Finding your Aristotelian friends

beyond platonic friendships

de Young Museum — May 2024

At the turn of the century, American political scientist Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone, a book that took a hard look at the state of the American community. He sounded the alarm that since the 1960s, American participation in clubs and civic associations had declined precipitously. While Americans were bowling more than ever before, membership in bowling leagues was dwindling, a symptom of the broader unraveling of American communities.

Most of us have felt the weight of navigating life in the face of the loneliness and meaning crisis, but I’d argue that the tragedy isn’t just in losing connection to organizations like churches, rotary clubs, civic groups, and neighborhood associations that once served as the bedrock of American life — it’s that we’ve lost our ability to find our Aristotelian friends.

When we consider friendship, most of us think of Plato’s concept of platonic friendship — a close bond between two people who share no romantic or sexual attraction. Few of us think of it in terms of Aristotelian friendship.

In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle identified three forms of friendship:

1. Friendships of utility: relationships that hinge on mutual benefit with an explicit gain to be made from one another, often in the form of a business partnership

2. Friendships of pleasure: what we think of as platonic friendship where pleasure is the root of the relationship and the bond exists to experience shared interests or hobbies

3. Friendships of virtue: relationships of mutual respect, admiration, and a shared commitment to cultivating one another’s moral and intellectual development

While the first two forms of friendships fade with time as tastes evolve and life circumstances shift, he believed that friendships of virtue prevail and regarded this bond as the highest form of connection.

In modern day, most of our friendships form from the very foundation of life circumstance — as a result of going to the same school, having a mutual friend, working at the same company, or living in the same neighborhood.

When we place ourselves in less serendipitous spaces like the clubs, associations, and churches of our past, we find ourselves with less opportunities to connect with people who might resonate with us on the moral or intellectual level.

Shared membership to a club begins as a relationship centered around a common interest. Most communities have requirements for new joiners which serve as a mechanism to identify people who are a good fit for the community. And, at a minimum, interest groups attract people who share common curiosities: a first pass filter that doesn’t otherwise exist in bonds formed out of circumstance. It’s from that seed of a common curiosity where a friendship of virtue can grow and flourish.

One could argue that having the ability to reach out to anyone on the internet is a form of serendipity — and it certainly has been the root of several of my meaningful friendships — but it takes a lot of activation energy. For most people, it’s far easier to consume content online than use it as a playground to find Aristotelian friends.

It’s not that we don’t need friends of utility and pleasure. We can certainly find meaning and fulfillment in those relationships, but friendships of virtue are equally important to cultivate. The path to finding those friends is less obvious and requires far more intention.

For many of us, our structured intellectual pursuits end with our undergraduate or graduate degree. Once we’ve closed the chapter on our formal education, we head off to the workforce and find our lives centered around work, family, and our existing networks. As we age, the size of our social networks tend to peak in our mid-20s then gradually decline thereafter. We have fewer opportunities to find and cultivate new relationships deeply rooted in a shared intellectual development.

At the root of this tragedy is the ways our individual and societal priorities have shifted over the last few decades — away from engaging in this type of exploration beyond our university years. On average, we’re working more to meet the demands of rising economic pressure and placing more of our identity into what we do for work. At the same time, the hours we may have spent in the evenings and weekends socializing at local clubs — a reprieve from daily work stresses — have given way to more time scrolling through social media or binge-watching the latest series.

Local churches, associations, and social clubs used to serve as the large centralized communities that picked up the role in helping us navigate our curiosities and lives after formal education ended. In their decline, we’ve seen a new wave of niche organizations emerge alongside a rise in microcultures. Whereas traditional institutions once functioned as hubs for civic engagement, our modern day organizations are more decentralized, made possible by our digital social networks.

While this fragmentation is at the root of the rise of polarization, the benefits are a far wider range of ways to engage, find community, and express our curiosities. The decentralized model allows us to personalize the ways we want to engage civically and intellectually, building communities that align more deeply with our interests.

Across the US, we’ve seen a new wave of communities and clubs taking shape.

From third spaces:

• In San Francisco: The Commons, The Center, Alchemy Springs, The San Francisco Zen Center, Manny’s, Noisebridge, Baba’s House (Oakland), Alembic (Berkeley)

• In New York: Verci, Merlins Place

To weekly and pop-up communities:

• In San Francisco:

  SF Writing Club
  ,
  SF Contemplarium
  , Conscious Tech Collective, Board Walks

• In Austin: Board Walks

• In New York: Reading Rhythms

To friends who are engineering their own neighborhood serendipity:

• In the Bay Area: Radish

• In New York: Fractal Collective

• Co-living communities across the world via

  Supernuclear

To organizations making IRL community building and living near friends easier:

• In the Bay Area: BuildIRL, Live Near Friends

If you live in certain cities, there is likely no shortage of places and communities to meet new people and stumble upon your Aristotelian friends, but if you don’t live in one of these cities or find resonance in what exists, what might you do in lieu of joining one of these third spaces or clubs?

In an upcoming essay, I’ll share some ideas on how to build a club centered around your curiosities and creating an intellectual stimulating environment inspired by a few friends, the clubs at The Commons, and Benjamin Franklin’s junto group.

Thanks for reading! How have you cultivated Aristotelian friends in your life? What questions do you have?

Let me know in the comments or say hi on Twitter :)

Thanks to Ryan for reviewing an initial draft of this essay.