如何重启我的社交生活

几年前，我有点精神崩溃。

A few years ago, I was going a little mad.

从物质上讲，生活很舒适。

Materially, life was comfortable.

我和伴侣刚买了一套房子。

My partner and I had just bought a house.

我的自由撰稿事业还算顺利，我们过着一种中产阶级的生活，每年能负担得起多次海外旅行。

I was doing okay in a freelance writing career, and we were living the sort of middle class ish lifestyle where we could afford multiple foreign holidays a year.

但有一件事让我感到不安。

But there was something I found disturbing.

我没有任何理由必须出门。

I didn't have any reason to ever leave the house.

这并不是什么夸张的说法。

That's not much of an exaggeration.

由于运气和机缘巧合，我从事了一份居家办公的工作，几乎所有事情都通过邮件或Zoom完成。

Through a combination of luck and circumstance, I'd landed in a work from home career where almost everything happened over email or Zoom.

亚马逊可以在24小时内把任何我想要的东西送到我家门口。

Amazon could drop anything I wanted at my door within twenty four hours.

Deliveroo和Ocado负责解决我的饮食问题。

Deliveroo and Ocado took care of food.

由于我和伴侣没有孩子，也不打算要孩子，所以我们也没有那种与本地社区天然的联系。

And because my partner and I don't have nor want kids, we didn't have that automatic tether to our local area either.

到目前为止，这听起来可能并不那么困难。

So far, this may not sound so difficult.

我真幸运。

Lucky me.

对吧？

Right?

但这种生活方式的困难在于，我的社交生活也完全停滞了。

But what made living like this difficult was that my social life had also ground to a halt.

当然。

Sure.

我有一些朋友，而且由于在英国政治推特上是个中层人物，可能还有数百个松散的联系，但我很少亲自见到任何人。

I had friends and perhaps even hundreds of looser connections by virtue of being a middle ranking character on British politics Twitter, but I only rarely saw people in person.

我们最亲近的朋友不住在附近，也没有任何机制能让我们定期聚在一起。

Our closest friends did not live locally, nor was there any mechanism that would regularly bring us together.

这到底是怎么发生的？

How did this happen?

我认为这种社交崩溃是由几个不同的因素造成的。

I think the cause of this social collapse was down to a few different factors.

首先是疫情，它让我们都习惯了待在室内。

The first was obviously the pandemic, which made us all too comfortable with staying indoors.

其次是年龄增长带来的影响。

The second is a function of getting older.

你过去常一起玩的人中，有很大一部分有了孩子，从此在地球上消失了整整二十年。

A significant proportion of the people you used to hang out with have kids and disappear off the face of the earth for two decades.

第三个原因，坦白说，是我的舒适生活状态。

And the third was, frankly, my comfortable circumstances.

简单来说，我真的很喜欢待在家里。

Simply put, I really like being in my house.

住在这里非常舒适。

It's extremely pleasant to live in.

我最喜欢陪伴的人和我住在一起，我们的猫也在这里。

The person who I like spending time with more than anyone else lives here with me, and our cats are here too.

我有一台大电视、一台PlayStation 5和千兆互联网连接。

I have a massive TV, a PlayStation five, and a gigabit Internet connection.

但显然，好事也可能过犹不及，这使得待在家里变得更吸引人，而外出则显得不那么有吸引力。

But clearly, you can have too much of a good thing as it has the effect of making staying in more desirable and makes the prospect of heading outside seem less appealing.

也许，你根本看不到这个问题。

Perhaps, though, you can't really see the problem.

你甚至可能带着羡慕读着我到目前为止写的内容。

You might even be reading what I've written so far with envy.

毕竟，我幸运地过上了无依无靠、少有牵绊的极其舒适的生活。

After all, I've lucked my way into an extremely pleasant life of no dependence and few commitments.

那么，到底有什么问题呢？

So what could possibly be wrong?

客观来说，抱怨这种情况是非常不近人情的。

Objectively, this was an incredibly unsympathetic situation to complain about.

