Community
We're currently a loosely-organized group that just calls itself a community and accordingly tries to operate like one. This is mostly to combat modern society's remarkably prevalent culture of atomization.
The concept of social atomization is a complicated one that frankly warrants a more thorough analysis than what is written here. However, to summarize the idea, atomization can broadly be defined as the tendency for individuals to grow more individual, to become disconnected, and to stray from what we call community. Here, Willow Liana more precisely calls it "the process by which larger units—compounds or cultures, molecules or families—are broken down into their subcomponents, their individuality gaining clarity as their relationships disintegrate." This is a fantastic term. It argues that the perceived epidemic of mass loneliness is a symptom of a larger, more insidious disease, born from homogenization and inflamed by competition. It's a complex social breakdown rooted in factors unique to the modern socioeconomic circumstance; worker subjugation endlessly saps people of time and energy, isolationist culture produces distrust in organization, and the internet now represents a critical piece of our identities and "social" lives. The potential dangers of this loss of community was famously pointed out by Robert Putnam in his 2000 book Bowling Alone. Or, if you're in a rush, there's a good documentary about Putnam's research called Join or Die.
The Thursday Council doesn't exactly have a strictly defined mission or purpose. We exist mostly because atomization is a very scary concept, and because an organized community is one of the most effective ways to combat it. We're just a group of friends who celebrate silly things and talk about politics and share photos of cats. We're not an organization in the same way that a company or religion is an organization; there are no distinct "leaders" in our community, and every member of the Thursday Council is the Thursday Council. So how can you get involved?
The easiest way for you to engage in this community is to find us. Odds are, we really want to be your friend! The group is mostly offline, but we have two main online spaces: