What if We're Wrong About Each Other?

By Frank Filocomo

Nothing can replace in-person connection.

Lura Forcum, in her new Substack, How to Human, explains how her bimonthly potluck dinners foster interpersonal connections and weak-tie relationships that would otherwise be difficult, if not impossible, to cultivate digitally:

Every other month, on Sunday evenings, people bring a dish for dinner at my house. Anyone is welcome. It’s not fancy, but the food is good and so is the company.

Forcum, who, along with the State Policy Network's Erin Norman, authored Beyond Polarization, is an advocate for socializing with those outside of your ideological orbit (read my write-up of that report in National Review here).

It's true: we tend to surround ourselves with people who are "politically like-minded" and "on the same page," ideologically speaking. 

There's nothing wrong with this, of course, but, if the goal is the engender a culture of high-trust relationships and communitarian values, we must venture outside of our silos and extend social invitations to others whom we may disagree politically, theologically, or whatever. 

It's also true that, party affiliation aside, we may have more in common with each other than we initially think:

From the article:

It’s easy to attribute all sorts of inaccurate, negative characteristics to other people, especially those who are different from us. But in-person interaction confronts us with the reality that the characteristics we attributed to other people aren’t very accurate. We have to correct our assumptions based on the person in front of us.

So, in the spirit of rising above the current climate of toxic polarization and balkanization, I encourage you to dine and converse with those from outside your orbit; you might be surprised by how in-person connection and meaningful dialectic can make your preconceptions about others fall by the wayside. 

Read more by Lura here. 

The City of Roommates

By Claire Cordonnier

“When you’re young, you don’t need much to survive,” a hair stylist told me recently when I was getting my hair done somewhere near 60th street. That’s right, if you keep your necessities cheap and uncomfortable, there’s more money to spend on frivolous things like hair treatments and overpriced clothing.

As you get older, your physical needs become more demanding and uncomfortable things become even more so. New York is full of discomforts, and these can’t be tolerated as easily by the old as by the young. 

The things that make roommates annoying are the same things that make the city annoying. And aren’t roommates more so a “young people” thing? 

One can’t get too far away from their fellow New Yorkers; we’re all siblings in a way. We all live close enough together to observe and be annoyed by each other’s dirty habits. We’re all constantly in one another’s way: blocking the sidewalks with our slow walking, hampering the stairwells with our meandering steps, and causing our business-casual fellow New Yorker to miss his train and wait another 6 minutes.

It’s not enough to check the street intersections for cars, you must also check for the lightning swift biker that comes hurling down the gray street in your direction, who’s trajectory seems prepared to yield at nothing. In more residential areas, your every step ought to be one of caution, as the sidewalk is never guaranteed to be clean. At night, the random unexplained yelling of strangers and the persistent, long honks of cars keep you up.

Our lives occur in such close proximity to one another, we’ve probably both contemplated our deepest sorrows in the same subway car, or enjoyed a happy morning coffee in the window seats of the same cafe. These are not new ideas. We express our affection for one another often in the form of distrustful glances and unsmiling faces. Reluctantly, we’re roommates.

How many young people are here in New York, just living off of the adrenaline of being in the city, that mixes with their youthful feelings to give them a sort of immunity to New York’s discomforts? I hope that they enjoy it.

Forming 'Weak Ties' Through Community Design

 

By Frank Filocomo

"We are happier," writes Robert Steuteville in Public Square, "when we have connections to other people."

People-friendly and human-centric urban design, Steuteville posits, can engender feelings of social-connectedness and facilitate what sociologists often refer to as "weak ties," that is, the loose and informal social bonds we make with our neighbors and fellow community members. 

Much of today's urban landscape, however, feels cold and sterile. And, as I've noted before, we have a tendency to let our environment dictate or at least shape our behavior. In other words, anti-social urban design will be internalized by community members in a way that makes them distrustful of others and connection-averse. And even weak ties are hard to form when people see each other, not as neighbors, but as social obstacles.  

Thoughtful urban planning, though, can transform communities. 

Steuteville writes that,

how we build communities can strengthen social ties, and boost satisfaction. There’s a transportation component: When we walk, we are more likely to have a friendly interaction with another person.

I've written about walkable cities before for National Review. You can read that here.  

Steuteville, in making the case for walkable cities, explains how his children benefited from "prosocial" urbanism:

I raised my children in a historic neighborhood, where they walked to three schools, K-12. They met friends each day and had a personal relationship with the crossing guard at the elementary school, who always had a friendly word. When he retired and later died, they mourned.

Conversely, if we live in sprawl, without the ability to serendipitously bump into our neighbors during our daily stroll or commute to work, we will deprive ourselves of the weak ties that are characteristic of robust and flourishing communities. 

