Here’s a list of resources to get you started on building something like a fractal.
What is a fractal? It's a microsociety with three components: village, campus, and culture :
- Village → We live within a five-minute walk and help each other raise kids. (example)
- Campus → We build things together—startups, research groups, nonprofits—and explore new fields through a community-run university. (example)
- Culture → We throw legendary parties, make music, host salons, and generally cultivate aliveness, beauty, and meaning. (example) It’s kind of like a neighborhood and kind of like a campus, so sometimes we refer to fractals as “neighborhood campuses.”
Things a fractal is not:
- 🚫 Ideological: like a friend group, fractals are based on relationships, not on ideas or political alignments. No “shoulds!” This is for fun & realizing the good life! A fractal is not an enclave for only one subculture (such as: effective altruists, Game B people, leftists, cottagecore conservatives, meditators, authentic relaters, etc). You can, eg, use your community of neo-post-Marxists as a jumping off point, but there is no such thing as a neo-post-Marxist fractal.
- 🚫 Centralized: like a neighborhood, there are no formal roles, rules, or boards. These things can (and probably should) exist for organizations within the fractal, but the fractal itself is just a name for an informal collection of friends, family, and colleagues.
- 🚫 Separatist: like a civic society, a fractal is not a commune that breaks away from civilization. A fractal is a scene that integrates and contributes into an existing municipality. Relatedly, fractals are multicultural. They should be able to integrate everyone from your mom to your college best friend without too much friction.
Resources to build one
Below highlighted the resources we think are the most important in each category in case your time is short.
If you want to take our full bootcamp for starting a fractal, go here: fractalcampus.com
🚀 Getting started
- Tweet on the founding of Fractal
- Tweet on sending invitations – be high touch!
- Tweet on finding your people (helpful for assembling the network to start a Fractal-like thing)
- Ones and Tens
- Have Less Acquaintances, More Friends
🥘 Dinner party
- If you’re a brand new host, I recommend the following:
- What I Don’t Do (Hosting Edition)
- you should host a party
- Hosting 101: The Picnic
- twitter thread on hosting
- How To Host Gatherings Successfully Even If You're Scared (banger thread!)
- Geeks, MOPs, and Sociopaths
🏘️ Co-living and neighborhood building
- How to Live Near Your Friends
- All posts on Supernuclear but especially:
🛋️ Third space
🏛️ Starting a school (FractalU)
- How to Start a School With Your Friends
- Tweet on how starting a network university isn’t as hard as you think
🧑🍼 Parenthood in community
- Tweet on how community makes it possible to raise a kid while still having a life (please forgive the tone, I used to tweet in this overbold manner)
- Tweet on baby coworking
✨ Ethos/vibes
- Video talk from Tyler and info page on rebuilding civic society (also covers the evolution of Fractal and the vision)
- Tweet thread on “Community is not an outcome, it’s a side-effect”
- Tweet: “You aren’t a good community member”
- Tweet on friendquaintances vs tight bonds
- Essay: The Tyranny of Structurelessness
- Spaceship Earth: a documentary covering the Synergists, a crew that started with a theatre company that went on to build their own seafaring ship, sail it around the world forming businesses and communities, and then build a giant $200 million vivarium with a self-contained ecosystem designed to create habitats for the moon and Mars. Great inspiration for any small crew looking to do great things – it will have your jaw on the floor.
