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What are strategies for finding community in our polarized times? Almost all of my friends, family, and acquaintances are pretty damn progressive, and I always find it so irritating how they inject it into everything. Always, always when I have people over for dinner or something, something comes up at some point where people get into a progressive taking point that I disagree with, and I just sit there really uncomfortably and can't say anything because there's no tactful way to do it, or I don't want to get into a giant argument. Even at recent holidays, the progressives in my family have started inserting progressive variations on traditional observances, and I hate that sort of thing a lot.
On the other hand, I have a group of people whom I've met through meetups which were dedicated to more conservative or at least less progressive conversation. We all keep up via a messaging app, but I find they swing too far in the other direction. They're basically a sneer club, and this is similarly irritating. They're constantly lauding vitreolic conservative commentators like Ben Shapiro and Stephen Crowder. I don't agree with leftists and their takes, but I think this class of commentators only exists to leech off of conservatives, and generally does not put the best foot forward of anti-wokism. More than anything, this community of mine won't shut up about how much they hate progressives. I don't want that. I just want to live my life and not have to hear about politics so the time, not be infringed on from either side.
So what do I do, how do I find people and communities that aren't progressive, or at least don't talk about progressivism, but also don't talk about it from the other side? As has been cited here many times, if an institution isn't explicitly anti progressive, then it is susceptible to progressives coming in and making it all about progressivism. It makes for a tight spot for someone like me who wants to be around prior with similar values, but doesn't want to hear about politics all the time.
I found a rationalist group in my area and they're fun to talk to. People are all over the political spectrum so people rarely strongly signal their controversial opinions, discussions are usually around less inflammatory topics like economics and philosophy. You can crawl old meetup posts on ACX and look for something local, or find communities on social media.
More generally, you can meet people organically in hobby space. If the hobby leans young or female, expect it to lean left. If it's more blue-collar and male, expect it to lean right. In both cases, people should generally be less extreme and more centrist than groups who met through explicit tribal filters.
That's a good point, and totally true. I have found rationalist groups to be much better at dealing with culture war related issues. Though in my area (northeast US), it's still slightly more left facing than I'd prefer, I've been at rationalist meetups where some (but only a few) people are totally sneer-clubbing anti-vaxers and stuff.
My other issue with rationalist spaces is that in some way, it seems like a different culture than mine. For the Less Wrong in my area they have celebrations regarding the solstice, they have a strong focus on nootropics and biohacking, the people are a bit more nerdy than I am, and also practically everyone there is polyamorous (seriously, it almost feels like a dating club). They feel more like people who I really like that I could be friends with, but that I could never quite be a part of their culture, it just feels a little alien. But maybe I should give it another try.
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