然而，问题在于我几乎把生活优化到了极致，结果这种生活方式实际上让人精神上非常疲惫。

However, the problem is that I had basically managed to over optimize my life, and as a result, it was actually quite a mentally tough way to live.

事实证明，当你缺乏这些时，就会开始怀念与他人的联系。

It turns out that when you don't have them, you start to miss connections with other humans.

就在这时，我终于意识到一件本该显而易见的事。

And this was when I finally realized something that should have been obvious.

我有一小群亲密的朋友，他们分散在全国各地。

I had a small group of close friends who were spread across the country.

我有一群更广泛的朋友和熟人，我们在线上交流，但我缺少的是一个社区，一套行为规范的框架。

I had a wider group of friends and acquaintances who I talked to online, but what I lacked was a community, the the cage of norms.

讽刺的是，我一直以来都相当轻视社区的重要性。

Ironically, I'd always been pretty dismissive of the importance of community.

从宏观层面来看，这是因为我认为自己站在了大都市主义与社群主义分裂的都市主义一侧。

On a zoomed out level, this was because I saw myself on the cosmopolitan side of the great cosmopolitan communitarian divide.

原则上，我一直喜欢那种庞大、匿名、原子化的城市，个人可以自由决定自己的命运。

In principle, I've always liked the idea of a big anonymous atomized city where individuals are free to determine their own destiny.

从意识形态上讲，我认为强大的个人权利是解放的重要工具，我对强大社群如何将人们禁锢在《窄廊》作者所称的规范牢笼中持怀疑态度。

Ideologically, I think strong individual rights are important tools of liberation, and I'm suspicious of how strong communities shackle people within what the authors of the narrow corridor refer to as a cage of norms.

例如，小镇之所以令人感到压抑，是因为它们就像全景敞视监狱。

For example, the reason small towns can feel so oppressive is because they are surveillance panopticons.

每个人彼此熟识，因此可接受的行为范围不可避免地受到社会压力的制约。

Everyone knows each other, so the range of acceptable behavior is inevitably mediated by social pressure.

如果你违反了群体的隐形规则，就可能失去地位、被生活中所有人疏远，甚至可能遭遇更糟的后果。

If you break the invisible rules of the group, you risk losing status, being shunned by everyone in your life, or potentially even worse.

历史上，这正是小社区更为保守的原因，也是人们迁往城市以摆脱与生俱来的期望的原因。

Historically, that's why small communities are more conservative and why people move to the city to free themselves from the expectations they were born into.

但这并不仅仅是一个地理问题。

But this is not just a geography thing.

这些相同的动态也适用于其他类型的社会群体。

These same dynamics also apply to other types of communities too.

无论是地理、宗教、职业还是仅仅基于共同兴趣形成的强大社群，都会扭曲我们的激励机制，形成关于什么可以说、什么不能说、什么可以做、什么不可以做的规范和禁忌，以维持你在群体内的地位。

Strong communities, whether geographic, religious, professional, or simply driven by shared interests, warp our incentives and create norms and taboos about what can and cannot be said or done if you want to maintain standing with the in group.

我认为我对社群特别持怀疑态度，因为作为一名作家和互联网上的迂腐讨厌鬼，我重视追求真理的行为。

I think I'm particularly suspicious of community because as a writer and pedantic asshole on the Internet, I value truth seeking behavior.

我希望人们思考和说出真实的事情，而不是为了取悦社群而不得不相信的东西。

I want people to think and say things that are true, not just things that they have to believe for the sake of keeping their community happy.

公平地说，确实有很多社群存在这种情况，其中许多我以前就写过。

And to be fair to me, there are plenty of examples of communities where this happens, many of which I have written about before.

例如，早在2020年，如果你的群体都是左派，质疑围绕‘觉醒文化’兴起的规范就需要极大的勇气。

For example, back in 2020, if your in group were all lefties, it would have required an act of tremendous bravery to question the norms that arose around wokeness.

而更近一些，在神经多样性群体中，若对过度诊断提出合理质疑，就可能招致朋友和同侪的愤怒。

And more recently, in neurodivergent communities, it can be difficult to raise legitimate questions about overdiagnosis without risking the wrath of friends and peers.

