Crowds Vs. Community

Thank You For Being Here

I want to start this post with thanking you for being here and reading this piece. When I write, I am really pouring everything in me onto this screen. I am doing it because I cannot do anything else. I truly feel like we are all here to give the best we have to offer. You are an unrepeatable once in the Multi-verse being. And I feel compelled to remind people of that in whatever way I can think of.

I choose to live my life iteratively. That means that I experience life as an ongoing process rather than being attached to a preconceived plan. I know I am always in the process of becoming. And I choose to believe the same about each of us. I frequently remind people that we are greater than the worst thing that has ever happened to us or even the worst things we’ve done. But, living iteratively means that we take everything with us—when we fail and when we are fantastic—and we take it into the next moment, the next encounter, the next lifetime. We take it all. And we keep improving on it as we go.

I recognize that what improvement might look like to some folks may not look like improvement to me. So ultimately, I am not here to judge. But, I am here to be a catalyst for transformation. For that reason some of the things that you encounter in my process my inspire you and some might irritate you. Believe me, I get that. So, if either of those things comes up for you, I invite you to sit with it.

The truth is that I am not trying to inspire or irritate—just to iterate unapologetically. So many of the institutions and systems that we encounter in this life try to get us to be static in exchange for some illusion of safety. Being a part of that is not my jam. So the degree that one wants to fit in to an institution or system enough to hold themselves back is the degree to which I will seem irritating. And the degree to which the person is willing to look at institutions and systems for what they are—tools that we use to accomplish something in particular that are only as useful as they are effective, is the degree to which I may seem somewhat inspiring.

With this piece, I am sharing some of what I am learning about crowds versus communities. Looking at what many of us are miscreating and destroying in order to fit in to something is getting to be way too much for me. So, I am putting this together for others who might be interested in living iteratively or are at least curious about what is possible on the other side of trying to fit in. I hope it serves you.

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Becoming Incomparable

Lately, I have caught myself slipping into life reviews on a semi-regular basis. It all started with my brother getting killed. Sometimes my brain forgets that he is dead. And when I remind myself, I feel this energetic pull that calls me back to my child self. When I arrive, I think about how fragile life is. I think about how I didn’t grow up with what many people think of as safety on nearly any level. And that psychologically speaking, there were very few people who could accept me as I was or as I was becoming because for one reason or the other, I didn’t know how to “fit in”. Heck even the phrase “fit in” kind of annoys me as if the standard for being a part of a community is being limited to a puzzle piece.

As far as I can tell, most people I know now can’t relate to this. But, as a child, I was frequently the outsider that people eventually got used to but never really accepted. I was joked, ostracized, beat up, jumped, and abused by both children and adults all the way until 11th grade where things started taking a turn. When I look back on it, the only reason that I can think of for things changing was that a whole lot of people started freaking out about adulthood. They basically got insecure. And because I wasn’t, people started being interested in me for the very same reasons that they didn’t like me—my comfort with just being myself regardless of other people’s opinions.

Of course, there was always a few people who appreciated some aspect of how I was—mostly family and girls who wanted a heterosexual male friend who wouldn’t try to hook up with them. But none of them could garner me social acceptance. I was a friend on the side. And even family members my own age felt like I was weird or felt like they had to explain me to other people except for my cousins Jason and Zaki and my little Brother Marcus. But Zaki was very similar to me undercover. And Jason will always be his own person. Marcus was different. He knew how to fit in the hood. He had a player streak. And he loved partying and hanging out.Nothing like me. And yet, he could accept me as me and didn’t care about how other people saw me.

In one of our last conversations, I told him that I was about to come out as weird again because I was about to start working at a Unity Spiritual Center, which is part of the New Thought Movement—a faith that views Jesus very differently than we were raised. They see him as a Wayshower rather than as a savior who functioned as a blood sacrifice in order to appease an angry God. Well hearing this, Marcus was true to form and simply said, “Nigga, you ain’t weird. You’re just you.” That was exactly what I needed to hear.

