So I've been thinking a lot about @brianklaas's article about #supercitizens, people who help bond communities together by volunteering, because I think I might be one. That feels extremely arrogant to type, but I suspect most people reading this are too - the kind of people who contribute to a shared decentralised social network are probably the sort of people who also devote time and energy to projects that don't benefit them directly.
https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/the-power-of-supercitizens
1/n
As a social species who evolved in small groups in a harsh environment it does make evolutionary sense that small groups where people contributed effort to the wellbeing of the entire group would thrive more than those where everyone just looked out for their own interests. Working together with other to make things better just intrinsically feels good, presumably because we evolved that way. So the question isn't so much why are some people #supercitizens but why isn't everyone.
2/n
What follows is something I've been speculating about for a while from my own personal experience but don't have any scientific evidence to back up. But I do a fair bit of volunteering with the local cycling campaign, seed bank and community garden and I have noticed the same people keep popping up in different groups in the same context - for example I know the treasurer of the cycling campaign and one of the seed bank founders are heavily involved in a local refugee support group
3/
And some common factors I've noticed are church membership and/or neurodiversity (sometimes both, I'm also have some theories about the Venn diagram of #Quakers and #neurodiverse people but that's another thread). And I think the church connection, especially Quaker and Methodist, is a culture that encourages helping other. Which then sort of highlights that the broader culture we live in is quite selfish and competition focussed, which perhaps doesn't foster super citizenship
4/
Without strong identification with church culture to balance it out. (This is probably the case with religions other than Christianity too, it's just the neurotypical people I've met in my own life who do a lot of volunteering have tended to be Christian). And I think the connection with neurodiversity is that some of us find it harder to instinctively absorb the norms of the broader culture around us than neurotypicals. That can be a weakness, but in this case I think it's a strength.
5/
@afewbugs As if to prove your "no strong culture to identify with" point, this concept gets independently rediscovered constantly and then given different names, but it all seems to be the same concept - the concept of "lightworkers" is another one that seems to be very similar to what you're describing here, although more from 'new age'-y circles.