我自己也亲身经历过类似的社群动态，尽管程度要轻得多。

And I personally have experienced these same community dynamics myself, albeit on a much less severe scale.

我不再赘述了，因为我以前谈过这个话题，但我在二十岁出头时曾是怀疑论者社群的热心成员，讽刺的是，这个社群本应建立在拒绝教条和推崇改变观点的基础上。

I won't bore on as I've talked about this before, but I spent my early mid twenty seconds as an enthusiastic member of the skeptics community, which ironically was premised on the rejection of dogma and the celebration of changing your mind.

然而，随着时间推移，这个社群也不可避免地形成了自己的规范，规定了哪些观点和问题是可以接受的，哪些是不被允许的，以维持成员的声誉；近年来，正是由于对这些规范的分歧，这个社群才分崩离析。

Yet, inevitably, over time, even this community developed its own norms about what ideas and questions were and were not acceptable to remain in good standing, and it has fallen apart as a cohesive community because of disagreements over those norms in the intervening years.

所以，这一切都说明，我原本对社群动态抱有深深的怀疑，并强烈渴望成为一个独立思考者。

So this is all to say that my default setting here was deep suspicion of community dynamics and a strong desire to be an independent thinker.

我希望相信，我的观点和对世界的看法是通过纯粹的理性与审慎思考得出的。

I wanted to believe that I was deriving my opinions and outlook on the world through the exercise of pure reason and careful thought.

我不希望我的分析被他人会怎么想的顾虑所污染。

I didn't want to pollute my analysis with concerns about what other people would think.

但当我陷入彻底的社会崩溃时，才发现，其实我确实很在意。

But when I reached the point of total social collapse, it turns out that, actually, I did.

社群的价值。

The value of community.

这所有的一切，其实是以一种极其自命不凡的方式在说：尽管我上面抱怨了这么多，但这件事让我清楚地意识到，社群确实具有社会和心理价值，即使它让追求真相变得更加复杂。

This is all an extremely pretentious way to say that despite my carping above, what this whole thing made clear to me was that there is clearly social and psychological value in community, even if it does make truth seeking more complicated.

那么，加入一个社群有什么好处呢？

So what good is there in being a part of a community?

这似乎太显而易见了，都不用说。

It seems almost too obvious to say.

我可以谈谈互助带来的实际优势。

I could talk about how there are practical advantages in terms of mutual support.

我可以指出社群是社会运转所必需的信任引擎，或者承认社群在我们漂浮于一个空虚、无意义、无神的世界时，赋予了我们归属感和身份认同。

I could point to how communities are engines of trust which we need for society to function, or I could recognize how community bestows a sense of belonging or identity as we float through an empty, meaningless, godless universe.

但这些都算不上什么新发现。

But this would hardly be revelatory.

所以我要说的是，就我个人而言，我最怀念作为社群一员的，是它在伦敦这样一座大城市里，直接为我提供了一群朋友。

So what I will say is that, personally, something I miss the most about being a part of a community is how it creates a ready made group of friends even in a city as large as London.

在那些怀疑论者的岁月里，我可以参加某些标榜怀疑论的活动、酒吧聚会、公开讲座等等。

Back in those skeptic years, I could go to certain skeptic branded events, pub meetups, public lectures, so on.

而无需详细规划或协调，我总会不经意地遇到熟面孔。

And without detailed planning or coordination, I'd inevitably bump into familiar faces.

而且，关键的是，他们彼此也都认识。

And crucially, they all knew each other too.

这为我提供了一条快速找到志同道合者一起聚会的捷径。

It was a shortcut to like minded people to hang out with.

所以当这个社群瓦解、我脱离它时，就好像失去了整个一群朋友的星系。

So when the community fell apart and I fell out of it, it was like losing access to an entire constellation of friends.

建立社群，这让我回到了我的困境。

Building community, this brings me back to my dilemma.