Once someone asked me what was the nicest thing anyone could say about me? My answer was, “If someone would say ‘Pedro is just Pedro’ and their thought matched how I experienced myself, I would love it.” That was essentially what Marcus offered me. And as I navigate this world without his physical presence, I go back to that conversation frequently.

All I have ever desired to be in life is me in my fullest expression. And that is all that I have ever desired for others. But, for the most part we live in a society of conformists who fancy themselves “independent thinkers”. And yet, somehow most folks happen to arrive to similar conclusions as everyone that they are in relationship with. We are taught to live our lives by consensus. And most of us will leave this world having never met our True Selves. That is a shame in my opinion. Because each of us is the greatest gift to ourselves we will ever have. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to know yourselves as such and not need another person’s permission?

So with this piece, in continued honor of my brother who was coming into himself when he was killed, my intention is to hold a space where it is more acceptable to be you as you are becoming. And if you are already cool with yourself, my hope is to be an encouragement that you are not alone on your awakening path and to help you keep some perspective when the crowd might try to get you to dim your Light.

The Illusion of Safety In Numbers

As you go forward in reading, I encourage you to read this post as if it is coming from someone who is on a rescue mission. And what I have come to rescue people from is the illusion that we are in danger in the first place.

Yes. You read that right. I am coming to rescue people from THE ILLUSION THAT WE ARE IN DANGER. Now the logical question to ask after reading such a statement would be, “Well, if we are not in danger, why would we need to be rescued?” Good question. And the honest answer is because I am getting bored. That’s it. I am getting bored with humanity. Or at least the American version of it.

Have you ever watched a predictable show and started just feeling like, “Damn. I wish this show had more surprises?” Or, have you ever sat with a child who is able to watch the same show over and over again? You know how they can still see it with new eyes even after watching it 30 times, but most adults can’t? Well, that is how I feel about being human for the most part.

When I look at the news, it often feels like the same day on repeat. A gang of us just go along with whatever crowd we choose to be a part of on damn near everything. Even when we know the crowd is not going in a direction that serves us or the world, here we go, going along to get along like we can’t think for ourselves. It is so boring and predictable. And I don’t like it. I want a fresh take. Don’t you?

Unfortunately, the main reason so many of us are like this is because our brains are still wired to believe the cave people notion that there’s safety in numbers. It’s an unreasonable bias for safety that actually makes a lot of people less safe using the standards of safety we claim to value. And because we are constantly afraid (of mostly nothing), we are always looking at everyone else for signs of what we can or can’t do or who we should or shouldn’t be.

So my appeal to you is to feel through what I am saying for yourself. Look at your own life and see if you live your life by consensus because some prehistoric part of you thinks if you don’t go along with the crowd, you’re going to die. If you don’t feel that, great. Let’s chat. But, if you do feel that and you’re tired of it and want to experience who you are when you aren’t living in pointless terror, then read on.

A Crowd vs. a Couple or a Community

Based on what you’ve read so far, I could totally imagine someone wondering, “Well Pedro, it sounds like you are against crowds. But, isn’t a community essentially a crowd? Or, if people think for themselves won’t they just do whatever they want and maybe destroy their relationships or do others harm?” Well maybe. But not as much harm as crowd pleasers. Here’s why.

A person who is living from their own internal guidance is more capable of treating people the way they want to be treated. Just look around. Most of the biggest hypocrites in the world are assholes who treat people worse than they expect to be treated and treat accountability and responsibility like persecution. That is because they are Avatars of Fear and their followers surrender their potential for intelligence and volition in exchange for the illusion of safety from dangers that virtually don’t exist.

A community, a family, and any group of people of two or more based in love are those who have the ideal of treating people the way they want to be treated at the forefront of their consciousness. In love, these unifying systems are ever expanding self regulating relational enterprises that, as Paul stated in Romans needs no laws.

Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
Paul of Tarsus Romans 13:8-10

Do you know why we have laws? For assholes and careless people. I’m serious. Ok, maybe that is a little harsh. There’s probably some other good reasons for some laws—like to not have a bunch of car accidents and bunny poop in our cereal. But, when you think about the big laws, who they are for is not far off from what I said. That’s why Martin Luther King Jr. said in a more eloquent fashion, “Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.” Man that dude had some good quotes.

Anyway, the major difference between crowds and communities of two or more is that crowds are full of people looking for validation, whereas, communities are full of people creating opportunities for celebration. Crowds want you to surrender your individuality so that weak people can feel safe. Communities want you to grow into your individuality so that your true strengths can be expressed. The result of which is a safety that is naturally occurring for increasingly more people. Crowds are afraid of what happens when what is inside of you comes out. Communities want what’s inside of you to come out because who you truly are has nothing to fear and will be a value add to everyone’s life.

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you; if you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
Jesus – Gospel of Thomas Saying 70

A Community of Safe People

When we refuse to bring forth what is within us, we feel terror. It is only natural. We basically are anticipating rejection from the world. So, out of a misguided desire to defend ourselves from external rejection, we reject ourselves first, which creates a terror loop. And out of that terror, we destroy ourselves slowly and everyone else quickly. We basically suck when we hold our gifts back from the world. But, we don’t have to. We simply need to receive the courage to be ourselves. And I say “simply” for a reason.

Some spiritual dude whose name I can’t remember once said, “The simplest way to stop smoking is to stop putting cigarettes in your mouth.” Was he wrong? Absolutely not. It is that easy. But the hardest part about quitting any habit that isn’t serving you, is stopping telling yourself the story about what the habit means.

Back in the day, I used to pay homeless people to tell me stories. It was a win-win situation in my opinion. Well, I once asked a guy how he got in his situation and he told me that he used to be a drug addict. He basically believed that because his parents were addicts he had to be too. He said he didn’t know a person could be different than their parents. But now that he knew he had a choice he stopped being a drug addict and was now an alcoholic. His next step was to go from alcohol to coffee, then coffee to tea, and then from tea to water. That was the saddest inspirational story I ever heard in my life. But, it taught me a lot about how some of our brains work. Most of us are trapped as characters in our own stories bound to scenes with chains of meaning that we don’t realize we can change.

There are a lot of reasons for this. But the number one contributor to our narrative incarceration in my opinion is what Bowen Family System Theorist would call the “togetherness force”. The togetherness force is one of the ingredients for social cohesion in a community and a crowd. This can be a good thing if you are a part of a community that has values that are consistent with each of its member meeting their highest potential. It is a very harmful thing when the crowd uses shame as a social cohesion tool, which unfortunately is very prevalent in America which functions as the super-ordinate culture out which most subcultures in this context emerge.

In America, the lie of rugged individualism makes us more susceptible to joining crowds instead of communities. So, if we are ever going to be who we can be, we are going to have to get honest about who we’ve been. The fact is that crowds came to this land and killed communities. That’s what crowds tend to do. They have mob mentalities rather than mutual mentalities. And while, I don’t blame anyone for feeling authentic fear, I really am done with the false fears that are driving a lot of the behavior in our so called society.

I Couldn’t Disagree More

The Bible says that there is no fear in love and that perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). That sounds about right. Because the more that I focus on love, the more I feel called to cast fear out of my life as well as those committed to embodying it. I didn’t really expect this. I thought that the more I loved, the more understanding I would be of people who I disagree with. But, it turns out that the more I focus on love, the more I feel called to deny any fear based motivations in my life and the less patience I have with people who use fear as justifications for their unconscious commitment to crowd worship and their inability to agree to disagree. As I described it in my post, Heaven Is the Worst Thing on Earth, when I talked about why so many religious folks are willing to condemn or even kill people who disagree with them about what happens after we die:

…it all comes down to terror management. So much of our lives are based on the denial of death that we barely know how to live. And even worse, because we don’t know how to live, we can’t let other people live either. We won’t admit it. But, because of the false belief of safety in numbers, we think that the more people who agree with us, the safer we are. This is why we perceive disagreements as threats and will do almost anything to establish agreement—even if it means torturing someone into submission or killing enough people that whoever is left over is afraid to admit how they really feel.

