Pinker’s The Village Effect: Why Face-to-Face Contact Matters

Please note that the venue is in the vicinity of the Scott Monument and will be announced to RSVPing members closer to the event date. We will NOT be meeting at the monument, itself.

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How can we rebuild high-trust networks in an age marked by growing atomisation, demoralisation, and the virtualization of everyday life?

For this event, we’ll use highlights from Susan Pinker’s 2014 book, The Village Effect: Why Face-to-Face Contact Matters, to start a conversation about the importance of social capital and the possibilities for cultivating strong online-offline communities.

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

“The power and immediacy of electronic media have persuaded us that the different ways of ‘clothing ourselves’ in social contact are interchangeable… [But] electronic media has pulled the wool over our eyes, convincing us that different ways of making contact are the same as being there, and leading us to believe that our networks are expanding. In fact, even if our electronic networks are larger…the number of people we feel close to is shrinking…

“Despite our being increasingly tethered to the devices that connect us virtually, there has not been a corresponding uptick in well-being. In fact, it’s the reverse. By and large we're lonelier and unhappier than we were in the decades before the Internet age… The evidence is pretty clear that we are wired for frequent and genuine social interaction. As humans, we need to know that we belong.”

Find the highlights here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VfzHTxivLyWjgj135yaC_s2rmuW3VURW/view?usp=sharing

Please join us!

C&S