Social-Strength Practices for a Better Life and a Better World

Contents

The Need

The world is a mess. How to improve our own lives and help make the world better - even with no money at all, no spare time, no leader, and no one's permission or approval needed?

Relationships matter. The world came very close to nuclear war several times that are publicly known, but was saved (so far) by key people and relationships. And in everyday life, relationships determine much of our personal fates as well.

You can train for communication and relationship skills:

• As a hobby;
• To open doors for making friends;
• As a martial art for personal and community protection in an often-hostile world;
• To help avoid poverty when affordable housing and living-wage jobs are going away;
• To contribute toward a better world;
• And more.

Today, relationship skills are not taught well (if at all):

• From infancy most people specialize in what they do well, and avoid or freeze on what they don't, creating strengths and weaknesses that can persist throughout life.
• Therapy or counseling can help. But there aren't enough helpers, most people can't afford them, and they can't be with us in our life situations when we need them.

Why "Practices"?

We like the English word "practice" because it can refer both to a young child's piano practice, and also to the practice of a leading surgeon or other professional; the same concept applies to all levels. And compared to "exercises," most people wouldn't do pushups etc. throughout the day in the office or at social events, but can do practices for studying and improving their relationships.

On this site we propose observing, listening, community-building, and relationship training PRACTICES that:

• Anyone can learn or use any time (so these skills will be there in real life when we need them);
• Don't need any money, education, classes, or spare time, because they happen through whatever we are doing anyway;
• Don't need anyone's permission, since most of this training is invisible;
• Can build skills to help get out from under bullying or other oppression;
• Build competence that belongs to YOU, that no one else can control or take away.

This training is available to almost anyone, including prisoners, the homeless, students in oppressive schools, draftees, those unhappy in their jobs - and also those of any social class who are in oppressive relationships that can be hard to get out of.

Later, group practices will be important for community building.

Needed: a social movement to develop and promote better training practices. Here are some suggestions for getting started. There may be ten to a hundred equally useful practices out there for each one we listed below.

Note: Little is new under the sun. So we have mostly collected training practices rather than invented them. To make this training universally available, we selected ones that don't need any money, equipment, or other external resources; instead, everyday life itself is the only resource they need. End notes tell where we found the ideas.[1]

Pick one or two to work on at a time. Change your selection whenever you want.

Practices for Listening and Observing

Messages

You need to know where people are at emotionally, right now.

How? Pay attention the “messages” they are sending out – usually not to you, often to no one in particular. Are they enthusiastic? Relaxed? Happy? In a hurry? Argumentative? Tired, discouraged, beaten down, or depressed? Watch their face, how they move, and how they choose to present themselves to others.

This exercise works best with strangers, when you can observe them without interacting - for example, on a busy sidewalk seen from a cafe window. With friends or colleagues there’s often so much going on that it’s better to focus on that and not split your attention for an exercise. Later, observation and listening become habitual.

It helps lot if you can see their faces. But if you can't, maybe look for how they present themselves to the world. What is the most memorable feature of what they are wearing?

More importantly, what are they doing? Are they alone or with others? If with others, is one person doing almost all of the talking?

I explained this practice to somebody, who said, "Then you can imagine what they are going home and doing, etc." NO! You want to be as objective as possible, to pick up what other observers will likely pick up. If you imagine stories, they will be different from what other observers will imagine. (Later, Messages could be turned into a group exercise, so you can compare what you saw with what others saw.)

Caution, staring is impolite and can even lead to violence. People don’t like being spied on, and don't like being put onto a public stage when they are not ready for that. Grab a quick impression; no need to keep looking. Or maybe practice with videos or movies.

Where did this practice come from?[2]

Find the Positive

When observing or working with others, look for what’s admirable about them. What are they likely proud of? What may be well regarded by the public? If something appeals particularly to you, note that too.

When it’s appropriate, compliment them or otherwise acknowledge what they are doing well. People appreciate that.

A major value of this practice is changing your default from seeing the negatives of others to seeing the positives. Many use negatives to make themselves look better in comparison. But that doesn't help in building community.

Relationship Practices

When Telling Stories to Yourself,
Consider Making Them Interesting to Others as Well

Listening to others is part of community building. So is getting others to listen to you.

We communicate by stories, and most people spend considerable time telling stories to themselves. But often the interesting parts are left out of this self-narration, because they are familiar to the individual and are easily assumed. When telling the story to somebody else, however, they are usually unknown. The story needs to be redone to be suitable for anyone else, especially a casual acquaintance or a stranger.

We don't have a method or formula to offer, but suggest paying attention to making the narrations or dialogs in your own mind suitable for sharing with others, when occasions arise.[3]

Negotiation Training

Everyone negotiates; some do it well and some badly. There are lots of books on how to negotiate, which is well-developed in our culture because it is necessary for business. Here are two we particularly recommend.

