Sustaining Communities.

Humans seem, to me, to be fairly social creatures. I know I’m alone on a shaky branch here, but I’m going to go ahead and stand by that hypothesis. We operate better in groups, and are more effective when collaborating on things. Of course, there are people who do great work alone, and introverts and ascetics who shun society. But by and large, it seems we assemble ourselves, raggedly and haphazardly, into ensembles of vaguely like-minded people for the purposes of unification. Much of humanity’s problems are, of course, associated with the collision of such groups organized to cross purposes. Churches, nations, professional and charitable societies, corporations, governments, universities.

Sometimes these groups are formal, sometimes totally informal. And in my case, at least one of them is somewhere in between. Alcoholics Anonymous is a semi-formal assemblage of persons grouped to the common purpose of recovering from alcoholism. There are millions of us in hundreds of countries. But there is no list. No membership card. No leaders. No cost. We are simply a large group of people who have found a way to share our common experience to stay sober, and help others to recover. And it works. Lots and lots and lots of us have gone years and years and years without drinking.

We survive because we sustain each other. We call each other. We support each other. There are a dozen names in my phone right now, of men and women who would walk across hell to help me if I needed it. My name is in a few dozen other phones, and I’m willing to do the same. Though, I suppose it must be said that sometimes the way we help each other can be different from what an outsider might expect. If a friend from the program called me up, drunk, and said he needed help, I’d tell him to call back when he’d dried out and hang up. Just as I’d expect him to do if the situation were reversed.

The community sustains us. In walking in to the rooms of AA, we find a community that exists for the purpose of alleviating a malady that afflicts us, free from judgement. I’ve been in rooms with murderers and thieves, and worse. I cannot judge any of them. It is only fortune and grace that I have not done what any of them might have. And there are people in the rooms who may be grateful that they have not done (yet) the things that I have done. There is no stigma in AA. We are honest about our faults, so that we may find, build, and maintain this sustaining community.

Another sustaining community I have found is actually on twitter. If you’re a scientist (especially a young or new investigator), and you’re not on twitter, you’re doing it wrong. There is an enormous community of young and new researchers – as well as some old hands – who are building a truly remarkable and supportive community. In fact, it resembles AA in a lot of ways: it’s open to all, it’s largely supportive, and it’s available all the time. It is slightly more dogmatic than AA (which has no dogma at all), but I have found it to be tolerant of anyone able to rationally stake a claim to an intellectual position and politely defend it. And it’s open-minded in a truly critical way: it is permeable to evidence.

I’m fond of saying that America’s assistant professoriat is on twitter. It really is. Along with all sorts of other scientists and engineers who are working to get grants funded, papers published, classes taught and grading done. The information accessible in that group is astonishing. I have learned as much about being a scientist from twitter as I did from my advisor or my first mentor. And when grants get funded there’s cheering. And when papers get rejected there’s commiseration. I saw one tweet that simply said: “p=0.046”. And there was much rejoicing.

These communities are crucial to me. I am a better man, a sober man, because of a loose but powerful community of alcoholics who bear me up when I fall, and teach me how to be a man in the world. And I am a better scientist because of a group of semi-anonymous chatter-streams on twitter. Each of which is a person at a keyboard, with an idea. And the willingness to share it.

Which is an astonishing thing. We share. So that we may persist. And so that we may be better than we might otherwise be, alone.