Growing up in a city, I knew only one or two neighbors and barely interacted with the rest. As an adult living in Cambridge, I knew even fewer of my neighbors, despite being crammed next to them in apartment buildings. With some perspective now, it feels completely unnatural and unhealthy to be living amongst people while intentionally ignoring them. But I couldn't appreciate that idea until I left the city.

I spent some time with a wonderful flower farmer in Western Massachusetts and got to see another way of being. His friends and neighbors regularly dropped by the farm to chat, hang out, have tea and lunch together. I didn't get the sense that anybody felt like they were imposing or needed an invitation to show up. If Will was busy, they hung around and waited, or else said hello and left. It seemed like there were always people around, though not in an intrusive way.

When I built my tiny house in Worcester, I lived at The Shop, along with about 10 other people of various backgrounds. It was my first experience of living in community, though I felt a bit on the margins, and it wasn't a very intentional community. Nevertheless, it was a positive experience to bump into neighbors throughout the day, and help each other with projects. The fact that it was a community of people who were generally working in the trades and crafts made it a great environment for collaboration. They weren't all loafing around (and in fact, one of the problems I saw was a constant anxiety among some people – that they had to be doing something productive. The flower farm felt a bit more balanced in its approach to work). People felt empowered to do spontaneous stuff and invite others – for instance, I started a regular meditation thing for folks there, and some of us started a band.

Now, living in a small town, it's been challenging to find any sense of community. Since everybody lives further apart, they're generally not bumping into each other in the neighborhood. We might see each other at the Country Store or other public place, which can be a great way to make connections. But building a connection from "person I often see at the store" to "person who will visit my house" to "person who can depend on me" can be pretty difficult. It requires a degree of openness that I think a lot of people have forgotten.

One of my nearest neighbors grew up around here but has lived her adult life in cities, and now she's returned to town. She's very friendly but seems to be stuck in the urban habit of being – keep to yourself and ignore the neighborhood. For me, becoming a good neighbor and community member is an ongoing process, and it's sometimes difficult to know what to do. When I moved here, I felt there were pragmatic reasons to integrate myself – I didn't want to be the unknown weirdo at the edge of town. Now I'm becoming the known weirdo at the edge of town.

Another neighbor recently became a widow, and we've finally spoken a bit (after I've lived here for 10 years). When I was walking by the other day, she asked me to help her fix a problem with her stereo. It was the first time I'd been in her house. The old folks who've lived here for their entire lives are more comfortable asking neighbors for help or just talking to each other, but they're still affected by the wider culture, which is becoming increasingly insular.

In general, I attribute the insularity and alienation to the rise of Neoliberalism. It's a socioeconomic ideology which has dominated our culture for the past 40-50 years. It asserts that everything should be privatized, including our social interactions. It seeks to turn citizens into consumers, and in order to market products to us, it forces us into demographic buckets. The ideology intends to keep us separated from each other, so that private companies can mediate our relationships. It's a reductionist view of humanity that has been manipulating our cultural reality to conform to its ideology. As a result, it destroys organic communities and neighborhoods. It teaches us that strangers are dangerous and should be avoided. We shouldn't trust and depend on each other; we should trust the Authorities and depend on Amazon.com, et al.

When I joined Extinction Rebellion, it was immediately apparent that this cultural virus would be a big hurdle to overcome, within the group. How do you get a group of ordinary, alienated urbanites who've never met before, to work together and trust each other when engaging in civil disobedience? There were some "team building" exercises that were very effective – my favorite being the monthly Critical Mass bike ride around the city. But these activities (and many more) have to be repeated continuously, because our habits are hard to break, and new, alienated people were constantly joining the group. An activist organization is unlike other groups you might join in the city – a sewing group, a gym, a dance class – you can't really have the same strict boundaries about your participation, because people depend on you to show up and get stuff done.

I never really figured out how to change the culture (it's probably not within my ability), and then the pandemic put a huge damper on any sort of community cooperation. The COVID response was a major victory for Neoliberalism: we were individually confined to our homes and compelled to order everything online, because it's terribly dangerous to go outside and see anybody! Multinational corporations and billionaires became much richer, while local businesses, libraries, and parks (where people used to meet organically) were decimated. And ordinary people were traumatized. I think a significant number of people are still traumatized and avoid interacting with others – out of fear of disease, or just a continuing habit from the pandemic era (or because they firmly believe that we're still in the pandemic era and must avoid each other forever).

If it was already difficult to overcome decades of cultural conditioning, the pandemic response made it even more so. Now, a younger generation of people are growing up with a new, more-alienated baseline expectation of what community looks like. If they're not exposed to friendly flower farms, worker cooperatives, or neighborhood block parties – because those people and places are physically or economically dying out – how will they ever know that another way is possible?