An good place to start is Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and others of the Harvard Negotiation Project. Their system is good at finding options for mutual gain. But sometimes that’s not possible, as when only one can win a promotion or an election.

The best over-all negotiation book we know is Getting More, by Stuart Diamond, based on his popular negotiation class at the prestigious Wharton Business School in Philadelphia. To decide whether to spend the time and money (currently $20 or less for the paperback), you can read pages 1-19 of chapter 1 free on Amazon.com, even if you don’t have any Amazon account (on the book listing, click on "Read sample").

Some of the book’s examples may look silly - why put effort into small issues like getting recourse for a mediocre restaurant meal that didn't meet the ad's promise? But the author is teaching business students, and he encourages them to practice and learn when the stakes are small - instead of making beginner mistakes later at work, when they might cost an important deal, job, or promotion.

Needed now: a separate document on negotiating or otherwise dealing with robots. Fortunately most robots are still online, but often they can hurt you anyway.

Couples, Marriage, and Friendship [bid and response]

Drs. John and Julie Gottman founded the Gottman Institute, based on 40 years of research including over 3,000 couples. During their research they invited 130 newlyweds to spend a day in the Institute’s bed-and-breakfast-style laboratory. The Gottmans claim 94% accuracy in predicting who will be happily married six years later (only about three couples in 10), vs. who will be either divorced or chronically unhappy in their marriage.

Particularly important for successful marriage was the response to a “bid” for interest or connection from one’s partner. Those couples who would be divorced in six years responded positively to the bid only 33% of the time - vs. 87% for those who stayed together. For more information see Masters of Love in The Atlantic, June 2014 [you might be able read the full article free online with a trial subscription; or a library may have a print or online subscription].

Bid and response are worth our attention in many human relationships: friends, lovers, and colleagues as well as marriage. Do you really want a long-term or closer relationship with this person or group? If so, be ready to go out of your way to learn and share their interests. And note whether they do the same for you.

Switch Sides in an Argument

“Those that fight don't listen, those that listen don't fight.” Gestalt psychologist Fritz Perls, 1960s. And Abraham Lincoln said, "I don't like that man. I must get to know him better."

We are looking for practices to teach listening. One, more common in the late 1960s than now, was an exercise during an ongoing argument, in which each side argued for the other’s position temporarily. Difficult but possible.

An easier version: develop the best case you can for an opponent’s position. You’ll probably find unexpected points of agreement. (Due to today's over-the-top outrage industry, both left and right, you might want to keep the result to yourself. Why be a martyr to nonsense?)

Asking for Assistance [practice this first when stakes are small]

Asking for help is hard for many people. But it's super important, part of how a healthy society functions. And you can learn how to do it better.

(a) Practice when the stakes are small. That avoids excess emotion, and especially in the beginning, is usually the right way to learn.

(b) Good observing and awareness of people (see the "Messages" and "Listening" practices above) will help you sense if now is a favorable occasion to ask - or if it isn’t. Without listening, you are flying blind because you don't know where others are at, right then ("here and now").

(c) The request should make conventional sense, and be framed with appropriate expectations. For example, asking for job leads usually gets a positive response (if the person you ask has any relevant leads to suggest at that time - most people don't); asking for help for a startup less so, except in special contexts.

Be aware of what their interests are, not only yours. And if one appeal or person doesn't work, try others.

Community-Building Practices

Note Bonding Opportunities [don't throw good ones away]

Until recently I missed the importance of bonding with others through situations that are emotionally intense for the group, outside of routine reality. That made my work less effective than it could have been.

For example, I published AIDS Treatment News for 20 years, and there were many memorial services. I attended reluctantly, because our message at the newsletter was about saving lives, which had been ignored for too long by the early AIDS community focused on "a beautiful death" and grief, instead of medical research for lifesaving treatments. Once I was invited to a private gathering after a service, by an insider group at another AIDS treatment organization. I turned it down, due to not wanting to focus on death. That was a mistake, as emotional bonding across that organizational divide could have helped both of us be more effective.

In a much earlier example, I left a college group trying to deal with the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 (would we be alive the next day?) - to get to my job cleaning dorms, which could have been postponed at little cost.

Shared intense experience matters, and can open doors to exploring meaningful possibilities. Advance preparation can help - even if we don't know what the experience will be. For example, practices might teach how to deal with an awkward silence if it occurs. It’s important to learn first in casual, less important situations, where you have freedom to try ideas and recover from mistakes.

Caution: the need for bonding can go wrong, by encouraging unnecessary conflicts or wars, in order to provide common enemies to help cover up problems within a society. The human future may depend on finding better ways to handle polarization.

