- Alex and Simmo group house, parent page
- 2025-08-28
- Epistemic status: this is a very profound and deep topic for me, kind of the key topic in my life so far, and I know that I wonât be able to explain it well right now. Iâm giving myself permission to write a quick, incomplete thing here
The feeling of âI donât have preferencesâ
Just happy to be here
- A key failure mode for me has always been being (as a friend described it) "just happy to be here".
- (Maybe itâs not a failure mode, maybe it is a genuine and nice way to be (or maybe a bit of both))
- I have a sense that I did have such a relatively bad time (with e.g. social anxiety and childhood stuff etc), that I genuinely am just pleased when I have some friends to talk to and etc.
- Like, I donât want for much, and Iâm satisfied with a small amount, âthis is already greatâ. Especially post-kensho, just like âholy shit, this rulesâ.
- Like, I donât currently have a 1/3/5 year plan, I donât have any big clear ambitions other than vague and intuitive day-to-day stuff1
Having never experienced [the good thing]
- Also, at 29, I have never lived in a good group house, to have been too socially anxious during uni/masters.
- So thereâs the âIgnoti nulla cupidoâ thing here too â maybe Iâd love it, but Iâve never experienced it, so itâs not an active desire for me right now, other than in an abstract sense. All I know is what Iâve lived2
Wanna form a group house?
- So, when Simmo says âwanna form a group house?â, Iâm like âhell yeah, of course, Iâve been job hunting and living at my mumâs for 6 months to cut costs, of course Iâd like to live in a group house, thatâd be a huge improvementâ.
- âAnd also Iâve never lived in a good group house and I really like you and weâve been friends for 2+ years with lots of growth and conflict resolution and thereâs a depth of trust hereâ and etc. So yeah, a group house with Simmo is a no-brainer IMO
Wanna form an intentional community?
- And when heâs like âwhat about an intentional communityâ, Iâm like, âidk about that, sounds more like your dream than mine, I just want the bare minimum of a nice group house, thatâs a huge like 1000x improvement already, I donât really see the point of thinking about like 10,000x or 100,000x improvements atm, seems too ambitious and had to parseâ
- (Which is silly on my part, like, thatâs scope neglect right there. But still, you know, Iâm talking about gut/intuition/felt sense, rather than like logic, reasoning)
- So my gut sense was like âidk about Fractal, idk about community, idk about like forming a community hub and campus where people teach each-other, that all seems like much more than I need right now. And I know that youâve lived in great communities so you have much more of a real want for all that stuff, but I have the ignoti nulla cupido thing, I just donât know, no non-propositional knowledge here
But!
- But actually, guess what, I think actually I could be someone who is really really energised by an amazing community, because it literally solves things that I have been pretty much obsessed with, and a serial ruminator about, for years
- This is something that is very alive for me atm because Iâve just lived with my mum for ~6 months and just spend 2.5 weeks being the only person helping my Dad in a Spanish hospital, so I feel very attuned to some stuff
Boomers/family/parenting
- A key thing for me, really possibly the thing in my life, the key theme, is the whole like âholy shit, my family is so ~damaged, no one is doing well, itâs gradually drifting apart and no one has the emotional skills to do conflict resolution, my parents are not doing well (from being working class and growing up in a time pre-therapy etc)â
- Having parents who are the opposite of lifelong learners, who are stuck in âfixed mindsetâ, who have no agency at all, who are the Romeo Stevens thing of like âmost people are tactically smart and strategically incredibly stupidâ (because they can e.g. book a holiday, but they canât look at the trajectory of their life and realise how fucked they are if they donât make some profound changes)
- This is the key theme of my life really. There has been huge bitterness re: âI canât believe this is my family, I canât believe these people are my ârole modelsâ, this is so fucked, there are no adults in the roomâ, and despair that they wonât help themselves
- Itâs partly why Iâm like âI canât deeply care about Effective Altruism, my family are suffering!â (or, âmy house is on fire!â)
Moloch
- And this is all downstream of society failing them, really. They didnât have therapy, there are no clear paths forwards for them that are straightforward. My parents parents were all very difficult, working class, traumatised. They didnât have religion to fall back on, or a healthy community, no role models, etc
- By Moloch I mean this blog post by Scott Alexander re: imagining the kind of fucked up state of the world as being about perverse incentives and this inhuman demon/god that we summon by mistake (or something like that)
âWhat do I do with all of this?â
- I havenât known what to do with all this energy, my horror at the way various family members live, all the energy it has given me to e.g. learn to learn, learn to think, refuse to get stuck in a rut, etc
