#campcrafting 001: a 21st century guide to building your own hunter-gatherer camp
I am…reluctant to predict just what the future communal world will look like…Although the basics remain the same — people living together on the basis of a common purpose, practicing some level of economic sharing — the details are elastic.
~Timothy Miller
1. Money, status, love, career, and miserable
In the fall of 2016 I had it all – professional, financial, romantic, and scientific success – yet I was the most miserable I had ever been. Through hard work, grit, and a fair amount of luck, I found myself in a prestigious post-doctoral fellowship that quickly morphed into a multi-year Senior Research Scientist position at Duke University. I worked in the lab of Charles Nunn, one of the brightest and prolific minds in Evolutionary Anthropology. The work was intellectually challenging and deeply satisfying. We published innovative, theoretically relevant work at a fantastic rate in respected journals.
In an exchange over beer at the Devil’s Craft House on Duke’s campus, Charles recollected on our collaboration: “It was an adrenaline rush.” I couldn't agree more. Durham, North Carolina, equidistant from the coastal beaches and Appalachian Mountains, was a beautiful and charming place to live. Moreover, I had financial stability for the first time in my life. I had survived the era of graduate school privation and had emerged a fiscally solvent, if not respected, member of society.
Despite all this, and having never been prone to bouts of melancholy, I was teetering on the edge of depression. For a considerable amount of time I could not put my finger on the root cause of my discontent, until by chance (one solitary Friday evening dedicated to surfing Netflix) I watched the documentary Happy by filmmaker Roko Belic, who traveled to more than a dozen countries searching for the secret of happiness; the answer, according to Belic was that happiness is strongly linked to social connectivity:
I was rocked by a surprisingly simple revelation – none of this – this material and societal success – means anything without my kith and kin in which to share the spoils.
In the ephemeral position of a post-doc, I was highly incentivized to work as much as possible to win an ever-illusive tenure track job and had almost no incentive to create, foster, and build my own social network. During my time as a postdoc at Duke, I had many extrinsic things that society had told me I needed to be happy and fulfilled. But, this had been at a devastating cost to my intrinsic values and I was utterly miserable. Back in 2013 in Indiana, I left my best friends and my family and now found myself socially naked and lonely. My social shell had been weathered by the toxic torrential rains of dwelling in a mismatched society. It was then I resolved to do something about it. It was time to strengthen and refortify my social shell…
It was time to #campcraft.
2. A most human pastime
Living as a group is one of the most ancient human pastimes. In fact, without the ancestral adaptation for group dwelling, you likely wouldn’t be here. Long, long before the first tribes came into existence, your ancestors survived because they lived within intentionally proximate social networks. These groups are what anthropologists call “camps.”
Camps (not families) are the fundamental nuclear unit. The camp is the essential building block of human society, consisting of individuals related by kinship, friendship, and marriage, and serving as the primary unit for both survival and reproduction.
Plop a family into the wilderness and it dies. Plop a camp into the wilderness and it thrives. That’s because our ancestors were the original #campcrafters.
In the same way that hunting and foraging are skills, so is #campcrafting. If you are in poor health, your clinician may prescribe the adoption of a new diet. So, we’ll begin in the next article in the #campcrafting series by assessing your “social health” and prescribing a new “social diet.” Following the metaphor, I recommend approaching these articles like you would if you were adopting a new diet. Alternative diets aren’t for everyone. Moreover, some people can tolerate certain foods better than others.
For example, your personality may be strongly extroverted or introverted and thus, people along this continuum will have different social networking needs. This is why we will survey the core set of tools that will permit you to assess what social diet is best for you. You’ll likely find bits you like and others you try and decide not to adopt. That’s great. Any small, incremental step you take towards the principle of intentional proximity can improve your social health.
The Principle of Intentional Proximity is the idea that decreasing geographical, physical, emotional, and spiritual distance that hinders group cohesion will enhance wellbeing.
The science is out. Isolation is deadly. And fighting it should be a first line prophylactic to improving your health and wellbeing. Don’t take just my word for it. Here is a tweet from the Surgeon General saying as much:
“I released a Surgeon General's Advisory on the epidemic of loneliness and isolation facing our country, the destructive impacts it has on our collective health, and the extraordinary healing power of our relationships.”
Changing your social diet to consume even modest amounts of intentional proximity will likely have a lasting, positive impact on your life.
Crafting a camp is a commitment. In the event that you’re deciding whether or not to make that commitment, here’s a summary of the core principles of forging a chosen family. The following articles describe how to dial in the parameters of what constitutes a cohesive, cooperative, prosocial group — and how to bond that group into a real life intentional community.
Loosely, there are three tasks ahead of you. First, you must find and shore up the relationships that constitute your honor group and the chosen family. These are members of your adventuring party you want to have alongside as you strike out on this journey. Second, once you’ve got the core honor group committed to #campcrafting, you will need to create a shared sense of identity. We will explore examples of the types of exercises that can help with team bonding; these challenges, if overcome, can imbue the camp with meaning and purpose that can propel your camp to the next level. Third, we’ll outline the scientifically grounded best practices for the creation, maintenance, and governance of your camp.
3. The #campcrafting series
OUR TRIBAL FUTURE: How to Channel Our Fundamental Instincts Into a Force for Good, provides much of the science and philosophy that is the basis for these guides. The book also has research studies, descriptions, and examples of past and present intentional communities. The blog articles are here to summarize and consolidate the best practices that will help you along your #campcrafting path:
#campcrafting 003: Know thyself, know thy camp - Big Five personality traits and camp cohesion
#campcrafting 005: Forging Cohesion (Part 1) - Harnessing the ancient magic of ritual
The articles above are meant to be read in order, but if you’re especially curious about a topic, there is no harm in skipping ahead. As I personally experiment with these, and gain insight on other related topics, I will try and update accordingly! I love participatory science, and every aspect of the #campcrafting experience I have applied in my own life to some degree.
On that note, one thing personally motivating me to write The Tribe Drive Newsletter as a supplementary resource for my readers is that we (my camp) are actively testing and applying these strategies; instead of making the book narrative about a personal journey, I wanted it to be a place to seriously explore the science and theoretical application, without fettering it with anecdote. However, I hope that musing about my campcrafting quest provides some example and insight otherwise not accessible to readers of the book.
Most importantly, I hope it serves as a guide for others and a starting point to build an intentional community whose sacred value is honoring the work of being more intentional about community. In fact, this is an official call out to those interesting in experimenting with #campcrafting in their own lives. Consider this substack your place to record your fieldnotes. As you experiment with any degree of Intentional Proximity in your own lives, please feel free to share them in this space. My ultimate measure of success for this substack is this place becoming a Community of Campcrafters!
This undertaking is for the true trailblazers and pioneers. This will take work. It’s a life’s project. But it’s good work…it’s human work.