Right to Community and What it Could Look Like

“The Grind” stole something from you, it’s time to get it back.

If we consider how humans lived together before industrialization, we can see similarities in cultures across the world in terms of how people connect. But it’s important I explain to you what coregulation is and why it’s so healthy for the nervous system.

A scientist by the name of Stephen Porges came to understand that the human body functions along two main branches of the nervous system. One branch deals with a mobilizing stress response for times of navigating danger or threat, known as the sympathetic branch. The other deals with generating new brain cells, healing wounds, digesting food, resting cells, ridding toxins, growing muscle and bone etc., known as the parasympathetic branch. Our bodies are typically operating from one and not both of these branches. The reason for this is simple, your body wants to allocate its energy to be most effective at keeping itself healthy (parasympathetic) or getting you out of danger (sympathetic). When both branches are engaged or rapidly shifting back and forth, this is called nervous system dysregulation. This means your body doesn’t know what level of danger you are in and therefore which functions to shut off, whether or not to flood your hormonal balance with mobilizing or calming neurotransmitters. The book, The Invisible Lion by Benjamin Fry illustrates this very well. In it he explores the negative bodily effects of hyper-vigilance and persistent disregulation, or as the name of the book suggests, feeling like you’re always in danger of lion attack even when you don’t see signs of danger. (The best treatments for this seem to incorporate touch to pressure points such as massage, EFT, acupuncture etc. In case you’ve always felt like the world is a dangerous place and you should never let your guard down.) When you are over-stressed or have stress too residual, your body doesn’t heal and maintain itself properly. As the book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky shows, prolonged stress responses are damning to the physical health of the human body.

One way your body knows to engage its healing functions is what’s called coregulation. It’s the calming effect of feeling connected to someone. Coregulation takes many forms, it could come from a conversation with a like-minded and non-judgemental person about something that resonates with you, but it could also be a cuddle with a spouse, a lingering hug as you say a temporary goodbye to a friend, anything that makes your body feel connected to a point where you feel viscerally calmed down to the core.

Before the tribe was separated into family houses, before the fathers of those families were separated into the factories and mills for 60+ hours a week, before the cubicles and all other modern symbols of alienation, humans lived very differently. Infants were born into a tribe or village where they had over a dozen caregivers. This means that any time a baby or toddler wanted to be held, there was an adult to hold them. This is a foundation of coregulation. A baby being held is great for the development of its nervous system. It’s great for establishing a healthy body that doesn’t dysregulate so easily, and doesn’t have an overactive stress response.

Fast forward to the common ‘nuclear family’ and the only adult in the house to hold the baby is the mother, because the father is on “the grind”. The mother can’t always hold the baby, because household responsibilities need to be done and the mother needs rest too. When babies feel abandoned, that changes their rapidly developing nervous system in to one that feels a need to increase stress hormones as a result of abandonment. This is the body taking input from the environment and adapting its development to best navigate that environment. Gabor Mate once joked in an interview that children in tribes weren’t even set down until they were three years of age. This is a jest, a hyperbolic statement to illustrate how loved children were in tribes. Loved as in the verb of gentle touch, singing, hand holding, embracing, forehead kisses, even playing peek-a-boo. These things are connective and are healthy. I state this all as pretext for how community is not only a right to culture, a right to a fulfilling life in a philosophical sense. I mean that a right to community is a right to a healthy body and the persistent experience of safety.

So let’s get to it, let’s talk about a place that could exist within a ten minute walk of every resident in a city.

Imagine, it’s a warm summer afternoon, you’ve got no plans and you decide to walk into a community center thaat was built in recent years you’ve never gotten to explore. You step inside an immediately you feel the cool touch of air conditioning, there’s a colorful welcome mat beneath your feet that says the word Welcome in several different languages. The enterance is small section that looks like you stepped into a caf’e. There are several people on sitting at tables with steam rising from their cups some are couples chatting, some are typing on a personal laptop.