Advanced and Miscellaneous

Here are some ideas that need work.

Making a Living

Poverty is a major cause of dystopia. Some is deliberately created, but much occurs by happenstance or neglect. Modern technology could provide a comfortable life for everyone. But technology cannot support unlimited exponential growth.

Billions of dollars and thousands of people have worked to reduce poverty, with considerable but inadequate success. Here we are interested in what has worked on a personal or community level. Both the big-picture and local methods are essential.

The practices described above can help in obvious ways, like doing better in job interviews, or finding out about job openings, since many jobs are never advertised publicly.

One practice that helped me early in my career was applying for jobs I did not intend to accept (I almost did accept one of them, which would have changed the direction of my life). This is a way to understand the field and see what's going on, without the anxiety that interferes with awareness and learning.

But beyond the individual level, we need community action and support. Otherwise it's giant corporations and governments against individuals alone - not at all conducive to fair negotiation.

Nonprofits can help, but we can't rely on them completely. Usually they have good people but are also part of the system, and if their funding goes away so do they.

Besides helping individuals get better jobs, we need to research communities that have developed one or more industries to support the group.

For example:

(1) Mondragón, a co-op started primarily by a Catholic priest in 1956 in the Basque region of Spain, now employs about 70,000 people, 80% of whom are members of the co-op. The president of the company earns only 6 times more than the lowest-paid worker. We want to learn how Mondragón has been so successful, and how that information can be applied in very different environments.

(2) Religions that separate from the general society in order to live their faith are often very poor as a result; but sometimes middle class or rich. We want to understand how and why.

(3) Many successful careers happen unplanned, through a series of accidents. But many failures do, too. What made the difference? It's hard to find out, especially when conditions are changing so fast.

Collaboration Practices

Teamwork among equals is important in many jobs. So collaboration practices, by multiple people who can later share notes and suggestions, or by one person alone if necessary, can help in making a living, or accomplishing other projects that may require group effort.

We don't have suggestions currently, but one place to look is the book Mastering Successful Work by Tarthang Tulku. It "includes over 80 exercises, most of which can be done one the job." It was published in 1992, but the exercises should still be valid. The standard price for a new copy is $18.95, but caution, we have seen online prices over $55 for the same book.

Cold Reading

A "cold reader" is a kind of fortune teller who does not use devices like cards, palms, or stars, but instead has a conversation with you, and then tells you things about yourself that you had no idea how they knew. More importantly, they may give you information about yourself that you had not known, but recognize as true. Cold reading has interested persons who otherwise pay no attention to fortune telling. While part of it is trickery, another part comes from skillful understanding and observation of people. For more information, see this Wikipedia article, or Cold Reader Tips by MasterClass.

Advice Columns

Some newspaper advice columns focus on difficult or awkward social situations. It's like an advanced course in navigating current U.S. society. But be careful; following bad advice can be harmful.

Here are some that are well-regarded. Unfortunately these are behind paywalls. But even if you don't have a subscription, often you can see a list of the kinds of situations they cover:

Social Q's.

The Ethicist.

Washington Post advice columns

And see a 2017 Columbia Journalism Review article about advice columns, their history, and what they meant in 2017.

We are looking for alternatives and expect to have more suggestions in the future. There are many advice sites; the problem is deciding which ones are reasonably safe to use, in serious situations where you may feel over your head. If you want to do your own research, a handy place to start is to search for:
alternatives to social q's, etc. on any search engine.

Or better, use Perplexity.ai - it has a free version, which has become our research tool of choice for almost any topic, from medical research, to software instructions, to local restaurants.

And on January 28 we started trying DeepSeek.com. It is also free.

"What's Going On Here?"

Several times in my 20s or 30s I was in a social or professional meeting, when someone asked me, "Do you know what's going on here?" - meaning what was happening politically or interpersonally, not whether I understood the subject being discussed. I did not know. It is certainly possible to develop such skills - maybe by close reading of certain novels (Jane Austen?), or closely following the plot of certain movies or films. Just quietly following what's going on in the social world around one seems to be an excellent training practice, especially when it's possible to check if conclusions were right or wrong.

We are also looking into reports that ability to predict future news events varies greatly among people, can be taught and learned to some extent, and that at least one study found that the best predictors without access to classified information could predict future events better than intelligence professionals with classified access.

Study the Rich, Powerful, and Successful

Rich families usually develop certain practices that enable them to win and succeed, part of the family tradition. It should be possible to teach some of these skills so that anybody can use them regardless of their social class. Many of the most important uses are not competitive, not about who wins or loses, but about the successful management and enjoyment of life - including better health of course.

Upper-class privileges may be more important than upper-class skills for success in life. But the skills are much easier to deploy, to the benefit of all social classes.

