> My neighbors near my current home are basically randomly selected suburbanites.
I think that's an understated problem right there - suburbs are awful for fostering good relationships. Some suburbs have gone out of their way to have events like block parties - but most have no real common every-day interaction and the infrequency of common tasks like shifting grocery shopping to a once a week task and minimizing interactions outside of PTA meetings is really hurting our ability to form strong social bonds.
I live in a city so my neighbors are a metric ton of randomly selected folks who I pass often walking on the street and doing life tasks - additionally the population density is high enough that I have multiple different board game events hosted by stores and a plethora of choices for D&D groups to choose from. I think that density makes a very big difference.
Yeah. For all the hate density gets, living in e.g. Manhattan has made it really easy for me to find like minded friends. I live within like 10 minutes of millions of people so it would be weird if I couldn't connect with people locally. You just have to consciously try to speak to the same people, it's easy to float around and never see the same person twice.
In the summers I live in a real city with fair density (Berlin) and love talking to strangers, but even there the people directly in my building are mostly conservative immigrant families who give me dirty looks because I'm a man with hot pink hair.
I am pretty against neighbor relations these days. I spend a lot of energy and money maintaining relationships with my friends from the scenes in which I inhabit, who are in many different cities.
Conformity is not the most important virtue. I’ve been a weirdo my entire life, and if people are judgmental about me, that’s their failing, not mine. I bet most people on the spectrum know what I’m talking about.
Being friends with someone or generally getting along with them doesn't mean you have to "conform" with their views or lifestyle. That is something we seem to have lost as a culture in today's political environment.
99% of people out there aren't looking to get into a fight with you no matter how different you are. They aren't looking to change your views on things or have their own views changed. The sooner you accept that, the easier building new relations with them will be.
I have no problems meeting and talking to people. The person you insulted said that they were getting dirty looks because of their non-conformity. Somehow in your mind that became their fault.
What helped my suburban neighborhood come together was putting in a community garden. We have apple trees, thornless blackberry plants, grape vines, strawberry and blueberry plants, and a raised garden bed for everyone. People talk when they come down to weed, water, plant, etc. It gets people out of their houses in the evenings and gives a gathering place where we also host the block parties.
My opinion is every suburban neighborhood should be planed with a central community garden place.
That's good for gardeners. Maybe also a communal board game space, a communal maker space, a communal basketball court, and so on? We can perhaps put them together into a "community centre".
It turned out that even people who don't want to garden would come out and just hang out and talk around the garden. Most humans just like being around green growing things. Probably from millions of years of evolution.
I think that's an understated problem right there - suburbs are awful for fostering good relationships. Some suburbs have gone out of their way to have events like block parties - but most have no real common every-day interaction and the infrequency of common tasks like shifting grocery shopping to a once a week task and minimizing interactions outside of PTA meetings is really hurting our ability to form strong social bonds.
I live in a city so my neighbors are a metric ton of randomly selected folks who I pass often walking on the street and doing life tasks - additionally the population density is high enough that I have multiple different board game events hosted by stores and a plethora of choices for D&D groups to choose from. I think that density makes a very big difference.