我意识到问题在于我不属于任何社群，那么我该如何找到一个新的呢？

I had identified that the problem was that I wasn't part of any community, so how could I find a new one?

那是2023年，距离我30岁生日还有几个月，我有了一个想法。

It was 2023, a few months before my 30 birthday, and I had an idea.

我应该为自己组织一场生日聚会，这是我多年没做过的事了。

I should organize some birthday drinks for myself, something I hadn't done for years.

当然，这听起来没什么大不了的，但我真的感到紧张。

Now, obviously, this doesn't sound like a big deal, but I was genuinely nervous.

我的心理健康状况并不理想。

My mental health wasn't in a spectacular place.

所以当我这么做时，我不确定是否真的会有人来。

So when I did this, I wasn't sure if anyone would actually turn up.

于是我给自己打气，开始向许久未见的朋友和关系较松散的人发送邀请。

So I psyched myself up and started sending out invitations to both friends I hadn't seen in a while and looser connections.

我对邀请谁并没有一个明确的策略。

I didn't have a well defined strategy for who to invite.

我把详情发给了那些出现在我通知或时间线上的朋友和共同联系人。

I sent the details to friends and acquaintances who appeared in my notifications or to mutuals who appeared on my timeline.

但无论如何，令我欣慰的是，当晚真的来了很多人。

But, anyway, to my relief, on the night itself, a whole bunch of people actually turned up.

有认识多年的朋友们，也有我第一次见面的人。

There were friends who I'd known for years and others I was meeting in person for the first time.

据我所知，每个人都过得很愉快。

And as far as I could tell, everyone had a pretty great time.

从心理上讲，这显然是巨大的鼓舞。

Psychologically, this was obviously an enormous boost.

事实证明，付出努力邀请人们参加活动是值得的，就在那时，我找到了解决更大问题的答案。

It turned out making the effort to invite people to stuff pays off, and this is when the answer to my larger problem hit me.

如果我想拥有一个社群，那我可以自己建立它。

If I wanted a community, then I could build it myself.

我的意思是，原则上，这不应该太难。

I mean, in principle, it shouldn't be too hard to do.

自人类文明诞生以来，社群一直是所有人类社会的基础，因此如何构建社群的方法早已被摸索出来。

Community has been the foundation of all of human society since the dawn of our species, so the playbook for how to build one had already been figured out.

我认为这归结为几个关键要素。

I think it boils down to a few key ingredients.

一个社群需要共同的联系或兴趣。

A community needs a common connection or interest.

它需要一个让人们非正式互动的场所，还需要一种机制，让新人能够加入，以防止社群随着时间推移而衰落。

It needs a place for people to interact informally, and it needs a mechanism for new people to join to prevent it from decaying over time.

所以，我做的第一件事就是不再等到下一个生日才再组织一次聚会。

So the first thing I did was not wait until my next birthday to organize some more drinks.

事实上，在第一次活动后不久，我就开始规划的不只是下一次活动，而是接下来的多次活动。

In fact, soon after that first event, I began planning not just my next event, but my next events, plural.

我的前提很简单。

My premise was simple.

我要尝试把我认为最有趣的人聚满一屋子，并且每个月都这么做。

I was going to attempt to fill a room with what I described as the most interesting people I know, and I was gonna do it every month.

我会选定一个日期，宣布举办一次酒会。

I'd pick a date and announce some drinks.

然后我会向邮件列表发送邀请。

I'd then send out an invite to a mailing list.

我会精心挑选几十位朋友和熟人，并继续采用散点式策略，邀请人们参加下一次活动并加入邮件列表。

I'd curate of several dozen friends and acquaintances, and I'd follow the same scattershot strategy of inviting people to join both the next event and the mailing list.

然后到了每个月的那一天，我会和到场的任何人一起度过。

Then when the day arrived each month, I'd hang out with whoever turns up.

我的想法是，这解决了组建社区时的两个核心挑战。

My thinking was that this solves two of the core challenges when forming a community.

它解决了协调问题。

It solved the coordination problem.

