I’m coming up on a year of researching health and wellness, and I’m starting to notice parallels to phenomena I studied in the crypto space. Much of what I’ve investigated over the last 7 years has been some kind of experimental organization or institutional prototype. In crypto, these were largely groups of strangers building software to manage financial resources and make collective decisions. Now I’m paying attention to organizations that center healing in some way, from virtual coaching retreats to community clinics.

One significant thing these organizations and social technologies share is that they all seek to create new social paradigms, to stand apart from legacy institutions of finance and care. My favorite people in crypto are those who want to leverage the technology for cultural change, emphasizing public goods and participatory governance. The community leaders, therapists, and founders who get in touch with me via Care Culture are similar: they see the broader cultural relevance of the models of care they’re experimenting with, and want to have a bigger impact on how health, spirituality, and community are integrated. They share a sense that the integration of these elements are key to healing social and civic life, and to the next generation of psychiatric practice.

Here is how I put the question being asked by all these parties: what role do therapists, coaches, healers, guides, clinicians, and other “helping professions” have to play in establishing new social forms—social forms which themselves heal, enliven, and strengthen the social fabric?

By researching how different people and communities answer this question, we may begin to understand the pattern languages and even design methodologies for these new institutions of care. Increasingly I see my role as encouraging these kinds of experiments. I want to help formalize and link these efforts together, building networks of learning between organizers.

A first necessary step is to categorize some of the hybrid organizations I’ve been seeing. It won’t be an exhaustive list, but just one taxonomy that might be helpful. Across community and spiritual leaders, alternative psychology folks, educators, and innovative community organizers, I’ve found that institutional prototypes are combinations of these four categories of social form. ⦿ Centers are physical community spaces with a healing focus. ⎈ Campuses network together spaces in the existing built environment under a new identity. ⌂ Parlors are private spaces of digital discourse. ✽ Practices connect people across space and time through sustained embodied activity.

To briefly explain my terminology, “place” refers to things localized in the physical realm, while “space” refers to the distributed nature of activities conducted over the internet. Many of the experiments of the last decade, from cryptonetworks to digital academies, have been in “space.” But as I argued in my Body Futurism talk, the exhaustion of software means place is once again coming to the fore. I’ve been visiting a lot of IRL retreats, clinics, churches, and community centers with burgeoning energy. And some of the most exciting new social forms I’ve seen are placemaking initiatives that congregate digital communities in the physical realm.

As for “centralized” and “decentralized,” I use these terms in a value-neutral way. In my years working in crypto and hanging out in artist and activist circles, I’ve seen that many people automatically assign virtue to “decentralization.” But for my purposes here, decentralized social architectures are simply those that aim to distribute authority, power, and responsibility across multiple actors. By contrast, centralized”= social forms, whether spiritual communities or health centers, are simply those which have clear points of authority, hierarchy, and control.

“Social form” **is the term I use to talk about all of these institutional prototypes. Social forms are structured architectures of behavior that determine the shape of social situations. The Brooklyn Public Library is an institution, but the public library itself is a social form. Social forms are the templates of social life: school classrooms, retreats, clinics, universities, art residencies, therapy sessions, mens and womens groups, camps, meditation centers, classes, salons, apprenticeships, sport clubs, fitness studios, and newfangled pop-up villages are just a sampling of the vast range of forms that make up our culture’s basic repertoire of social situations.

Why should new social forms play the pivotal role in cultural renewal, as opposed to institutional reform?

In recent years, technocratic centrists who identify with an “abundance and progress” agenda have made a compelling argument for increasing the speed and efficacy of existing institutions, through initiatives like improving NIH grant funding. Institutional reform is worthwhile and impactful, but challenging and capital-intensive. Many larger institutions have have become captured by rent-seeking bodies which have little incentive to change, like universities and for-profit hospitals encumbered by administrative bloat.

Geriatric and extractive institutions, however, are not the only areas of stagnation. Social forms themselves can themselves fall into disuse. Fraternal organizations and small-scale civic organizations in the US are two social forms indicative of this neglect: they played an important role in Tocqueville's America, but have little vitality today. In a report on civic associations, Lewis et. al describe how social media platforms have out-competed neighborhood associations, to be the “most representative layer of the governance stack.” In this media environment, additional financing isn’t sufficient restore civic organizations to centrality in social life. Their way of operating, programming, communications, and how they recruit and retain members all need updates to suit today’s language and media environment. When people don’t see themselves in these organizations, they don’t join them. I suspect this lack of fit shows up in other social metrics, such as declining participation in civic life, being outside, and marriage rates, not to mention grand narratives about loneliness and meaning crises.

As I have argued elsewhere, social programs aimed at “solving the loneliness epidemic” are only good at directing capital towards organizations with familiar shapes. They are ineffective at identifying what formal innovations will make these organizations adaptive for the contmporary milieu, or discovering what new social forms might fill that role. I believe that on-the-ground experimentation, and capital allocation across the social and commercial sectors, should be directed at these goals.

It might be countered that some social forms don’t need an update. Aren’t churches lindy? This ignores the fact that many churches are experimenting with modern communications strategies and updated programming today. Grace Cathedral opens itself to yoga, sound baths, and social justice work, keeping its core as an Anglican community church but meeting a wider array of seekers where they are.

Experimentation with social forms is thus a different route to cultural renewal, one which is more open to ingenuity from a wider range of actors. Socially minded designers, health professionals and practitioners, community builders, and small organizations can play a role in developing new templates for communal life that are better adapted to today’s cultural context. Where many existing interventions are couched in the pathological frameworks of “health” and “crisis,” prototyping novel ways to gather, learn, and heal is pragmatic and optimistic.

Let’s now look at four categories where such experimentation is taking place, and see how each is fostering different kinds of communion and care.