- I donât want to abandon them, I also donât want to try to save them
- (Which I tried to do briefly re: going to family therapy with my mum, e.g. âHow can I change how to orient to my family?â (Open Question))
Because it feels intractable, I ~forget about it
- Thereâs a sense in which, all this stuff being so important to me, so salient, has actually blocked it from my awareness in a weird way. Itâs like an ugh field or a blind spot
- Like, itâs so aversive, so I donât know what to do about it, so I look elsewhere, and I think that thereâs nothing that can be done, and I kind of forget about it, or at least I never do the mental move of "this is an important thing for me to work on"
âI donât know what my thing isâ
- And as such, I can tell myself âoh man, I donât know what my thing is, I donât know what my niche is, I donât know what matters to me, I just havenât found it yet, maybe one day, maybe one day Iâll stumble across something like idk geology and Iâll have this eureka moment and realise that that is the thing for me to build my life around, but not yet, I havenât found it yetâ
- Vs âI have been alive for 29 years. Imagine an omniscient being could look into my brain and all my thoughts over the last 10+ years and pull out the things that I think about the most - what might they be?â
The negative formulation is agency-robbing, a positive reframe is obvious and energy-giving
Being a parent
- E.g., if I think about âdo I want to be a parent one day?â, itâs like âoh god, holy shit, it seems like itâd be so hard, and so easy to fuck upâ. How could I possibly do that, and itâs so far away, etc
- But, if the question is âcould all this mean I have a huge amount of energy and juice re: being the best Dad I can possibly be, and that would be profoundly, indescribably meaningful as it would e.g. let me âhealâ via giving my child what I wish my Dad could have given to me?â, itâs like, so incredibly obvious that this is one of the core themes of my life
- Itâs like, the negative version of this, the âoh man my parents really messed up in big waysâ thing is agency-robbing and overwhelming.
- And the positive formulation of âtherefore I want to be an incredible Dadâ is incredibly energising and obvious
Living in a non-Molochian world
- And then similarly âdo I want to live in intentional community?â is like âoh man, idk, that seems far too like, grand, I donât need all that, not yet anywayâ
- Negative formulation
- And similarly - âman, society has failed so many of us, itâs so fucked up, what the hell are my family supposed to do, what even would my prescription be to them if they did want to follow my path which I know has helped me in profound waysâ is massively agency-robbing and overwhelming. Iâm left with no options, it feels like thereâs nothing that can be done, so I just like, background it
- Vs the positive formulation of âletâs build a long-term community and use all the pain and failure of the default society as a deep teacher in what to not buildâ is very energising and obvious
uhh the end
- âI want to be an amazing parent (and husband) one dayâ is possibly a very obvious goal, but lemme let it percolate somewhat
- And âI want to help build a non-Molochian community/societyâ is possibly a very obvious way to channel all the pain from living in this world, but again, brand new framing, letâs see đ
Footnotes
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- I think this is âjust happy to be hereâ stuff is also partially downstream of spending a good chunk of my childhood in the sanctuary of my bedroom, door shut, video games, reading Harry Potter, playing ps1 then ps2 then ps3, etc, and being shuttled back and forth from one unhappy home to the other for years, and going on holidays that I didnât want to go on, etc. If you donât have a happy home life, youâre forced to dissociate a bit and just make do. âThe endurerâ archetype comes to mind
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What living situations have I had?
- Childhood, good home for first 5 years, then shitty for ~13
- Uni â holy shit I am so socially anxious â lived with people who were just ok in 2nd and 3rd year, too socially anxious and low agency to e.g. propose living with the people I was closer with (but still socially anxious around)
- Living with long-term girlfriend â lovely, sanctuary, fun, great. Especially when we got our greyhound, are you kidding me dude! I owe my ex-girlfriend an astounding amount
- Living ~alone, e.g. ~2 years of traveling post-breakup. Sublets, Airbnbs. Sometimes shared a place with people (e.g. H & C in London for a few months, Y in Toronto), but still in the mode of âmostly in my bedroom, mostly doing my own thingâ, which is yeah I think downstream of a childhood in my bedroom
- Intentional community â even when I lived at Life Itself, I was mostly doing stuff on my own, working, going on walks etc. For the last ~2 weeks we had a nice little group there (E + R + V), and a few really nice hangs. In fact, there was a time when I cried because of a miscommunication and me feeling uncared for, and the 3 of them all came and we talked about it and had a big hug, which felt really like the first and only time that I experienced real community. That was my first taste of what this stuff could be