Strangers Talking: A recurring focus group from Social Cohesion Lab.

Episode 1: "Are you doing OK?”

By Social Cohesion Lab

Social Cohesion Lab (a nonpartisan production company using media to bridge divides) brought together six Americans from different walks of life to have a conversation about how they’re doing. The main thing they agreed on? The importance of community and the struggle to find it.

**These six Americans are ideologically, geographically and culturally different, but they all agreed about the value of community in their lives.**

Focus groups offer a useful way to get a vibe-check on how people feel. It’s a kind of opinion poll that is less about being statistically representative, and more about having conversations with real people, to get into questions and ideas more deeply than phone or online surveys. It can be intimate, awkward, and sometimes moving.

Usually a focus group will be, well, focused, on a specific question, and related to opinions about a specific product, policy or person. Do you like this politician? Or this sitcom? Do you think this new technology will be helpful, do you like this toothpaste’s packaging etc. In this first focus group designed and facilitated by Social Cohesion Lab, we wanted to start with a simple but hugely dense question: “Are you doing OK?”

The question is broad, and we expected a range of drifting conversations — perhaps with less definitive conclusions. This isn’t as helpful to political consultants crafting campaign messages or to someone selling toothpaste, but it offers a unique opportunity to take the pulse of a group of people who don’t have any shared agenda and who don’t know each other or us, to talk about how their lives are going, what’s working, what’s not, and what they spend their time thinking about.

If you enjoy “Strangers Talking”, please consider supporting our work at Social Cohesion Lab by subscribing or donating. Our goal is to release a new focus group regularly. The overarching mission of Social Cohesion Lab is to use media to bridge divides and we think that this format offers a lot of opportunity for revealing the shared humanity in a wide range of people at various stages of their lives. Upcoming episodes will focus on specific groups, like retired people in the South, religious observers under age 40 or new college graduates. Today’s session is simply an ideologically diverse group of 6 working adults from all over the US. We hope you find meaning in what they have to say. We definitely did.

Participants:

**Meet Nick, Sarah, Joe , Erika, Alex and Paul**

Facilitator (Ben Stillerman, Social Cohesion Lab):

Today is about getting a sense of the daily life of a cross-section of adults in the United States. We have people on this call with quite different lives. So your first question, an easy one, I'd love to hear how you start your day, what the first hour of your day looks like?

*Erika, 34, Alabama:*

Most of the anxiety in my area is directly related to the federal government. We have a lot of federal employees and federal government adjacent employees in our area, so everyone's freaking out just directly related to exactly what's happening in D.C. We live so close to it.

*Joe, 37, New York:*

I live kind of in the middle of the woods, so I'm a little secluded. Running out to do stuff in the morning is not much of an option. So mostly my mornings are, wake up, get to the coffee. I'm lucky enough to work for a winery. So we're not open till noon every day. So I can take my time in the mornings and really just sort of enjoy myself.

*Nick, 41, Missouri:*

I'd like to consider myself a full time artist, but unfortunately I do have a full time job as well. I work from home. So the first hour of my day until the minute I get on the computer to do my job is laying in bed. I have two cats and one of them likes to sleep in my armpit. So as long as she's there, I'm in bed. And if she doesn't get up before 2 minutes before I have to be at work, then I'm forced to make an executive decision.

Facilitator:

Let's talk about the key people in your life, your core people. They could be family, friends, they could be colleagues, community members.

*Sarah, 43, Washington DC:*

So I’ve got two sisters and we text and Marco-Polo daily and I have a colleague that I see and chat with pretty frequently, and then I've got two or three dear friends who I make it a point to talk to frequently and see even just once a month. But my sisters are my people. Those are my best friends. And my husband and the kids.

*Alex, 34, Kentucky:*

That’s something I think about on a very regular basis about how I just feel very fortunate that I have a lot of really good core people in my world.

*Alex, 34, Kentucky:*

I'm also pretty close to my family. So my mom, my dad and I have a sister who's married and she has three kids. I love being the fun uncle to them. I have a pretty large extended family. My mom is one of seven. I have something like twenty first cousins and for the most part we're all pretty decently close. We not see each other every month anymore, but we're always talking to each other.

*Joe, 37, New York:*

I've got a really close knit group of friends that I've known since, you know, six or eight years old. Half of them are programmers. So our group chat is on Slack, but we talk every day about all kinds of stuff.

Facilitator:

I'd love to know a little more about people's childhood.

*Erika, 34, Alabama:*

I was called an oddball because I love telling stories, I loved writing especially and that stuff. I'm a writer today, so I guess I would say it's really a hard time line to pinpoint because I never really changed from the core of who I was as a little girl.

*Nick, 41, Missouri:*

I couldn't play sports. I was extremely out of shape. But my competitive nature came out when a very specific example, in third grade we had a writing assignment and I thought, I got it because I wrote six pages and this girl in my class wrote 17 and she killed it. And that was a very specific time. I can remember getting angry because I thought this was the only thing I had and she took it.

