I have recently been (re)reading Effective Altruism in the Garden of Ends, which is a great post on this forum about what you need to be a hardcore EA. And I'm on the agenda planning group for the (UK) Quaker Earthcare gathering this year, which is all about designing a gathering format to help people get Spirit-led on their climate doom. I've started thinking about what all this might imply about better EA community.
For context, I was first involved in EA in 2018, would describe myself as "relatively hardcore", and first got involved in Quakers in 2022. I ran off to Quakers to fix my mental health issues that were (partially) caused by EA. Rating: worked, cheaper than therapy, supports my moral ambitions, definitely 100% signed my life away to Quakers now.
Now, to clarify, my grandparents were Quakers, so this is me running off back to my ancestral faith, and there might be something about genetics in here as to why it works for me. But I solidly do believe that EAs are roughly some of the kind of people that it works for. And if you want to join a cult about your EA, it's a pretty good one.
Also Quakers as a faith has a lot of different interwoven parts that would go far beyond an EA Forum post, and I'm not going to pretend that it's all working great at the moment, but I'm going to try to describe the key points as an EA community-builder might see it - Meeting for Worship, being Spirit-led, and what fractal altruism might learn from Quaker Meeting structures.
What is Meeting for Worship?
Quakers are a Christian sect, but they don't go to church services. Instead they go to Meeting for Worship.
Worship is the response of the human spirit to the presence of the divine and eternal, to the God who first seeks us. The sense of wonder and awe of the finite before the infinite leads naturally to thanksgiving and adoration. 1967
Practically, when you get together in a group and are all silent and still for a bit (or a really long bit), a thing happens. Humour me for now and believe that it's either the actions of a theist God of infinite love reaching into the world to contact us or it's some nontheist concept about a mental switch for enabling optimal group coordination that's an evopsych leftover from when we were hunter-gatherers. For the purposes of this post, which is intended as a technical "how-to" document, I will not be engaging in theology arguments.
How to do Meeting for Worship:
10 minutes is about the minimum time, half an hour or an hour is more usual these days.
It has to be a group. You can just about do it with two, because it's something about perceiving not-aloneness. But three or more is pretty necessary, and there seems to be no real maximum group size - roughly, more goes harder.
It works better when you do it in a circle or circles, and either put a nice plant in the middle of the circle (if it's natural daylight) or a candle/some candles/a campfire in the middle (if it's night). Younger people seem to go more for night time, older people more for day time. Try not to go for electric lighting, but if you have to, make it high-quality light.
It works better in certain building architectures or on hills.
It works better if the place is silent or nearly silent, and has only natural noises (e.g. birdsong, water, flames). Kids babbling and people whispering seems fine, as does distant sounds of human activity.
It works better if you're already friends with at least some of the people in the circle. However doing it with people regularly does tend to make you into friends with people in the circle, so there's absolutely no issue with newcomers.
It works better if you've just done a bit of exercise, and/or have just eaten a shared meal together, or have just shaken hands with people or hugged them.
It works better if you're good at meditation and getting rid of your wayward surface thoughts, though it is not itself a meditation.
It works better if you centre down on whatever personal problem is deeply bothering you at the moment, rather than trying to clear your mind completely (as meditation tries to do).
It does actually work over a video call, though not as well.
I listened once to a super interesting spirituality lecture from someone who'd figured out you can make it work on the bus, and this was really helping them with their commute.
It works better if someone does some things just beforehand that are structured in ways to guide you into where exactly to put your attention.
This can be done using particular kinds of poetry and/or songs, particularly anything you find really beautiful.
It can also be done by people talking very deeply about their personal experiences, particularly anything you feel you really relate to as providing you clear life guidance.
It can be done by bringing up a very relevant, very pertinent question about an upcoming decision that needs to be made by the group. (in its pure form this is Meeting for Worship for Business which is a slightly different format).
The Experiment with Light prompts are quite good at doing it in manners that are repeatable and that anyone can say, and we've a variety of types that work for a variety of settings.
This is Quaker Meeting for Worship. Do it enough and it helps you get Spirit-led on your decisions.
In worship we have our neighbours to right and left, before and behind, yet the Eternal Presence is over all and beneath all. Worship does not consist in achieving a mental state of concentrated isolation from one’s fellows. But in the depth of common worship it is as if we found our separate lives were all one life, within whom we live and move and have our being. Thomas R Kelly, 1938
What does it mean to be Spirit-led?
