Ryan Daniel Moran argues that humans are fundamentally driven to connect with others, themselves, and spiritual life. He links modern social isolation to physical and cultural changes (living alone, online attention-seeking) and proposes intentional, themed communities (e.g., a 25–50 acre compound for 100–200 entrepreneurial people with shared meals and tiny homes) as a remedy. He contends such communities will arise only through voluntary, free-market capitalism rather than state-driven socialism, and cites a conversation with Aubrey Marcus to illustrate how tribe membership can strengthen both community care and capitalist incentives.
Chapters
I have this theory that at the end of the day, all human beings really want is to connect, connect with one another, connect with ourselves, connect with whatever spiritual presence we believe in. And I think that most of what we do is some sort of desire to connect with that. Why do I care about being successful? Because at some level I believe that being successful will allow me to connect with other people. Whether that means being free of a job I don't like so that I can spend more time with the people I love. At the end of the day, the desire is to connect. Whether that is because I want to drive a Ferrari and girls are going to think I'm really cool. It's a desire to connect. Whether it's to be free so I can do the things I love, it's a desire to connect with myself. So I have this belief that we're all wired to just connect with one another. And it's our fundamental desire. And biologically, we survive more if we're connected to one another, if we're part of a group, if we're part of a tribe. That's how we are built to survive. And in today's world, with all this abundance, it's easier than ever for us to be disconnected from one another because we, I live in high rises and live in houses by ourselves and we don't have that tribal connection to one another. So. So we try to cover up our lack of connection with all of these other behaviors and habits that don't give us that. So we say things on the Internet to draw attention to ourselves. Or we build ego based businesses that don't provide value in the world. Or we try and extract from others rather than feeling filled up so that we can give to one another. And I'm fascinated by the idea of, of where the trend of humanity will go. And I think, I think that the next wave of how we build our society is going to be in intentional communities that are basically themed by people's preferences and interests. For example, at some point in my life, I want to buy a 25 to 50 acre compound and build an intentional community for people who are entrepreneurial minded, where they can live there or they can be there for a short time of, you know, 100 to 200 people and have it built. So there's a community center where there's meals served three times a day and if you want to write a book, you rent a tiny home on the compound. You need creativity. You get a jet ski and go on the lake, you come back and three times a day. There's meals being made with your best friends. Because I think I know I'm happiest when I'm in that zone of being around people where I'm really connected to. And I think all of us have experienced that at some level. That's when we're happiest. It's when we feel safest. It's when we feel the most free. And I'm curious to see in the next few years, does our society go more and more isolated, which I think is causing a lot of problems in the world, or do we go more and more connected and do we get intentional about that? And.
I'm very fascinated to see which way we go. And if we're smart, we'll start to build our lives around connecting with one another. And I think that might be our only shot that we have. And it's only going to happen through a free market, capitalistic society. This is not going to happen if government or state mandates it, if it mandates socialism. It can only happen if we are voluntarily building communities in some sort of a free market system. I was having a chat with Aubrey Marcus, the founder of Onnit, who was talking about how he, when he is plugged into a tribe, when he's plugged into a community, he is more wired to go out and kill it in business because he wants to provide for other people. And he becomes more of a capitalist when he is incentivized to also take care of other people. But if we get government involved in that in a forced socialist state setting, then we'll lose it and we'll get even more divided than we already are. So we're at this point in our world where I think we're going to tip over into more freedom and more personal responsibility and more connectivity. And that's going to be our only shot to be able to create the world where we're all creating the type of lives that are possible for us. It's the only way that we progress as a society.
