity to his or her opinions as friendship's price.

— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) June 24, 2021

And so if a friend disagrees about murder being an injustice and even practices it, should one still be friends with that person?

5/ If you are an ideologue, a dogmatist, you will have trouble being friends with people with whom you disagree. If you don't have friends who disagree with you on important moral and political questions, you should ask yourself whether you've become an ideologue, a dogmatist.

— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) June 24, 2021

Can one be a dogmatist about theft or murder?

8/ Fellow truth-seekers can be friends because they recognize their own fallibility and are willing to be challenged, as well as to challenge. They're eager to learn from each other. Unlike ideologues, they don't allow love of their own opinions to impede pursuit of truth.

— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) June 24, 2021

A failure to distinguish between practical and speculative truth, even though in general NNLTists still emphasize the distinction between the speculative and practical intellectg. Apparently they don't understand the implications of their own theory. It is not enough to be a "truth-seeker" to have a real friend. Real friendship is based upon shared agreement on goods and the ordering of actions leading to those goods, because they know that such a unity is necessary for living together. Liberal academics don't have to live with their friends, and so they know nothing about what real friendship requires.

Family Farm and One's Narrative

“When you think about farming through story, you begin to think about the conversation that began before you were here. I can’t conceptualize my life on our farm with my family without a sense of story." https://t.co/Zn6UWNzjdx

— Civil Eats (@CivilEats) June 6, 2021

Wendell Berry's Communitarianism

Mark Cooprider explores Wendell Berry's plea with his readers to find joy and fulfillment—the motivations at the heart of Huck Finn and Christopher McCandless—not in escape and isolation, but in willing membership and participation in community life. https://t.co/u0topQmnEA pic.twitter.com/i5UJF8aX6i

— Front Porch Republic (@FrontPorchRepub) May 27, 2021

Is it a sufficient response to identity politics? No.

Sebastian Junger on the Tension Between Individualism and Dependence

Bestselling author @sebastianjunger examines the tension between individualism and dependence that lies at the heart of what it means to be human. He joins @MattGallagher0 via livestream to share what he has learned. https://t.co/4HHMTNHnqO

— Town Hall Seattle (@THSEA) May 17, 2021

The Sort of Trust You Need in Your Tribe

A trust few will ever know.
A soldier running across an open street. The man running trusts the two men to his right explicitly.
The men on the right would rather die a thousand deaths than fail the man running to the left. #brotherhood #family #trust #military pic.twitter.com/BfbIUoYZQZ

— Tim Kennedy (@TimKennedyMMA) May 10, 2021

Emile Doak Reviews G. Olmstead's Book

Could it be that the social cohesion, neighborliness, and interdependency for which Olmstead rightly pines are products of the same “cultural demeanors” that were skeptical of a “diverse local community”? https://t.co/WxBdhSNRtw

— The American Conservative (@amconmag) April 23, 2021

Good for the reviewer to call Olmstead out on her adherence to the SJW gospel and whether it is coherent.

It Takes a Tribe

Attunement is essential for a young nervous system to grow healthy. It’s also a great help for adults dealing with trauma. We all need to feel that love some time, preferably OFTEN.

Are you part of a loving tribe? https://t.co/eg2cw7rQGO

— Erwan Le Corre (@ErwanLeCorre) April 15, 2021

This afternoon at 5:30 PM EST, the Thomistic Institute at Georgetown University presents a lecture by Prof. Scott Cleveland of the University of Mary titled “How to Avoid Being Unhappy.”

Taking place over Zoom. Register to receive Zoom credentials.https://t.co/qAqSPEnRNe

— Thomistic Institute (@ThomisticInst) April 15, 2021

Will the academics figure out that their academic talk isn't enough?

Should He Still Be a Role Model?

Evangelization through friendship is a start; but Christianity must have an answer to the state. (And that requires a proper response to feminism, not "Catholic feminism" of the John Paul II type or of anyone else.

“Looking back at my own life, the most effective Christian apostolates I have been involved in have been informal events building real friendships with neighbors, events focused on community, faith and scholarship.” https://t.co/wP8AuIjk1C

— Josh Hochschild (@JoshHochschild) March 30, 2021

Find Your Tribe

"...Mental illness is often thought to be a matter of individual disorder. Modern psychiatry looks to features of individual experience, behaviour and thoughts to diagnose mental illness, and focuses on individual remedies to treat it..."https://t.co/VddPHMK2TE

— Local Futures / Economics of Happiness (@localfutures_) March 26, 2021

Define Society

A society is all the more human to the degree that it cares effectively for its most frail and suffering members, in a spirit of fraternal love. https://t.co/QerQ2QbOiz

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) January 12, 2021

What makes a society? If a criminal kidnaps families and enslaves them, has he created a society?

