A quick note on weirdness points and Solstices [And also random other Solstice discussion]

The only extremely weird thing at the solstice was the constantly screaming and crying child that interrupted half of the presentations and was never taken outside of the building. It honestly ruined the entire celebration for me and made the whole thing extremely disappointing as an event I flew all the way into San Francisco to attend.

Extremely unlikely that people exist that aren't weirded out by Solstices in general but one song lyric is the straw that breaks the camel's back.

The recent East Bay solstice was my first one. (I'm not usually enthusiastic about rituals or very large social events where I don't know many people--but I do enjoy singing with friendly people, so I came as part of the choir.)

I was pleasantly surprised by how not odd it was. It felt quite a lot like other ritual-type events I've gone to--church services, memorial events, formulaic holiday celebrations, etc.: much reinforcing of common themes for the group and reference to shared values and oft-repeated material. It was not as in-groupy as I expected--I could have imagined taking a friend who was not part of the community and not needing to explain much about it; it was mostly appealing to the broadest part of the community rather than deep insider references. (And here I realize I still count myself as in the community even though my recent involvement is mostly passive!)

I also appreciated the group activity of writing down meaningful encouragements and posting them on the wall: it gave a sense of who was in the room and the chance to show the best parts of themselves--and something easily visible to make conversation with strangers about during breaks. It did remind me of the sort of activity you might do at a company retreat, but the better kind! I wouldn't mind seeing that repeated.

I wonder what part of these worries is really about "weirdness points", and what part is related to the "status-regulating emotions".

I mean, maybe it's not just "we are needlessly weird, which could make people stop taking us seriously", but also "having songs that take our beliefs as normal is a bit higher-status than we can afford... someone is going to punch us just to make sure we know our place and don't disrupt the social order".

Things that persistently work for me at Solstice:

• Having it happen at all.
• Group singing, particularly "Brighter Than Today" which has gotten to be pretty much the song of the season for me.
• Acknowledging and working with dark themes — cold, danger, extinction, loneliness — and facing them as a community and as humanity. This is a big part of what makes Solstice work as a ritual for me. I'm going to come in vaguely mopey and anxious but glad to see people; completely break down crying at least once during the ritual; hug a lot of people; reconnect with a community I don't see nearly as much as I should; and have an awesome night.

Things that seem like areas for improvement:

• Both events I went to this year had microphones cutting in and out. Even with experienced sound people involved, this still happens. It's easy for me to laugh off technical problems, but they still are disruptive.
• The Berkeley event seemed to have a lot of extra food. It's much better to overprovision than underprovision, but the error seemed pretty high. I found myself wondering if the dinner aspect of the event wasn't well publicized.
• Even with the suggested donation above the ticket price for the Berkeley event, the overall price was much less than I would be willing to pay. This is inefficient! Sure, I can add the extra to my end-of-year donations, but mumble mumble fuzzies and utilons mumble.

Things I don't like that didn't happen:

• "X Days of X-Risk". It wasn't in the Berkeley program this year, and honestly I had kinda forgotten about it until seeing this post. I find "Twelve Days of Christmas" annoying for being repetitious, and "of x-risk" is too many consonants to sing. It wouldn't have ruined it ... but I will gladly take "When I Die" over "X Days of X-Risk" any day.

Things I am not worried about:

• Cultiness. It is totally okay for Solstice to be the cultiest thing we ever do. It's certainly the cultiest thing I did all year.

And my impression is that people are only really weirded out by these songs on behalf of other people who are only weirded out by them on behalf of other people.

Coincidentally, I was thinking today about whether people upvote some LW articles because they felt really useful for them, or just because they believe they could be useful for other people. Another instance of a similar problem.

(Specifically, I was considering writing an article explaining some more or less high-school math. Because... well, people have random blind spots, so maybe this could actually help someone. It's an experiment, and I would get feedback in form of upvotes, right? And then I was like: oh crap, people could actually upvote this article even if it wouldn't be useful for anyone, just because everyone would be like: well, this is all obvious for me, but someone else will probably benefit from reading this.)

Is there a general solution? I guess in our culture, you could just tell people "please now express how you feel about the issue, ignoring your prediction of how other people will feel about it". Or perhaps create a poll containing options in the form of "I feel X, but I predict other people will feel Y".

In-jokes (and in-not-jokes) can signal both inclusion and exclusion; there's a difference between "you won't get this, you're not part of our group," and "you don't get this? Let us show it to you." Relevant XKCD.

In my own experience, people don't mind in-jokes as long as they feel like you're letting them in on the joke.

Comparative solsticeology: I helped organize the Seattle Solstice, and also attended the Bay Solstice. Both were really nice. A couple major observations:

The Seattle Solstice (also, I think, the New York one) had a really clear light-dark-light progression throughout the presentations, the Bay one didn't - it seemed like each speech or song was its own small narrative arc, and there wasn't an over-arching one.

Seattle's was also in a small venue where there were chairs, but most people sat on cushions of various size on the floors, and were quite close to the performers and speakers. The Bay's was on a stage. While the cushion version probably wouldn't work for a much larger solstice, it felt intimate and communal. (Despite, I think, ~100 attendees at Seattle. Not sure how many people came to the Bay one, ~150 marked themselves as having gone on Facebook but it seemed larger.)

I asked this in the open thread, but maybe it's more likely to be noticed here: Are the solstice events recorded and/or streamed? I've wanted to go but I'm too far away.

I really enjoyed the main East Bay solstice! Thanks to everyone who put it on.

I found it slightly off-putting that one of the performers seemed to take lots of joy in using lyrics different from those displayed on the screen. I can definitely see how this might be an honest error, but that's not how my gut felt. I felt like I (and the other audience members) were being very implicitly made fun of by not being allowed to know what lyrics would come next during the sing-along. I suspect that this sort of status game is negative sum, since lots of audience members can feel put down by it, while Critch is the only one who really benefits.

Other than that, I generally enjoyed the musical parts, and greatly appreciated the performers :)

Do people think that the singing of The Star-Spangled Banner at baseball games here in the US represents inappropriate ingroupiness? How about buying a sweater with my university's logo and cheering for their team at a football game?

It seems to me that ingroupiness has both costs and benefits. Ingroupiness facilitates the creation of group-wide public goods, promotes within-group cooperation, improves collective decisionmaking, makes it easier to accomplish large projects, satisfies the human need for community, etc. I wish there was a little more awareness that this is not a one-sided tradeoff.

And my impression is that people are only really weirded out by these songs on behalf of other people who are only weirded out by them on behalf of other people.

Be careful, though. How much of that is really "only weirded out on behalf of other people", and how much of it is "weirded out themselves, but think it would be more socially acceptable to claim to be weirded out on behalf of other people"? After all, being weirded out yourself may signal that you don't want to be part of the group. Being offended "on behalf of other people" is a way to express your offense while trying not to signal the wrong thing.

It seems like you shouldn't worry about songs that are getting a good reception potentially offending someone. Bad songs will bomb. Good songs will stick around.

Censors are canny. They figured out a long time ago that "Don't you dare free speech in that way because I order you not to!" wasn't a winner. So we moved onto "Don't you dare free speech in that way because it harms me in an unverifiable way", and then to "Don't you dare free speech in that way because it may at some point potentially harm someone, possibly".

Counterspell is if they really cared about speech hurting people they wouldn't be telling you not to sing, since after all that is speech and might potentially hurt you or someone else at some future date in some unspecified way. They are fine with that (and other songs that they aren't objecting to), because they don't actually believe that songs/speech hurt people. They just don't like the song, and are using a ruse to try to get you to fall in line by hijacking your "don't hurt people" belief.