You can see a massive whiteboard calendar on a wall with a bunch of words in different handwriting scribbled into the boxes, there’s a wide opening just beyond it leading to a vast room, the other walls you scan are decorated in works of art. Some look professional, some look simply as the kinds of things young people learning the craft put together in a high school or college course. You notice that some have a price tag, the one’s that do mention what percentage o the sale goes to the community center. You fixate on a work of art that catches your eye, but your concentration is broken when someone asks “hello, can I get you anything?” you turn to see someone behind a counter, underneath a chalkboard menu listing what teas and coffee blends are available today. The margins are decorated with drawn swirls, hearts, stars, cartoon cats or whatever. Clearly whoever chalked this, did so with evident levity. You walk closer to the counter to answer the barista, who assures you that there are four available drink vouchers. When you ask what the drink vouchers are, the barista explains that some people buy extra drinks to be claimed later in the day by people who can’t afford one but would want a smoothie or latte’ or something; then explains that otherwise, there’s always donated refreshments in the potluck hall as she gestures toward the vast room beyond the calendar.

You move toward the calendar, you want to read some of what’s written. You check today’s date and see a list of events, what room numbers they’re in and at what hour they begin. The list includes board game night, book club with the title of the book being read, yoga class, Philosophy discussion. You scan a few other random days to see listed: guided meditation, economics discussion, dance class, dungeons and dragons, movie night, poetry workshop, Pinball tournament. You don’t read them all, there’s two to six events written in each day. Some classes, trainings or workshops have entry fees, most do not. One phrase you’ve seen multiple times is “volunteers enter free.” You step away from the huge calendar. You go past the wide opening and set foot into a cafeteria sized room. The sounds of chatter and distant laughter greets your ears. There’s a huge banner hanging on the wall directly across from the entrance that says “Welcome to The Potluck Hall. Here, there’s always enough for you, there’s always a seat at the table for you.”

The walls here too are decorated in works of art from a variety of artists who likely donated their work to the community center. You smell curry in the air. One of the walls has six refrigerators lining it. there’s a doorway beside them that obviously leads to a kitchen. There’s another chalkboard menu. You walk past rows of tables to investigate it, and its easy to notice that on every table there’s a board game or a deck of playing cards, along with napkins and silverware. It’s clear that this place is encouraging people to not only break bread together, but to make new connections and play together. As you get closer to the menu, you notice there aren’t any prices, instead there are what will be cooked and what time it will be served. The scent of curry is delightfully strong. There’s a man cooking and you ask him, “How does this all work?” He finishes stirring and walks closer to you. He greets you warmly and explains this is a food rescue. That the walkin cooler and pantry beyond is filled with donated or rescued food. The same is true for the refrigerators lining the wall. He explains that he is one of many volunteers who keeps up with the inventory and cook a meal once every few days. The meals are free, it’s first come first serve until the food is gone starting from the time of serving. Grocery stores donate food rather than waste it, farmers bring produce that they deem too ugly to take to market, but otherwise has nothing wrong with it. Members of the community who are more financially well off sometimes order food in bulk to be prapared in these shared lunches and dinners. At serving time, people can bring in their own home cooked trays to contribute. He says that every day, at lunch they serve fifty to hundred people, and at dinner they often serve over a hundred. He walks back to the stove as he invites you to join them in a couple of hours for dinner.

The rows of tables here are all long, you see that pairs are often pushed together to make a table that seats eight to ten people. There’s a long sturdy wooden table pushed up against a wall where several crock pots, pans and trays of food are placed beside stacks of bowls and plates. There are sodas, teas, juices on that same table next to cups and mugs. There’s a coffee machine with its little orange light lit, making that gargle sound of filtering through the grinds. There’s an outburst of shared laugher, now much closer than when you entered a room. Your gaze follows the commotion and a family is all smiles from whatever it was they were just joking about. You can see birthday festivities decorating the tables; a woman is even wearing one of those colorful cardboard cone hats. One of the men makes eye contact with you, and in a moment he’s waving you over to the table in a gesture of invitation. He asks if you want some cake and encourages you to eat some. They baked three trays of cake, yet there are only seven of them here. The made more cake than they needed for an obvious and specific reason, to share their celebration. To share with someone like you, who they’ve never met.