Facilitator:

Did you write “I yam who I yam” on the demographic poll?

Facilitator:

So I'm going to ask everyone to tap into a bit of a philosophical mode. And it's one of the core questions we're trying to get at, about your satisfaction with your day to day life, with the day to day routines of being an adult. And I'm just looking for a gut reaction to start. Who here feels fairly satisfied or very satisfied with their day to day life?

**Two hands up, two so-so’s, and two hands down**

*Joe, 37, New York:*

That's a difficult question to answer, but, you know, nothing's ever perfect. You've heard the cliche of the person that changed their life. Sold all their stuff. I was one of those people. I was working in software marketing at the time and just really did not like how things were going. So I quit my job, grew my hair out, moved to the woods and met some new people. I made some decisions to try to intentionally drown out some of the noise that was not beneficial to me. I was living full time in between Manhattan, Brooklyn and Jersey City over the last 15 years. So this is kind of a stark difference for me, and I think it's just been sort of being intentional about what I want out of this world and what my day to day life would be like.

*Nick, 41, Missouri:*

I've been trying to write my role, write my story, and I'm dissatisfied in the sense that I'm not there yet. And I feel the ticking of time. And there’s gray in my beard that wasn't there. And the more grays show up in my beard, the more I'm like, I can see physically that I'm running out of time. So it's really just like a mini version of a midlife crisis, I guess, where I need to put the pedal to the metal.

Facilitator:

Paul, what’s your work?

*Paul, 29, Texas:*

I'm an engineer and I'm in the electric utility space and I design high voltage power lines for major utilities.

Facilitator:

So that's why you got to keep your hair short in case you touch something electric?

*Paul, 29, Texas:*

Yeah. I mean, the funny thing is that there used to be a policy, especially on chemical refineries, you have to trim your beard. To have a mask. And I always tell them, don't send me there because I'm leaving before I trim the beard.

Facilitator:

What would you all say your biggest concern is for the future? What is it that you spend the majority of your time wondering about or worrying about? It could be at a personal level or it could be kind of at a wider general level.

*Joe, 37, New York:*

I live in New York, which is generally a left-leaning state, but I also live in a very rural area. So it's a pretty mixed place politically. And one of the things that concerns me is the lack of communication and respect that people show each other. And I feel like that's something that has become a big problem where people just aren't willing to talk and listen, not necessarily even on politics.

Facilitator:

See a lot of nods there.

*Erika, 34, Alabama:*

The word empathy, I guess, is something I think about a lot. I feel like we are going in a direction where more and more people think about their own greatest good instead of the greatest good. And, you know, I consider myself a very empathetic person, so I try to see and feel other people's perspectives. And yeah, self preservation is real out here, especially for some demographic of people that unfortunately end up fighting these fights for the greatest good a lot.

*Paul, 29, Texas:*

On a personal level, I'm most concerned if I am going to be able to provide my future family a lifestyle that my current family provided to me, you know? And so on a societal level, I think my biggest concern is as the years progress, it's like we move further away from that sense of community and, and if we go far enough away, there's almost a point of no return. And so that's why I think you have a lot of people suffering on their own, because we've kind of done away with the community, you know.

*Sarah, 43, Washington DC:*

Personally… cheesy, retirement. Can we even do it? And then I would echo everything that everybody else said. I think like on a systemic level, it's that isolationism. There's a loneliness epidemic and it just breaks my heart. Yeah, the community piece is exactly what I'm worried about.

*Nick, 41, Missouri:*

My biggest concern is, I guess the simplest way to say this is the systematic dumbing down of society, which allows the influx of misinformation because nobody is going out to research. It makes it a Thunderdome situation where everyone's just doing what they need to do to get famous and rich quickly because everyone's got the same concern. Am I going to be able to survive tomorrow if I don't make all the money that I can today? Will there be anything for me left? And it's made us selfish by necessity. And then that's where it mirrors what everyone else has said. There's no empathy, there's no community. Because we're moving at a speed that no human was meant to sustain.

Facilitator:

If I ask you to imagine that being an adult is kind of a low-grade battle, who are the enemies in that battle? Who's on the other side of you, trying to get in your way of achieving satisfied adult-ness?

*Alex, 34, Kentucky:*

Anyone who has an opposing viewpoint that it's hard to have a conversation with is probably a daily battle.

*Joe, 37, New York:*

You know, I don't want to say technology is the bane of humanity, because it's obviously done a lot of great things for us, but it's a very mixed bag and I think that we're not good at paying attention to that.

*Sarah, 43, Washington DC:*

So my funny answer is that my battle is the stomach. Because, my God, I have two teenage boys. And the fact that we need to eat this often is just, it just takes so much time and effort and it's really annoying. That's the one that really is my daily battle.

*Paul, 29, Texas:*

We fight our own laziness. But I think the best part is we have our own agency and responsibility of our choices.

Facilitator:

I'd love you to take a moment, you can even close your eyes for 10 seconds or something. And I'd love you to picture for yourself a full, complete life, and describe it.

