A social movement that celebrates life and puts meaning and beauty at the center. Tired of predatory ideologies spreading fear, guilt, and resentment? Know there’s more to life than instrumentalizing yourself for some flat notion of “good”? Want to re-sacralize life, but don’t want a return to tradition? For everyone who hasn’t given up on existential hope.

I define a kind of business, website, or app we need more of, that I call “spaces”. Spaces are places that build community, trust, and connection between people. More spaces would help with “internet problems” like internet addiction, depression among teens, doom-scrolling, political polarization and outrage, etc, and would also build a stronger social fabric—institutions would function better, there’d be more state capacity, people would be more resilient in emergencies. Finally, more spaces might restart progress in science and democracy, which were designed as spaces but have been slowly re-fashioned (as what I call funnels).

I get nerdy about what it takes to make spaces, how to recognize them, and what kinds of policies, funding, etc would make more of them.