Weave Project

Contextual Citation

“Our Weave team will go into a town and ask, “Who is trusted here?” Immediately people start reeling off names of folks who are really good at building community and deepening relationships. “

- David Brooks [1]

Interview

From an interview with David Brooks on Starting Weave: The Social Fabric Project, conducted by the Aspen Institute

• Q. David, you’ve spent most of your life as a journalist, an author and a columnist holding a mirror to society. What prompted you to join the Aspen Institute and lead a project aimed at shifting American culture?

Brooks: It’s clear that we have a crisis of connection in this country. I do a lot of reporting across the country and see firsthand the loneliness and division. So many people feel unseen and misunderstood. Blacks feel that whites don’t understand their daily experience. Democrats and Republicans glare at each other in angry incomprehension. There are teenagers in the basements across the country who feel that no one knows them well. There are seniors wondering what happened to the warm bonds they remember from the old days in their neighborhood. Our national problems are really relational problems. I realized that the solution wouldn’t come from Washington, DC. It had to happen in our neighborhoods.

• Q. So how do we solve this crisis of disconnection? How do we envelop people in relationships?

Brooks: It’s already being solved. It’s being solved by people in neighborhoods everywhere. Our Weave team will go into a town and ask, “Who is trusted here?” Immediately people start reeling off names of folks who are really good at building community and deepening relationships. Sometimes the people they mention work at a suicide hotline or a mentoring program. Sometimes they run a coffee shop where everybody feels at home. Sometimes they are just the person on the block who invites everybody over for barbecue. Sometimes it’s a young woman in high school who sees someone alone and sits down to talk.

• Q. And for you, these people are Weavers of their community.

Brooks: Yes, they are all very different from each other and yet they are the same in one way. Whatever they do, they lead with love. They create countercultural islands, where love and community are more important than ego and self. The problem is that so far, it’s just islands. So many places and people are left out. Our project began as a way to learn from the Weavers and spread their way of living. Relationships happen one on one. They don’t scale. Our goal is to spread this way of living, these social norms that prioritize relationships and community over striving just for yourself. The job is not just to heal division. It’s to find a better way of being.

• Q. How do you do that?

Brooks: Our Weave Project does three things.

First, we illuminate Weaver stories and explain their values. Being around Weavers has inspired me to change how I live, to be more emotionally open, to live more as an active member of my communities. We use video, narratives and public appearances to bring the Weaver stories to millions of people, so they, too, will be inspired to live a little more in the Weaver way. Culture changes when a small group of people find a better way to live and the rest of us copy them.

Second, we bring Weavers together, online and through in-person convenings. We’ve learned that Weavers crave each other’s company. They want to know, “I’m not alone.” They want to meet other Weavers to laugh together, share each other’s burdens and learn from each other’s wisdom.

Third, we spread Weaver skills. Building good relationships is hard. How do I talk to someone with depression? How do I help people heal from trauma? How do I organize a community gathering and keep people engaged? How do I weave across racial or ideological lines? We want to spread the wisdom that’s already out there in the community.

• Q. Aren’t there already many groups supporting community development and neighborhood organizations?

Brooks: Yes, and they’re great. But their work alone will never create the kind of society we dream of. Look back on the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s and 2000s. In those decades, there were foundations that spent hundreds of billions of dollars to build community and expand social mobility. There were millions of volunteers who dedicated hundreds of millions of hours to this work.

They did good work and saved some starfish. But the fundamental trends did not change. Social mobility declined. Social trust declined. Polarization got worse. All that work didn’t bend the curves.

They didn’t bend the curves because they focused on creating and scaling good programs. But 95 percent of Americans are not in programs. Ninety-five percent of the care in society is informal — friends, neighbors, relatives, teachers and parents.

If you really want to change society, you have to work to change the rest of us, the 95 percent. You have to change the culture. You have to change the norms. You have to change what people think is the normal way of being a neighbor and citizen, the way a good person should behave. If you’re not doing culture change, you’re not going to bend the curve and make fundamental change.

Weave’s hope is to be one of many organizations that shift people’s perceptions of how they want to show up in the world. What kind of person do I want to be? How can I live a more connected life, where I deeply see others and where I am deeply seen? How can I lead with love? Culture change is vital. Q. Is cultural change on that scale really possible? Aren’t we too steeped in a culture of cell phones, social media and the pursuit of money and fame? Brooks: It’s happened before and it’s happening now. Back in the 1890s, America was coming apart at the seams, just like now. But the Settlement House movement, the Social Gospel movement and the Progressive movement shifted culture and norms and produced 60 years of greater cohesion.

By the 1960s, people found those communities stifling, so they created a counter-culture that emphasized individualism, freedom from restraint and liberation. Think of all the old rock anthems: Free Bird, Rambling Man, Born to Run. They shifted culture again.

Today, individualism has gone too far. People acknowledge that. Now the tide is turning again. People from every walk of life, every ideology are talking about connection, relationship, interdependence. Culture change is already happening. People want to come together, to form new kinds of community. Weave is highlighting those who are on the leading edge of this new way of life.” (https://weareweavers.org/weavers/why-i-started-weave-an-interview-with-david-brooks/)