Community Building

Affinity is the main measurement of cohesion in a community.

This is different from

Relationships do not scale.

This is due to several factors:

Limited Time and Energy: Individuals have limited time and energy to devote to relationships. The more relationships one has, the less time and energy they can devote to each one, potentially leading to more superficial interactions.

Dunbar’s Number: Anthropologist Robin Dunbar proposed that humans can only maintain a certain number of social relationships effectively, often cited as around 150. This limit is thought to be related to the size of our neocortex. Within this number, there are smaller, more intimate circles (e.g., 5 close friends, 15 good friends, 50 friends, and 150 meaningful contacts).

Quality vs. Quantity: Deep, meaningful relationships require ongoing effort, communication, trust-building, and emotional investment. As the number of relationships increases, it becomes more challenging to maintain this level of investment in each relationship, leading to a trade-off between quantity and quality.

Emotional Bandwidth: Each person has a limited emotional capacity or bandwidth. Juggling too many relationships can lead to emotional exhaustion, making it difficult to provide the necessary emotional support and engagement in each relationship.

Complexity and Conflict: More relationships can also mean an increase in complexity and potential for conflict. Managing diverse needs, expectations, and interpersonal dynamics across many relationships can be challenging.

Memory and Cognitive Load: Remembering personal details, histories, and dynamics of a large number of people can be cognitively taxing, potentially leading to forgetfulness or mistakes that might strain relationships.

Human stack comprises of

• Philosophy at the very base
• Values as the core stack
• Values translate into beliefs
• Beliefs translate into lifestyle elements that we call culture
• Values and beliefs also dictate which habits stick and which don’t

The more Alignment of human stack, the easier it is to create affinity. And more of everyone’s power should be pointed towards aligned people (Pointing your power).

Communities are built on consensus. Consensus of what?

Of elements of the human stack.

I see alignment as overlap or proximity to another person or a community on any of the elements of the human stack.

Some day, I hope we can measure alignment as close to reality as possible.

This would save immense friction and bring about some kind of balance to human civilization. Conscious Equilibrium.

Some relationships require a lot of work to maintain. And some grow deeper even without much interaction. Meeting my school friend after every ten years but I somehow feel the warmth has only grown.

We have all experienced this.

Why does this happen?

It is because of the alignment of human stack.

The more aligned we are, the more the relationship compounds.

This is the way to decide where to point your power: Pointing your power.

As community builders, the most important task to be done is to layer your community to make onboarding more aligned and efficient.

Layering has trade-offs:

• Time and energy invested in layering

Most influencers and drivers of causes start adding value without

Human Values are seen as absolute. I think they are a spectrum, not just because there is a weightage or intensity to it. But also because they are often on the conflicting ends of a spectrum.

I believe there are 7 to 15 fundamental value spectrums that apply to each human being. Most values—like Freedom, tradition, or Justice—are derivatives of these fundamental spectrums. I don’t know what these are, but enough data about values and talking to people help me narrow it down. It is a 5-year exercise, I think, but we will get there.

• each value is on a spectrum. For example, Freedom stands for a dislike of constraints. Some people operate better without structure. Opposite end is people who like structure. Such people are more likely to hold Discipline as a value. Each of us lives at one point on these spectrums.
• most values are derivatives of Base Spectrums. 

(I am still collecting data points to derive all the fundamental value spectrums – Base Spectrums. One of the main reasons for building this app is to get a large enough dataset to determine these value spectrums scientifically. Ideally, ValuesDAO will fund the largest study of human values globally.)

Base spectrums are those that i believe apply to all human beings. It is a scale that I see like a pendulum. See Pendulum Theory.

Almost every one of us is swinging somewhere in the middle. Hanging on to the pendulum as it swings in the society.

See: Base Spectrums

Local vs global is about focus.

You know someone who thinks more locally – in terms of time, geography, and life situations.

You also know someone who thinks more globally in the same terms.