The Value of Socializing in Multiple Contexts
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First day writing at large in NYC. Husband joined in the subway, he’s meeting a recent friend at Washington Square Park to solidarize with the NYU grad student unionization effort. He was excited about hanging out and continue cultivating the friendship. The value of sharing experiences with others in multiple contexts came to mind.
You have probably had the feeling too. You know the power of serendipity to bring people together. Say you are introduced to a new person one weekend, and then you have a chance encounter with them next week; something grows, a familiarity. You’re now both mapped onto the mind of the other; your identities, a bit more colored-in. Shouldn’t be a stretch to say that sharing experiences — ‘happening together’ — in multiple contexts increases intimacy between people. People call it “traveling in the same circles”.
✰ ⇢ TNC / Joint Perspective, Joint Attention
Tight-knitted communities like those existing in small locales (towns, villages) become intimate with each other through multi-context interaction. To see fellow townsfolk on the street, on the butcher shop, on the market, at school, at parties. It surely comes with non-idealities but what doesn’t?
Twenty-first century social dynamics foster mono-contextual relationships, people you’ll only meet and relate to as work colleagues, twitter mutuals, or service workers. Modern life, split across a dozen unconnected contexts, is lived in worlds that don’t speak to each other, with your individuality maximized in every single one. There’s never a we, a true process of fission.
✎ Connection to