Reading this now, you might think it is easy for me to say all of this. And I probably sound at least a little dismissive and maybe even arrogant to some folks. But, it really is boredom with the status quo that is pushing me to say this. I guess it is part of my iterative process.

For most of my life, I was the King of Agree to Disagree. I have literally been in conversations with people who disagreed with my very existence—at least two of whom admitted to a plot to murder me. And in almost every instance, I had the attitude that they were entitled to their opinions and that I could agree to disagree. But they couldn’t. Their whole sense of reality seemed to be grounded in getting approval from the crowd and the need for me to agree with them that I was worth being destroyed. And I say this with no exaggeration. They wanted me to hate myself as much as they believed that they hated me. But, I not only persisted in loving myself, I loved them too, which is exactly why they hated me. Because it turns out that the people who seem to hate others the most actually hate themselves more.

Complex, I know. But, it’s true in my experience. Because when you love someone who doesn’t think they deserve to be loved, they will project their self-hate onto you and convince themselves that making you hate them is the only way to make their world make sense. Again it is a misguided attempt at establishing predictability that they then conflate with safety. I’ve watched this show a quatrillion times. And it plays out the same way repeatedly because our systems are so bad at knowing better and doing better. Just ask Jesus, MLK and Gandhi. Oh you can’t because even if you lived in their time frame, they would be on their way to getting murdered because so many of us are crowd-bots. But, if you are reading this, chances are that you are not.

A Coward In a Crowd

Q: What do you call a gang of cowards?

A: A crowd.

If you didn’t notice the subtitle above, it is an anagram I discovered using the letters A,C,R,O,W, and D, which can be used to spell both “a crowd” and “coward”. I think this is very apt, because in my experience, I have always found a coward hanging in a crowd. And the most cowardly among them is usually in the front.

Listen, as someone who literally ran into a guy who tried to jump me with a dozen guys when he was by himself, I can tell you that the biggest bullies in a crowd are private punks. That dude was ready to murder me in a crowd. But almost pooped his pants alone. That’s how many of them are. We need to know this once and for all. Because as soon as we do, we will be able to do better by ourselves and our communities.

We have everything we need to both know better and do better. There’s no more excuses to go along to get along. Just like the cowards of the world are finding each other and making a hell for a lot of us, those of us with hearts for community can find each other and make heavens for more of us—first those with love in our hearts and then later the cowards.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
R. Buckminster Fuller

Look, I know that some of what I said may seem a little harsh to some folks. But, it is not as harsh as what we are allowing some people to do to the planet and so many communities of folks just because we act like we’re in an 80s film where everyone fears the one bully whose dad didn’t love him.

My hope is that in reading this is that you come away with more questions than answers. Because at the end of the day people don’t kill each other over questions. They kill each other over the answers we can’t agree on. So, if you’re like me and you’re bored with all of the answers that have not been serving us, then come live iteratively in the questions with me and an increasingly growing number of people who are done seeking validation from crowds and are starting to look for the value in community.

Know Better, Do Better.

I came across this gem on YouTube and wanted to share it with y’all because it makes thinking people think. I posted an Instagram Reel with it today and so far the only people who responded are crowd members talking about how Indigenous people wouldn’t have an alphabet if it wasn’t for Europeans and how the colonized should thank the colonizers. Just the kind of boring response I would expect but hope to see less of.

Each of us are made from Intelligence itself. Our capacities to to do good far exceed our capacities for assholery. But, it is going to take a communities of folks who choose to live into our capacities to create alternatives to the status quo. I hope that this piece serves as your invitation to be a catalyst for transformation or an encouragement to continue living iteratively into our collective Greater Good.