与其安排临时的、需要特别组织且带有明确目的的聚会，比如工作会议，

Instead of ad hoc hangouts that would need to be specifically arranged and have a nominal purpose, like a work meeting.

我说的是：我会在这里。

I was saying, I will be here.

如果你有空，就来聊聊吧。

Come and hang out if you're free.

它同时也解决了衰退问题。

And it also solved the decay problem.

用最功利、最冷酷的话来说，通过不断扩展邮件列表，我创建了数字营销爱好者会称之为‘参与漏斗’的东西。

To put this in the most mercenary and bloodless terms possible, by continuing to expand the mailing list, I have created what digital marketing bores would call an engagement funnel.

现在，每当我结识新朋友时，我都有一个定期的活动可以邀请他们参加，以便我们能经常见面。

Now when I make a new friend, I have something recurring I can invite them to so that we can see each other regularly.

如果他们来了，这是一种有效且有趣的方式，可以维持我们的联系，而不是让我们渐行渐远。

And if they turn up, it's an effective and fun way to maintain our connection rather than have us drift apart.

这是一次成功的重启，从那个时刻算起，现在已经过去了两年多，结果甚至比我预期的还要好。

A successful reboot, it's now over two years on from whatever this moment was, and it has worked out even better than I could have hoped.

现在几乎每个月，我都有理由去见朋友，重新巩固我与更广泛人群的联系。

Almost every month now, I have an excuse to see my friends and renew the connections I have with a much wider network of people.

有些月份的出席人数多一些，有些少一些，但每次回家时，我都感到自己与他人紧密相连，心理上得到了重新充电，这种感觉也带来了额外的好处。

Some months are bigger than others in terms of attendance, but every single time I've headed home feeling like I am connected to my fellow humans and psychologically renewed, it has had spillover benefits too.

由于与人面对面保持联系，我的社交生活变得更加丰富，社交日程也因此变得更加繁忙。

My social calendar is now much busier as staying connected with people in person has enriched my social connections more broadly.

即使我上面描述的维系友谊的方式听起来可能有点病态，但我再也不觉得快要疯了，因为我身边又有了一个社群。

I no longer feel like I'm going mad even if there is a risk that my description of how to maintain friendships above might read as psychopathic, I once again have a community of people around me.

我相信，欣赏这种模式的并不只有我一个人。

And I don't think I'm the only person who appreciates this.

我酒会的其他常客似乎也很享受这种聚会的理由——既能维系旧友，也能结识新朋友。

Other regulars at my drinks events seem to enjoy the excuse to get together, maintain existing connections, and make new friends too.

这大概让我说到我决定写这个的根本原因了，除了我觉得在尴尬的圣诞新年过渡期，你们或许会喜欢一些更富反思性的内容。

Which I guess brings me to basically why I decided to write about this beyond the fact that I thought you might like something a bit more reflective in the awkward Christmas New Year gap.

我写这个是因为我怀疑，经历社交联系崩溃的并不只有我一个人。

I wrote about this because I suspect I'm not the only person who has experienced a collapse in social connections.

我上面提到的结构性问题——疫情、居家办公和舒适的生活环境——并非我独有。

The structural problems I identify above, the pandemic, working from home, and comfortable circumstances aren't exactly unique to me.

我敢打赌，很多人也因为类似的原因感到自己快疯了。

I bet that lots of people feel like they are going mad for similar reasons too.

所以，尽管听起来像一个蹭流量的网络导师，如果你现在和几年前的我处境相似，我的生活建议是：直接邀请人们参加活动吧。

So at risk of sounding like a grifting Internet guru type, if you're where I was a few years ago, my life advice to you is this, just invite people to stuff.

这真的管用。

It works.

如果你正在找一个借口来组织活动、启动项目或创建一个微信群，

If you're looking for an excuse to organize that event, start that thing or create that WhatsApp group.

那么，这就是你一直在等待的信号，去行动吧。

This is the sign you have been waiting for to do it.

和他人相处是好事，如果你找不到一个社群，你总是可以自己建立一个。

Hanging out with other humans is good, and if you can't find a community, you can always build your own.