On Microsolidarity

Every so often I am reminded about microsolidarity. Most recently by Marin Petrov in his beautiful article Riding the Crest.

Microsolidarity has been on my radar for a while, but I’ve never dug deep into it, until recently. Thank you, Marin.

It’s community building, in a nutshell, with these two goals:

1. The first objective of microsolidarity is to create structures for belonging.
2. The second objective is to support people into meaningful work. This is very broadly defined: you decide what is meaningful to you.

Who couldn’t use more belonging and a sense of meaning these days?

Upon deeper investigation, I am practicing Microsolidarity a bit already. 

“The only theory you need to grasp is that different-sized groups are good for different things”.

• The self (some framing around Internal Family Systems is apt here). This might warrant deeper thinking and writing. 
• Dyads (two people in a mutually respectful relationship). Aside from my spouse, I have a couple Dyads already. 
  • C and I are partners in creativity, learning, sharing, and focus on “graceful accountability”.
  • B and I have known each other for 45 years, and support each other in numerous ways.
  • J and I only met a couple years ago, but we support each other in our comedy pursuits, thinking about what manhood means, and breaking out of the boxes we’re ‘supposed’ to be in based on societal expectations.
  • M and I support each other with our creative works, and all sorts of life things. 

• The Crew (4-6 people). Can act as a team to make things, and build projects together. Or just be there for each other.
  • M and I ran a Mastermind Failure club at the start of the pandemic. It was great for everyone until it wasn’t needed any longer.
  • Recently, I called a coaching circle together, and it’s been goin really well. N, S, and T are great, warm, open hearted people who want to support each others growth. It’s early and we’re finding our feet a bit which is really exciting. 
• The Congregation (a crew of crews, 15-150 people). 
  • I’m a member of a couple communities, but they aren’t connected really. They don’t come together. The pathway seems to be create some crews, then bring them together into a congregation. I’ve got a lot to learn before that.
• The Network is the congregation of congregations, although there may be new developments around federations. I’ll see how that evolves as I do in my own practices. 

I am following this path and looking to form another crew and/or join an existing congregation. I’ll have to think about that some more. 

Are you practicing Microsolidarity now? Would you want to talk more about it?