Take heed, dear Friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts. Trust them as the leadings of God whose Light shows us our darkness and brings us to new life. Advices and Queries 1
So from a theist point of view, being Spirit-led is really easy to describe - the Spirit (that is, God the Holy Spirit) has led you into doing something. The entire point of Quakers as a Christian sect is to help people get Spirit-led on their decisions, so that the Spirit can go reach through them and enact a wider plan for the world. In the nontheist view, idk, something about group evopsych of hunter-gatherers, not the point of this post. But a lot of Quakers are nontheist and do it anyway, because if you commit to it, it does something which is real.
Okay, so if this is a practical thing that happens in actual life, what is it to be Spirit-led and how do you spot it? Quakers might respond with something like "we know it when we see it", which is intensely frustrating for newcomers. But getting good at Quakers does tend to involve getting very good at spotting it in other people, because if someone else's action is a Spirit-led one that could very well imply some things about what you're led to do.
Here's a list of points that I'd basically say categorise Spirit-led things.
- It is a reaction to having very deeply perceived something that seems to have come from beyond you. One of the easiest ways to get these perceptions is to do a Meeting for Worship (see above). There are definitely other ways (Quakers have a few others, other faiths clearly have their own that work). But Quakers is very much about figuring out cost-effective, repeatable and powerful methods so we can implement them as much as possible. As it is a reaction to a perception of the Spirit, Quakers will often call the resulting Spirit-led actions "witness".
- Spirit-led things tend to end up right at the top of your personal priority list in ways that can make other parts of your life seem unimportant. They activate you into doing stuff.
- It is something to do with enabling you to joyfully meet your deeply held personal commitments, and/or figure out what commitments you actually have or want to make.
- It is something to do with helping you find your place in the group in which you belong. Sometimes this is serving your group's aims, or the group serving you.
- It is something to do with getting you in contact with your personal wider life path.
- It is something to do with altruism more generally - Spirit-led things often involve willing sacrifices, which are consistently looked back on as "worth it" or actively celebrated for the ways they have improved your life as well as the lives of others.
- It definitely doesn't have to be Effective Altruism, but a lot of Effective Altruism looks pretty Spirit-led to me (and, indeed, a bunch of other Quakers). Thus I'm volunteering in principles-first EA community-building and going around calling it "witness". Everyone in Quakers basically agrees that's witness, and everyone in EA basically agrees that EA community-building is good, so it's all working out really nicely actually.
- Spirit-led things tend to be loving, truthful, and unifying. Exactly what the balance on this is varies wildly by what the thing is. But getting better at being loving, better at being truthful (scout mindset!) and better at being unifying are all very important parts of doing Quakers well. Some Quakers might say that the Spirit is what unifies the most loving and truthful parts of people.
All Truth is a shadow except the last, except the utmost; yet every Truth is true in its kind. It is substance in its own place, though it be but a shadow in another place (for it is but a reflection from an intenser substance); and the shadow is a true shadow, as the substance is a true substance. Isaac Penington, 1653
- Not everyone is Spirit-led to do the same things. This is because being Spirit-led is actually something about groups. Therefore, Quakers don't actually have to come into agreement in order to acknowledge the Spirit-ledness of something.
- It is something to do with experiential learning from the examples of other people. Spirit-led things tend to "echo" quite a bit. You're sort of perceptually drawn to them expressed through others in verbal or written word (especially in an environment like Meeting for Worship).
- This means that doing Spirit-led things tends to get you friends who would like to learn from you. This is (roughly) why Quakers is formally known as the Religious Society of Friends, and below the surface of seeming very solemn in Meeting for Worship can end up ridiculously friendly.
I should also note that Spirit-led things seem to have absolutely zero guarantee of personal safety, or legality. "A sacrifice perceived as worth it" definitely stretches to an arrest record, and sometimes to suffering and death. So that's one to watch out for if you're going to commit hard to this framework, although it doesn't come up quite so much these days. But I am actively designing the agenda for a gathering where people will be attending to shore up their moral convictions so they can continue to get themselves arrested on acts of climate protest, so it's something I've been thinking about.
"There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thoughts to any other."
James Nayler, 1660, a few hours before his death, after various arrests, jail sentences, and being shot by a highway robber
Testimony
Quakers don't have a fixed scripture they work with and will only sometimes use the Bible (most Quakers would definitely say that Jesus was very Spirit-led, though). If you're going around doing Spirit-led things, you're allowed to write some new scripture (testimony) on what the Spirit is like, because the whole point of scripture is to help others get Spirit-led. I've put some testimony in italics through this post. I would consider Effective Altruism in the Garden of Ends to be a pretty great testimony, as is The Goddess of Everything Else for that matter. This is because I see those things, and I really feel that the person who made those things made them because they saw the same thing I see quite a lot these days, and I really appreciate their attempts to interpret it in whatever framework makes sense to them, because maybe it'll help others see it.