You notice there are two long hallways that leave The Potluck Hall. Each hallwy has a list of what rooms can be found there. As you walk closer, one of the tables you pass is occupied by what appears to be a homeless man teaching someone in their twenties, wearing a university t-shirt, how to play backgammon. They seem to be so invested in the game that neighter of them seem to notice you. You arrive at one of the lists. It reads Room 2: living room. Room 3: living room. Room 4: library. Room 5: ballroom. Room 6: Game room. You are distracted as a woman walks past you into the hallway. Shortly after you hear happy commotion and the words, “I’m so glad you made it!” you look into the hall to see the woman who passed you excitedly hugging one of her friends. They do that tight squeeze embrace where they rock side to side a bit. It seems quite clear, that this is the kind of place where friends gather, where this is the kind of place where someone who’s here a lot would be greeted with hugs every day.

You walk to the other hallway and study its corresponding list, the rooms are, you notice there’s a theater room, an art room, an arcade, a meditation space. You stop reading, you start taking steps down the hallway. You notice immediately there are four restrooms on either side of you. The four on your left have a shower graphic on them in addition to the other markings. One of the doors is ajar and so you push it open to inspect. What you see is a spacious tiled room that has a sink, a toilet, a shower, and a counter-top that has six outlets on the wall it’s connected to. You continue down the hallway and can already hear the sound effects of arcade games being played. As you pass it, hear the commotion of kids having fun and see the dark atmosphere lit by brightly colored lights.

You return to the hallway and continue down. As you reach the theater room, you notice that a film is already playing. You’re curious but don’t want to intrude, so you just peek your head in. The room is built with therr levels, reminiscent of amphitheater seating, but wide enough to fit couches. So on each level, there are two couches all facing the wall where a projector is pointed. You see four friends all on one couch together, sharing popcorn as they enjoy the show.

As you pass the art room, you gaze through the open doorway, there’s a woman who is clearly leading children of varied ages through some art therapy exercise. You can smell incense, like a smoky vanilla delighting your senses. As you pass the meditation space, you can tell it’s lit by salt lamps. Someone is sitting on a large floor cushion in lotus position, meditating. Behind them is a simple tapestry of a night sky, starry and magnificent, but with all the cycles of the moon within its design. This place is quiet, it’s peaceful. You haven’t even stepped into the room and you can already feel the temptation to just relish the stillness. Cherish the tranquility.

Coming to the end of the hall, you notice an exit. When you step to the door and look out the glass, you notice a large grassy lawn that is bordered by flower gardens. You notice bonfire pit as well as several lawn games like ring toss and cornhole. There are a couple of picnic tables, one with a juicer, a pile of lemons and pitcher of what’s clearly freshly squeezed lemonade. Three men are chatting as they play catch with on of the beanbags. The moment you enter the courtyard, one of the three are excited to see you and asks if you’d like to team up for a game of cornhole.

You’ve only been here for ten minutes, and already you catch yourself wondering how different things could have been, if you never had to eat alone, if you never had to feel like you needed to ration food. if you had access to art therapy as a kid, if you could go someplace like that, to have fun, to make new friends with shared interests any day that you wanted to go. A place where you are welcome to be, even if you aren’t spending money.

So the next time you travel down a street that has three or more restaurants on each side, and yet no place to freely have a potluck, I want you to feel a sting of grief with it. I like restaurants and I’m glad they exist, but there could be other ways to break bread with people. I want you to know, in your cells that you were robbed of something beautiful that could have been. I want you to feel that there’s something sad about all these restaurants, these places where people eat and converse, existing transactionally, unlike the gift model of people coming together with food they cooked to feed each other, to share in a feast, to share in each others’ company.

The next thing I post here, will be a rough draft of The U.S. Declaration of Community as a Human Right.