Why Most Community-Building Skips the Practice of Communing

Opening Summary

Most community-building efforts fail not because of bad intentions or insufficient resources, but because they skip the one step that makes community possible: communing. In this conversation, Nora Bateson, Jonathan Goldsmith, and Lucas Jackson map the hidden dynamics that sabotage our attempts to connect. The obvious impulse (organize around shared values, set goals, create structures) actually reproduces the fragmentation it aims to solve. The deeper problem is cultural: a logic of withholding that starves relationships, a grammar that narrows perception, and an addiction to formulas that kill emergence. Anyone trying to build resilient local networks should read this, because the real leverage isn't in better planning, it's in the uncomfortable, unproductive practice of learning together without a script. That practice creates the adaptive capacity that no organizational chart can deliver.

Key Insights & Analysis

The communing gap: Why most community-building efforts fail before they start

The word "community" shares roots with "communion," but most groups jump straight to organizing, logistics, and shared objectives. Bateson argues this skips the essential precursor: the messy, unscripted practice of being together without an agenda. "What gets lost," she says, "is that question of what's it possible to communicate together? Who can I be when I'm with you?" The consequence is that relationships become scripted by roles and labels before they ever have a chance to form. People arrive with their identities already locked in, conservative, liberal, expert, novice, and the space for genuine encounter shrinks. Over time, this creates brittle structures that fracture when differences surface, because no one has practiced improvising together.

The warm data lab structure intentionally scrambles these scripts. Participants move through multiple contexts (family, technology, ecology) while discussing a single question, and the constant rotation prevents anyone from settling into a performance. Nate Hagens describes his own experience: "My impulse to talk actually declined and became subdued. After several of these little sessions, I actually didn't say anything. I started listening." That shift, from performing to perceiving, is the hidden payoff. It doesn't feel productive in the moment, but it builds the relational muscle that makes real collaboration possible later.

The systems holdback trap: How "fairness" starves relationships

Bateson introduces a concept from her father Gregory Bateson's work: schismogenesis, patterns of relationship that break relationship. The most insidious form is "systems holdback": a feedback loop where each person withholds because they expect the other to withhold.

"This is the logic of a culture that says don't give too much or people will take advantage of you. So I don't give because I know you're not going to give and you don't give because you know I'm not giving, and pretty soon there's nothing there."

This is the invisible architecture of transactional culture. It shows up in the chore wheel, in scorekeeping, in the constant calculation of fairness. The immediate effect feels protective: you don't get taken advantage of. But the downstream consequence is relational starvation. The system responds by further reducing generosity, which reinforces the original suspicion. Over years, relationships become hollowed out, held together by obligation rather than aliveness.

The antidote isn't a better formula for fairness. It's noticing the pattern and choosing to break it. Lucas Jackson describes the practice: "I noticed that I'm holding back because I'm afraid that you're holding back and in that perceiving it, my actions, my way of being in the relationship can change." Perception becomes action. The moment you see the loop, you're at choice. That's where radical hospitality enters, not as a moral imperative, but as a systemic intervention.

Radical hospitality: The uncomfortable antidote that pays off over time

Bateson distinguishes radical hospitality from ordinary generosity. Ordinary generosity says "I have two apples, I'll give you one." Radical hospitality is something else entirely:

"The generosity isn't a generosity of I have two apples, I'll give you one. It's a generosity of we're alive together and that means that our arriving is locked in."

This is the heart pumping blood to your toes, not because it's fair, but because the system requires it. The immediate discomfort is obvious: you might be taken advantage of. You might do the dishes every night for two weeks while no one else helps. But the delayed payoff is a relationship that can hold movement, that can shift when crisis comes. Jonathan Goldsmith notes that this practice starts with yourself: "It's like, I can give what I can give. I'm not giving because I'm holding back on myself when I think is equitable or fair."

The competitive advantage here is that most people won't do it. They'll keep score, they'll wait for reciprocity, they'll protect their boundaries. That's precisely why radical hospitality creates lasting moats. It builds the kind of trust that can't be gamed, that survives the arrival of bad actors because the lattice work of mutual learning doesn't give them a foothold. As Goldsmith puts it, "You can't game a warm data practice. There's no quick or clever answer that makes that wins it."

The grammar of industrialism: How "to" kills emergence

One of the most subtle insights in the conversation is a grammatical one. Bateson points out the difference between "going to market to buy bread" and "going to market and buying bread." The first is a linear transaction with a predetermined outcome. The second is an open-ended experience where anything might happen: maybe there's no bread, maybe you meet someone, maybe you encounter a spider. The "to" structure, which became dominant with industrialization and mass schooling, hijacks complexity. It narrows perception to a single metric of success: did you get the bread? If you came back without bread, you failed, even if you had a dozen rich encounters.

This tiny linguistic shift has enormous systemic effects. It shapes how we evaluate our days, our relationships, our selves. Identity becomes tied to accomplishment. The second-order consequence is that we stop valuing the things that can't be measured: the unexpected conversation, the moment of shared silence, the story that reminds someone of their own story. Bateson calls these "ghosts hiding in the itsy bitsy nuances of our lives." The ghost of industrialism lives in the word "to." Changing it to "and" doesn't just change language, it changes what you're able to perceive, and therefore what you're able to build.

Key Action Items

• Practice "and" instead of "to" for one week. When you catch yourself framing an activity as "to get X," rephrase it as "and see what happens." Notice what you perceive that you would have missed. This is an immediate practice that rewires attention.
• Make tea or coffee for someone with full attention to the process. Not as a transaction, but as an aesthetic ritual. Jonathan Goldsmith recommends taking extra time with the cup, the pot, the pouring. This pays off in the moment by shifting your relationship to giving.
• Observe your own holdback patterns. The next time you think "I've done my share, it's their turn," pause. Ask: "Am I in a systems holdback loop?" The perception itself is the intervention. This takes seconds but builds over months into a different relational default.
• Enter one space this month that your algorithm would never recommend. Lucas Jackson describes doing this as a teenager: going to church dinners, seeing the Dalai Lama with punk friends. The immediate discomfort of being out of place creates long-term flexibility in identity.
• Spend time with friends without any agenda. No project, no planning, no problem-solving. Just being together. This feels unproductive, but over 12-18 months it builds the relational lattice that crisis requires.
• Join or create a context where roles are suspended. Warm data labs are one example, but any structure that prevents people from performing their usual identities will work. The key is that there's no correct answer, no hierarchy, no winning. This is a longer-term investment: finding or building such a space takes months, but the payoff is relationships that can hold difference.
• Practice radical hospitality in one small way each day. Give something, time, attention, food, without expectation of return. Start with yourself: do something for the sheer joy of it. Over a quarter, this shifts your baseline from scarcity to aliveness, and others will notice.