How To Have A Great Time With Richard D. Bartlett
by Richard D. Bartlett
Yesterday we left the Borderland, the Swedish regional Burning Man event. I found the event surprisingly unenjoyable. As we drove away, I composed this blog post in my head to make sense of the experience, reviewing the list of my disappointments and translating them into positive desires. So for future reference, here’s How To Have A Great Time With Richard D. Bartlett.
There’s a state I get into sometimes, where I feel completely liberated, at ease, effortlessly improvising from one thing to the next. I float from cloud to cloud on updrafts of enthusiasm, a reinforcing feedback loop of joy and care and contribution and silliness and freedom and encouragement and spontaneity and good feeling and vigour. I am an organ in the collective body and a neurone in the collective brain. I am a benefit to everyone around me. I have energy to cheer up the person who is struggling. I can take any situation and make it brilliant. I know how to polish the dull moment and make it shiny.
But I can’t get into that state on my own. To get the feedback loop started, I need first to be uplifted by others.
When I first arrive into a new social landscape, it makes the world of difference when one of the locals helps me to get oriented. Introduce me to people you know I will enjoy meeting. Get us started on a a conversation topic you know will be of shared interest to us both. Give me opportunities to showcase my strengths. Kickstart my reputation-building process so I don’t have to linger too long as a stranger. Make the first deposit in my status bank.
The quickest route for me to feel belonging is through contribution. Of course I enjoy pleasure for its own sake: music, art, drugs, sex, food, spectacle, random acts of serendipity… yes please! But these activities only hold my attention when they’re contextualised inside my sense of life purpose. When I put in a chunk of effort and time and money to participate in an experience, I want to feel that it’s in service to a meaningful purpose. I want to contribute to the wellbeing of other people and I want to gather resources & inspiration for myself. Pleasure-seeking seems pointless without shared purpose.
To me there is nothing more relaxing than being with people with shared communication norms. As a migrant far from home, the most precious thing in the world for me is when I meet people who feel like extended family, people who share some of the same memes and values and sense of humour and ways of being. I love it when we’re singing from the same song sheet. I want us to all sing our unique parts of the harmony with our differences attuned to each other.
I’m unusually discerning about social dynamics, so that means I have an unusually specific manual for how I like to communicate.
When I join late to a conversation, I love it when someone gives me a brief synopsis of where the group is at, so I can weave myself in gracefully.
If someone new wanders into my group, I appreciate if they come with the assumption that something was already happening here before they arrived. Rather than immediately thrusting themselves into our presence, I love it when they take a moment to sense into the current state of the group, and check if there might be a Venn diagram overlap between their intentions and ours.
When we’re deep in conversation, and some random external factor interrupts what we’re doing, I love it if someone in the group keeps hold of an imaginary post-it note, so they can invite us back to the original topic after the distraction is complete. The sustained focus helps me to deepen under the layers of small talk down into the depths of what is most meaningful.
If I’ve been quiet for a while, I love it when someone asks what’s on my mind.
When someone is feeling uneasy about what’s going on in the group, I love it when they find an artful way to name it: drawing in our collective attention so we can change the game we’re playing.
When there’s a conflict of preferences, I appreciate when it is met with curiosity and enthusiasm. I love it when we can lean on the antifragility of community, knowing that the points of stress are what weave us more closely together.
When we’re making decisions as a group, I want us to all throw our preferences out on the table and see if there’s a rough consensus that suits everyone.
If we’re converging towards a “good enough” option and someone obstructs that flow, I’ll usually feel like they’re trying to dominate us, unless their objection comes with clear reasoning and demonstrated understanding of the preferences of others.
These rough-consensus decisions are really the exception. For example: where should we place our camp kitchen? It can’t be in two places at once. But the vast majority of everyday decisions don’t need a lot of convergence. Should we go to this workshop or that stage? It doesn’t really matter, we can do both: branch into subgroups and merge again later. The life-enriching pattern usually looks like “I’m going to do X, join me if you would like”, rather than “what would we all like to do?”
Looking back over what I’ve written here, it’s obvious that I brought a lot of very specific expectations with me to the event. If you order expectations for dinner you typically get disappointment for dessert.
As a community builder, social process designer, vibes mechanic, whatever you call it, I want to build the structure in which many different people can feel at home. I’m looking for interaction protocols that enables a great diversity of expression. I’m looking for a set of social norms that bring out the best in people.
So as I read this manual for How To Have A Great Time With Richard D. Bartlett, I’m once again asking myself, is this just my personal preference, or am I navigating towards a set of social norms that has much more widespread application?
What do you think? Does this sound good to you? What I’ve described here is more-or-less how people communicate in the Microsolidarity Network. If you like how it sounds, join us at Summer Camp outside of Vienna at the end of August.
I, for one, found this very helpful - particularly the bit on “Pleasure-seeking seems pointless without shared purpose”. This will help me explain to people I’m not just being a Scrooge 😊
And I would love to be more elegant in naming and nudging when things are suboptimal - eg someone coming in to a conversation without any sense of what might have been happening before their arrival.
Nice thoughts here, thanks Richard, and for the open question! My sense is that it isn't just you, but that (as you hint) you have a more sharply honed awareness of these matters. I share your preferences. Being perhaps not so socially skilled, I would add that I really appreciate being nudged to be aware of significant features of the social landscape that I may have overlooked. And thus, not to have my own variety of neurodiversity mistaken for bad intent. I am very grateful when people recognise my good intent behind what might be social ineptitude.