*Erika, 34, Alabama:*

It's just being loved and being able to love others and being authentic.

*Joe, 37, New York:*

I actually have a very specific image of this from my own history. So my parents had my brothers and I very young, in their early 20s. So I was lucky enough to know a bunch of my great grandparents. The idea of satisfaction has always kind of stuck with me because I have this very specific image of my great grandfather in his 80s. I think it was a Christmas and we're all in his living room. And my great grandma, his wife had passed years before at this point. And I remember being there as a kid and seeing him in his chair, in his living room with the dog by his left hand, and with a Manhattan in his other hand. I don't think he'd even spoken to anyone in an hour, but he's surrounded by his nieces and nephews and kids and grandchildren and great grandchildren. And he's just sitting there with a small smile on his face, just absorbing it. I have that very specific image and that's always stuck with me.

Facilitator:

How far away or near would you say you are to this full, complete life?

**Life satisfaction by eyeballing it. Hands at the edge of the frame is far from satisfaction, hands together is complete satisfaction. Alex needs a wider camera lens.**

Facilitator:

What kind of connections do you have with your community?

*Paul, 29, Texas:*

I try to get to know everyone in my immediate vicinity, so neighbors, start from there. Then I mainly only shop in my community. I want to really strive to be a part of what's happening in my immediate vicinity, you know?

*Sarah, 43, Washington DC:*

My kids are in school, so we're part of the school system in that way. But most of my friendships and connections are really not tied to this area. So my community is really not geographically driven. I've been here for eight and a half years. It's the longest I've ever lived anywhere, and I feel like I just figured out that I like *actually live here* a couple of years ago. I was like, ‘oh, we're still here.’ Cool.

Facilitator:

Do people find themselves having conversations with others about ideological questions, or are people sort of avoiding those kinds of conversations?

*Nick, 41, Missouri:*

It seems like the only way you can have those conversations is inside an echo chamber. And the conversations should have been had a decade ago. And if people were not having those conversations then because it was uncomfortable, they're definitely not having them now because it's even more uncomfortable because it comes with an ‘I Told You So’ addendum.

Facilitator:

How are the people that you’re around emotionally, mentally, psychologically doing?

Facilitator:

Just by a show of hands, who here would characterize the people that you are around as having a sense of concern or uneasiness?

*Sarah, 43, Washington DC:*

Most of the anxiety in my area is directly related to the federal government. We have a lot of federal employees and federal government adjacent employees in our area, so everyone's freaking out just directly related to exactly what's happening in D.C. We live so close to it.

*Nick, 41, Missouri:*

I think over the last couple of decades people have become so focused on every problem in the world that when it comes to a head like it is right now, that people are finally recognizing that, holy crap, maybe I can't solve everything all at once at the risk of losing my mind completely. Let me just focus on local. And a lot of people are just like throwing their hands up and going, I care for who I care about. Let me just affect what I can. And there's nothing else I can do.

*Paul, 29, Texas:*

I would say my friends are very upbeat people. And so we always see things as more upside than downside, you know, and to us no matter what really happens, we don't really make it out alive anyways. But with that being said, as long as we are, we feel like we're progressing in life.

Facilitator:

Tell us what's going well for adults around you, whether they're friends or community members?

*Erika, 34, Alabama:*

I think this time is forcing a beautiful creative revolution for independent artists.

*Alex, 34, Kentucky:*

I think this is a time where people are relying more on their community to get through various situations. So it's kind of bringing about a deeper sense of those connections.

Facilitator:

Hands up if you're feeling optimistic about the potential for your immediate community, or the people in your life, to do better than the generation that came before them?

Facilitator:

How do you feel the country is doing at the moment?

**No one says the country is doing well. Not a huge surprise.**

Facilitator:

Let’s compare that with the question we asked at the beginning of this conversation where I asked about your satisfaction with your own life, which felt a little bit more positive than that response we just got. Where's the divide happening between personal satisfaction and satisfaction with the state of the country?

*Nick, 41, Missouri:*

I feel really fortunate that I'm in a position where my parents were extremely diligent and they set up a framework of success that I don't have to worry about where I live. But the reason that I said thumbs down is because I recognize that there are a lot of communities in this country that don't have the the parents that I have, they didn't have those parents. That generation didn't have the opportunity to get that leg up, to brace against the impact that we're in now. There are a lot of people that are just struggling to bring themselves up from the gutter, and that gutter is just getting deeper.

*Erika, 34, Alabama:*

I have a rare quick answer. In my personal life. I'm in control of my choices that lead toward satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The federal government has done things that directly impact those choices for me, a.k.a my ability to consent to children.

*Sarah, 43, Washington DC:*

I just feel that in the country right now, we do not have the voices of the people represented as well as I think they should be. And the systems that are in place haven't created the representation that they should have.

Facilitator:

As we near the end, I'd love to hear reflections on something in your life that you feel proud of. It could be something on a personal level or it could be something all the way up to a global or national level, something that you've done or something that you're a part of.