I want to list ten controlling principles for the outward expression of simplicity. They should not be viewed as laws but as one attempt to flesh out the meaning of simplicity into twentieth-century life. First, buy things for their usefulness rather than their status. Second, reject anything that is producing an addiction in you. Third, develop a habit of giving things away. De-accumulate. Fourth, refuse to be propagandised by the custodians of modern gadgetry. Fifth, learn to enjoy things without owning them. Sixth, develop a deeper appreciation for the creation. Seventh, look with a healthy scepticism at all ‘buy now, pay later’ schemes. Eighth, obey Jesus’ injunction about plain, honest speech. Ninth, reject anything that will breed the oppression of others. Tenth, shun whatever would distract you from your main goal. Richard J Foster, 1979
EA (as a committed life path) very clearly has a problem where it's half a religion, and it doesn't know what the other half is, and I actually think there could be a lot of other halves. Some EAs talk about constructing fractally altruist communities to support them in their EA-ing.
I'm fine, because I have a fractally altruist community. It's Quakers, that is Lancaster Meeting (or Lancashire Central and North Area Meeting, or Britain Yearly Meeting, or Quakers itself, at whatever geography of the fractal you want). I can go get coffee after Meeting for Worship each week with someone who ran an extreme poverty direct cash transfer charity for decades. Or I can go chat with a really accomplished storyteller about the best way to adapt The Goddess of Everything Else into a campfire story and gripe about EAs being poor at metaphor interpretation. Or indeed, I can go chat with any one of fifty other people about anything in my life. And someone's always helping run sessions for the kids (I ran one about the smallpox vaccine once, we put a load of dots on). As a faith we basically keep picking up people who want to be committedly altruistic in some way and want underlying spiritual/community support on enabling their life to be like that. I think that's how a fractally altruistic community needs to work to not fall apart, even if you don't use the central Quaker method of "getting Spirit-led via Meeting for Worship".
I think that, even if you don't want to just sign up to Quakers rather than reinvent Quakers, how Quaker structures actually work is going to provide some practical advice on fractal altruism. So here goes:
- Meeting for Worship is a really powerful and flexible method for getting people to attach, hard and fairly securely, into the same community, while living their lives in the wider world. If you want a fractal altruist community, you need to know clearly what your method is.
- Quaker Meetings run themselves mostly through a distributed set of volunteer-done internal jobs, and sort processes to allow that to be effective and fun enough to happen. Paid staff, where around, are limited to fixing administrative matters that need to be reliable and repeatable.
- There's a group (we call them Nominations) whose internal job is to collectively befriend everyone in the community and work out what those people's spiritual leadings are, and then get together to match them up as best as possible with any internal jobs the community feels needs doing. We have a somewhat ritualistic process for talking to Nominations, where if we refuse to do something we tell them if it's because we're unwilling or unable (or both), so they know what to get us with in future. We also have to commit to being nice to Nominations, and very genuinely consider saying yes to their requests, because they know a lot.
- We separate spiritual support (Elders) and non-spiritual support (Pastoral). They talk to each other, but they are known to do different things. This is because the person who is low-key trying to make you more Spirit-led on stuff really should not be the same person who is trying to check on you and provide life support if necessary, even if you have a genuine life commitment that you want to be getting more Spirit-led. In EA parlance, this is something about having clear boundaries separating impact assistance and personal support.
- The community bonds itself through showing up fairly consistently to one thing, plus having a newsletter read out at/ emailed after that thing containing all the other possible things people in the community are running or going to, so that you too can go to them with people. If it's doing it right, this might end up a large degree of your social time, because the activities therein tend to be high-quality and don't cost much.
- We rotate people through internal jobs every three years (or so) in order that we have a lot of all-rounder knowledge in the community, while still giving people time to really get to grips with what the job is and teaches them.
True godliness don’t turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it, and excites their endeavours to mend it: not hide their candle under a bushel, but set it upon a table in a candlestick. William Penn, 1682
Conclusion
I hope this post is in some way helpful, or at least gives pointers to EA community-builders. If you want to chat to me about it in-person, you should skip out on EAGx Oxford and come to Quaker Earthcare https://www.trybooking.com/uk/FYIS , which is not only for Quakers, is in Lancaster Meeting House 25th-27th September 2026, costs £40 if you're 35 or under, involves sleeping on a campmat in the Meeting House. It has an EA meetup at because I'm sick and tired of pretending that all the EA Quakers I know are somehow less Quakers for being EA rather than more Quakers. I will cook you a bunch of great vegan food. And then you can tell me in the feedback session if you think Quaker Earthcare helped you get Spirit-led on your climate doom, EA doom, or anything at all really.
Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come, that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one. George Fox, 1656
