Thoughts on New Political Communities by Matt Prewitt

Matt Prewitt argues that new community initiatives such as Zuzalu and "Network States" should be judged by how well they build social coherence, which he treats as a kind of technology that measures progress in other domains. He sorts advocates into affinity-communitarians, individualist-escapers and responsible experimenters, and says each group has distinct ways of failing. Prewitt holds that storytelling, art and wisdom traditions were early tools of human cooperation, and that efforts to build clearer shared stories deserve the same support as other technical work. The excerpt ends mid-discussion of involuntary associations and shared obligations.