Ethics

Ethics works in different ways. In professions like law and medicine, boards can make it difficult or impossible for those they don’t like to make a living from their profession. This system has both advantages and disadvantages.

In other spheres there are no such boards and ethics are enforced by majority consensus (and by criminal law in some cases). That will be the default for the training we suggest here.

Ethics can be based on human dignity, how people should or should not be treated. For example, it shouldn’t be hard to get consensus that it’s wrong to facilitate con artists or other frauds, bullying, or sexual exploitation or abuse.

And ethics should promote what people really want - which today is security, community, and quality of life. People don't want crime and predation, which cause distrust and loneliness. They don't want winner-take-all economic and governance systems that create billionaires and beggars, with homelessness increasing every year. And most people don't want war.

On Money [And Why We DON'T Want It Here]

We select practices that don't cost any money at all, for three reasons:

1. Charging even a penny excludes most people in the world, and perhaps in the U.S. as well. Even if they have the money to spend, they may not have the right currency and account to pay online. Cryptocurrencies avoid foreign-exchange problems but have other issues, and most people are not set up to use them.
2. Typically a movement does not use money; an organization does (and may be affiliated with a movement). Our interest here is building a movement. Organizations can come later.
3. While money isn't always evil, it is associated with vile behavior worldwide. Usually, people with money are welcome almost everywhere - as tourists, permanent residents, and in some countries they can even buy citizenship. Without money, the same people are treated like vermin - same person, only difference is the amount of their money. Even worse, valuable minerals that could improve living standards and economic development of poor countries instead finance fighting between rival warlords, local governments, and foreign governments, leaving populations worse off than if the minerals weren't there.

Hopefully a movement focused on practices to build social strength can work without using money. Computer expenses are minimal; volunteers can pay them out of pocket. For references to books, articles, and other sources, we try to find those that are free online or otherwise. But if the best reference we know is behind a paywall, we do include it as well - while continuing to look for alternatives.

Notes

[1] In1960 I attended a talk by Aldous Huxley on "Human Potentialities," a public lecture at MIT. I was 19. The last 5 minutes of Huxley's talk inspired me for a lifelong project, somewhat different from what Huxley proposed.

Huxley noted that Western philosophies generally gave people advice such as "know thyself," but not methods for doing so. So he suggested collecting mind-body training methods from around the world and throughout history, then studying and improving them in view of modern knowledge of human biology. He suggested that a foundation could collect and catalog these without great expense, to help people reach their own potential - and to help reduce violence, cruelty, and war in the world.

But nothing I could do would help make that project happen - and I'm not aware of it happening in the 64 years since. (Huxley died on November 22, 1963, a few hours after President Kennedy.)

Instead, I left that auditorium with the vision of developing training methods as a kind of martial art for personal and community defense - and for success and quality of life as well. But the specifics weren't clear. It took decades to improve the project so that it could be widely useful.

[2] I never saw the "messages" practice in writing, but heard it from the late Joanna Harcourt-Smith (also known as Joanna Leary). She had perhaps the greatest social strength of anyone I have known, at least the greatest ability to get her way in any interaction - and she was very enthusiastic about "messages." I added the embellishments: if you can't see their faces, etc.

She was speaking at a street-corner rally in Berkeley, CA, while trying to get Timothy Leary out of prison, which eventually she did; she was the key person in getting him released in a complicated legal situation.

She and a partner had a website, futureprimitive.org; it survived her death in 2020, but is not currently available. It might be archived, but I haven't found it. She also published a book which is available, Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary: My Psychedelic Love Story.

[3] To judge if what you say interests others, consider the eyelid index. This works best on a Zoom, etc. call where you and other participants are equal, and each take a turn speaking for a few minutes. Or if you are giving a talk.

How many eyes are open and attentive - and how many are closed, catching up on rest or sleep? The eyelid index is the proportion that are open. Of course the actual proportion depends on whether most of the audience has had enough sleep. But you can compare your current eyelid index with that of other parts of your talk, or that of other speakers, to see how well you are doing.

If you put people to sleep, that's a problem.

About This Site

Last updated 2025-01-31

Author

John S. James founded AIDS Treatment News in 1986 and published it for 20 years; see New York Times archive search for AIDS Treatment News, "Underground Press Leads Way on AIDS Advice" (scroll down for the text). Before that, he was a computer programmer for 20 years, working for organizations including the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Montgomery College, American Airlines, and Stanford Medical Center, and later publishing articles on the programming language Forth.

He has always been interested in a better world - especially in practical ways to get there.

He was in Timothy Leary's psychology class at Harvard, two years before Leary was famous.

On July 4th, 1965, he marched in one of the earliest gay rights demonstrations: the first Reminder Day, at Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

Contact

jjames@social-strength.org

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