We must look to New Urbanist principles as a helpful aid in the revival of American community.

Before you go: Check out my latest article for Philanthropy Daily here. I discuss how intergenerational-connectedness can help shield the elderly from loneliness and isolation. 

Oh, and The Frank Forum got a little shout-out in Jack Fowler's Civil Thoughts newsletter here. 

See ya next time!

'Make New Friends, but Keep the Old'

By Claire Cordonnier

Make new friends, but keep the old.

One is silver; the other is gold.

A circle is round; it has no end.

That’s how long I will be your friend.

This song, “Make New Friends,” is sung by young girl scouts all over the country. That was certainly my experience. The song is about the importance of friendship and being there for others. The lyrics in the first stanza remind listeners not to neglect their old friendships, calling new friends “silver” and old ones “gold.” Ironically, the song's young audience may not be old enough yet to meaningfully distinguish “new” from “old” friends, though surely they will grow up to find that the message of this song endures.

Making new friends does not isolate one from old friends if one takes steps to maintain and nurture their pre-existing friendships, which can really become as valuable as “gold.” This is because keeping a friendship for a long time often requires both parties to face the challenges that inevitably arise in long-term relationships.

Cancel culture manifests itself in one's personal relationships in that it can encourage one to eliminate others from their own life upon the first signs of the other person being problematic. While it is good to be aware of warning signs in a relationship, how far is too far? Is it possible that the cancel-culture mindset prevents people from persevering long enough in relationships for them to develop into “gold?”

The song “Under the Bridge” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers describes the loneliness experienced by Anthony Kiedis, the band's frontman, and the connection he felt to Los Angeles:

Sometimes I feel like I don't have a partner

Sometimes I feel like my only friend

Is the city I live in, The City of Angels

Lonely as I am, together we cry

Its lyrics also nod at the common experience of loneliness endured by many city-goers. It's a cliche to come to the city to pursue a new life. But many people do, and in doing so, leave behind all of their own friends and end up feeling lonely. They pass by the city’s picturesque locations, ice cream parlors, and cafes - all of which would be wonderful to enjoy with friends - with an ironic weight of sadness in their throats.

But the city is also full of gift shops containing postcards to send back home, and beautiful parks to walk through, with one ear inclined toward an old friend on the phone. So why not beat the loneliness stereotypes by developing “golden” friendships?

Claire Cordonnier is a spring 2025 intern for National Review Institute. She is currently pursuing her bachelor’s degree at New York University, and plans to major in politics and journalism. Before beginning her studies at NYU, Claire spent a gap semester interning for non-profit organizations–The Borgen Project and the Childhood Cancer Society–and working as a barista in a local coffee shop.

Reading Together

 

By Frank Filocomo

Should reading always be a solitary activity?

Nadya Williams, in an article for Front Porch Republic, makes the case for a more communitarian kind of reading. 

"The function of the earliest literature," Williams explains, "was to bring people together rather than give them a delight to hoard all to themselves."

Literature, therefore, was meant, not to be consumed in isolation, but to be experienced in a communal setting.

The Homeric epics were composed and performed orally by traveling bards before there was a Greek alphabet for writing them down. Performances brought communities together for the joy of such entertainment. These occasions also provided people with shared literature to discuss presumably for days after such performances.

I'll admit, my reading is done exclusively alone. I've always found books - good books, that is - to be a sort of vehicle to internal exploration. But, perhaps they can also function as a tool to community cultivation. 

There's different ways that this can go down. There are read-alouds, which Williams does with her children daily, but I'm not sure how applicable those are to other demographics. 

I'm more intrigued by silent reading parties of the sort that Reading Rhythms hosts in NYC and elsewhere. 

To be clear, these are definitely not book clubs; they're parties. 

Everyone brings their own book (no assigned reading here) and then discusses what they've read with a perfect stranger. So, there are intervals of silent reading, followed by intervals of conversation.

Molly Young documented her experience at a Reading Rhythms event in the New York Times. I recommend giving that a read here. 

To be sure, book worms are notorious for their social introversion. When it came time for Molly to turn to a stranger and discuss what she had just read, she recalled feeling "an icy dart of trepidation" shoot through her body. 

She quickly, though, overcame this pang of anxiety and lost herself in conversation and community. 

Some, at first blush, will think this hippy-dippy or a Bushwick-bohemian fad. And, who knows, it very well may be. But, so what? The revitalization of community will inevitably require innovative thinking and resourcefulness. 

I'm tempted to sign-up for one of these "parties." At the modest fee of $20, it is appealing. 

We'll see...