
The Sprawl's January Conversation Cafe at Sought x Found. Photo: Christine Harvey
Building local connections in chaotic times
How can we strengthen our village?
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At The Sprawl’s first Conversation Cafe on Monday, we thought together about how to deliberately engage with our local "village" rather than retreating into what Fyodor Dostoevsky once described as “terrible solitariness."
About 40 Sprawl members gathered at Sought x Found Coffee for a conversation on local connection in Calgary. To kick things off, I drew from the recent cover story inThe Atlantic (The Anti-Social Century) about isolation and how we are becoming a home-based, phone-based culture: “All of this time alone, at home, on the phone, is not just affecting us as individuals. It’s making society weaker, meaner, and more delusional.”
The technological aspect of this is new but the human one is not. Dostoevsky wrote about it in The Brothers Karamazov, describing an era when people were retreating into their individual burrows, hoping to experience life’s completeness alone, but experiencing instead a kind of inner death, or what he called “a complete suicide.”
“For he has become accustomed to relying upon himself alone and has isolated himself from the whole as an individual, has trained his soul not to trust in help from others, in human beings and mankind, and is fearful only of losing his money and the privileges he has acquired,” writes Dostoevsky.
“In every place today the human mind is mockingly starting to lose its awareness of the fact that a person’s true security consists not in his own personal, solitary effort, but in the common integrity of human kind. But it will certainly be the case that this terrible solitariness will come to an end, and all will comprehend at once how unnaturally they have divided themselves one from the other.”
Perhaps, in our fragile times, we are painfully undergoing this comprehension.
We are living in what some have described as a “great regression.” The world as we have known it is being upended. Meanwhile, in our fragmented information environment, we are encouraged to form our own individual realities according to our own political preferences and passions.
Amidst all of this chaos and uncertainty, maybe we need to retrain our souls, as Dostoevsky put it, to trust each other a little more. To reach beyond our narrow worlds of self-interest. To deliberately seek out encounter with those who are different from us.
We are living in what some have described as a ‘great regression.’ The world as we have known it is being upended.
It takes some doing. The Atlantic essay notes that “home-based, phone-based culture has arguably solidified our closest and most distant connections." Parents spend more time with their kids than generations past; people with shared affinities and ideological alignment feel kinship. "But it’s wreaking havoc on the middle ring of 'familiar but not intimate' relationships with the people who live around us."
This is the village. The city around us. Or, as I like to think of it, the people we are stuck with, a.k.a. the people I curse at and call unprintable names when driving Deerfoot Trail.
Joking aside, are we just atomized individuals in a one-click consumer society—or are we part of something larger? What do we as Calgarians hold in common? Is it possible, across our various differences, to hold some sense of shared purpose and identity?
These questions are newly important nationally, at the moment, but they are important locally too.
At our conversation on Monday, people described some of the ways they have found local connection in the "village" in Calgary.
One spoke of being involved with the Rotary Club and finding purpose there. A postie described getting to know people on her mail route, becoming part of their daily routine. Several spoke of the significance of rec facilities in Calgary, especially for seniors and others who are more isolated, where people can find human contact.
Is it possible, across our various differences, to hold some sense of shared purpose and identity?
All of these local connections are threatened in various ways. Participation in civic organizations has declined, as has volunteerism in Canada. Community mailboxes (ironically named, when you think about it!) replace a friendly postie with a faceless metal box. And there is a need for more community gathering places where people can encounter others who are different from them.
If there is one good thing to be taken from all of this, it's that people are clearly hungry for something more than doomscrolling and Dostoevsky's "terrible solitariness"—which, I should point out, is very different than solitude. Solitude is nourishing, reconnecting us to ourselves and our place in the world. Phone-based solitariness does the opposite.
I often wonder what would be different in Calgary if we had bid on the 2026 Olympics. The Green Line might actually be built, for one thing! I wasn't here in the 1980s, but people describe a strong sense of volunteerism and shared purpose.
Nostalgia won't get us out of our current predicaments (quite the opposite!), and the Olympics have many issues, but there is something to be said for a shared civic project that brings people together.
For Calgarians 40 years ago, it was the Olympics. I wonder what it might be for us.
That's a big question. I will leave you with a smaller one: What is one thing you can do, this week, to deliberately engage with "the village" around you?
We've been hard at work on the next Sprawlcast. I love a good local deep dive, and this is a good one. It'll be ready soon.
And speaking of coffeeshop gatherings... The Sprawl is doing a pop-up abroad later in February. How far abroad, you ask? Edmonton!
Fun fact: A surprising number of Edmontonians support The Sprawl. It is delightfully baffling. Are they confused? Geographically challenged? Has my lifelong Oilers fandom paid off in unexpected ways? Not sure, but whatever the case may be, I'm visiting my folks later this month and will be bringing The Sprawl's pop-up printing press to the far north.
Join us at Anvil Coffee House in Ottewell for a family-friendly printing pop-up! My sister owns and runs Anvil and we've talked for a long time about doing this. Now's the time!
Anvil is at 6148 90 Ave NW. This makes no sense to me, since it's south and east of downtown. In Calgary we call that SE. How in the world do you get NW?!
Edmonton proves confounding yet again. Maybe I can find out when I'm there and report back.
Anyway, here are the details:
The Sprawl's Far-North Pop-Up
Anvil Coffee House (6148 90 Ave NW, Edmonton)
Saturday, February 15
1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
If you're around, I'd love to see you there. Thanks as always for reading—and for your support!
Jeremy Klaszus is founder and editor of The Sprawl.
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