Find and Build Your Tribe

“This is no true Democracy. Here is no solidarity such as existed in the ancient tribes and primaeval society, but only disintegration and a dust-heap” - Edward Carpenterhttps://t.co/73iKpd8qO1https://t.co/ajStwVRl1W pic.twitter.com/hD2ogr28bN

— Winter Oak (@WinterOakPress) November 30, 2020

Do We Need Health (or Life) Coaches?

A poor but necessary substitute for fraternity and the tribe?

I spoke with @drchatterjeeuk and @chriskresser about why behavior change recommendations from healthcare providers are largely ineffective, and why having the support of a health coach can make all the difference in achieving your health goals. Listen: https://t.co/fAwlbInRro

— Mark Hyman, M.D. (@drmarkhyman) November 20, 2020

The Legacy of Pope Francis

Pope Francis urges Europe’s leaders to rediscover ‘path of fraternity’https://t.co/cKKvSny8tH

— Catholic World Report (@cworldreport) October 27, 2020

Generation Gap

With a 22 year age gap, it’s hard to imagine what Stian Hagen and Stinius Skjøtskift could possibly have in common. This 3 part series is a lighthearted look into the dynamics of classic meets cool, what each skier can learn from the other along the way. https://t.co/GwQHrG9bE3

— Arc'teryx (@Arcteryx) October 21, 2020

Carter Snead's New Book

What It Means to Be Human

Argh early-morning typos. https://t.co/1hK46oTv5H

— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) October 13, 2020

Snead wrote this for the NY Post: To heal America’s wounds, we need to recall that we belong to one another

His book on bioethics is probably good. But he is unprepared for identity politics. He implicitly recognizes that there are natural affinities:

We need an anthropology that recognizes that we come into the world as living bodies, embedded in families, communities, and histories that, as philosopher Michael Sandel says, we “neither summon nor command.”

And if conflicts should arise between different identity groups? Calls such as this for friendship, or even civility, will not suffice. When one is a professional intellectual, authentic community is generally lacking, so academics write of things they have not experienced.

A better anthropology and, therefore, a better politics must facilitate the creation of what the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre calls “networks of uncalculated giving and graceful receiving,” in which we make the goods of others our own. To create and sustain such networks, we must practice the virtues of just generosity, hospitality, misericordia (accompaniment of others in their suffering), gratitude, humility, openness to the unbidden, tolerance of imperfection, solidarity, respect for dignity and honesty.

In other words, we must embrace the virtues of authentic friendship. We must remember our embodiment and what it means. And then, God willing, we will remember that we belong to one another.

They may think they have some sort of community with (some of) their colleagues, but how many of their colleagues would pass the zombie apocalypse thought experiment/test and qualify as true friends? Even if they do have (male) friends who pass that test, how many such friends do they have? Probably not even enough to fill a rifle platoon. And yet they think they are qualified to talk about community, "bcuz credential." They may think they have some sort of community with (some of) their colleagues, but how many of their colleagues would pass the zombie apocalypse thought experiment/test and qualify as true friends? The same criticism could be levelled at those associated with the American Solidarity Party. I don't expect much from professional (D) and (R) pols. But if the ASP wants to advertise itself as being different, there better be some actual basis for it, other than some sort of identity as Christian Democrats or adherence to Roman Catholic Social Teaching. Prove yourselves the trad. and natural way, not with mass politics.

Find Your Tribe. Be a Mentor to Younger Men.

Via @JVLast, If, like me, you’re into fears of Japanification, read this grim account of Japan’s Generation X. https://t.co/U9divSTGzZ

— Michael Brendan Dougherty (@michaelbd) October 6, 2020

Not the Example We Want to Follow

If Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia could get along, there should be hope for the rest of us. https://t.co/PYCLAa4iz4

— Intellectual Takeout (@intellectualTO) October 6, 2020

Can't Be Friends with Those Who Don't Want to Be Friends with You

Academics in the ivory tower are having problems understanding what identity politics means. Civic nationalism is dead, and so is state liberalism.

I'm with Prof Christakis. We could be--we should be--"a city on a hill." Time to reverse course. Eschew political violence. Period. Rebuild civic friendship, even across the lines of partisan and ideological division. "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies." https://t.co/K4Q5VUL69c

— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) October 1, 2020