When the Mesh of Our Community Is Strong

By Ariel Brooks

“Underlying all of the [disease] outbreaks, and even gun and opioid deaths, is a common theme: a declining sense of mutual responsibility among Americans. If the population could be analogized to a single human body, then its immune system would rely on a concert of action and purpose between each cell. When that concert stops, the body dies.”- How America Got so Sick, Vann R. Newkirk II, Atlantic March 2026

Like many Americans, I had a rough case of the flu in January 2026. Days into fever dreaming and boredom, recovered just enough to prop my computer on my lap, I reflected on the way sickness forces us out of rhythms and routines, and brings clarity. As our bodies feel terrible, and we turn energy towards survival, our focus narrows: What do we need to do to stay warm and hydrated? What can wait and what absolutely must happen? What resources and reserves - internal and external - can we draw on to support recovery?

For those who have been following my fascination with the physical interstitium, and the beautiful metaphor it provides for social relationships, you won’t be surprised to hear that I find applicability here as well. (As a reminder, or if this is your first introduction to the term, the physical interstitium is an organ system comprised of “small fluid-filled spaces that cushion organs, move nutrients and help clear waste; supported by a framework of tissue that keeps everything connected and balanced.”)

Among many essential roles, when we’re sick or wounded, the body’s interstitium serves as a channel for both information flow and immune response. It’s the “highway” that carries distress signals from wounded cells, or those under attack from viruses and bacteria, and enables immune cells to travel where they are needed. When our interstitium is damaged, our capacity to heal (let alone flourish) is reduced. The same applies to the web of relationships that make up our social interstitium. 

When the mesh of our communities are strong (family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, healers), our bodies and networks know what to do and all we need to prioritize is rest. We ride the dozing waves and strange time warps of daytime bedrest. We’re exhausted – but not afraid. Support rolls in to cover the essentials while we’re laid up - soup, cough drops, Netflix recommendations, someone else to do the laundry. Eventually, without too much trauma or drama, we turn the corner and start feeling better. 

To point out the suboptimal alternative: when our relationship matrix is injured, we stumble through actions that impede our healing. We inhale frigid air into bruised lungs because there is no one else to take the dog out; blearily wade through kiddo’s bedtime routines when germs rip through the house and we’re all sick together; and embark on DayQuil-fueled bus rides to work with searing headaches, because we alone are responsible for paying the bills and keeping the heat on. 

On a tour at Historic Deerfield (a village-scale museum of early colonial New England history) I learned that before we understood germ theory, people dying of tuberculosis in colonial New England were brought down to the kitchen where they were rocked in enormous cradles by the fire so they could be part of social fabric until the end. Now the sick are most often segregated - cut out of the community web for their own and everyone’s protection. 

It’s another example of the ways we are hyper-fixated on individualism at the cost of collectives. What if, in the COVID-19 pandemic, we’d invested as much in understanding herd immunity and bolstered immune systems as we did in mass production of disposable personal protective equipment, strict isolation or flagrant congregating, and angrily dismissing the perspectives of folks on the other side of the political aisle? Might we have avoided the terrible fates of millions of deaths, years of learning loss and lonely childhoods, increased alcoholism, and fragilized immune systems that were susceptible to intense infection when we emerged from lockdown? Might we understand and be working towards strengthening our individual and collective immune systems to avoid the next pandemic through strong societal health, rather than getting sidebarred by bizarre ideological wars over vaccines? 

Having mused about these ideas during flu-recovery, I was thrilled to come across the concept of “social immunocompetence” in a surprising place - an Economist article about ants! The author defines social immunocompetence as “the ability of an organism to use social interactions and behaviors to enhance immunity and control infection.” Apparently, ants are pretty great at this. What would it take for humans to become better at this as well? 

I join many others advocating for restored kinship in families and communities, so that everyone has a web of people to help care for them in hard times. But the social interstitium metaphor, and the idea of social immunocompetence go a step further. Both highlight the inherent interdependence of our world, whereas our dominant political and economic systems focus on competition and transactionality. 

Whether we look at the spread and impact of microplastics, youth depression or gun violence, our overculture encourages a “watch out for yourself first and only” approach. The powers that be have put an enormous amount of research time and venture capital into solving problems for individuals - from fancy water filters, to prescription drugs and biometric weapons locks. 

These approaches are more often successful at making stockholders rich than they are at reversing epidemic challenges, and they take focus and resources away from exploring communal hypotheses and solutions. 

Wired journalists illuminate one such example: Parkinson’s disease is likely caused by a cleaning solvent - trichlorethylene, or TCE - that can become an invisible toxin in regional water supplies. Despite mounting evidence, this link was missed for years because more than 50% of funding was funneled to genetic (individual-focused) research rather than looking for community-level explanations. 

Putting a finer point on things, Relationality authors (Escobar, Osterweil and Sharma) argue, “we are being actively defutured, for as we rush to secure our individual short-term futures under capitalism, we erode the possibility of a longer-term future for us all.”

What perspective shifts could support us to tend to collective solutions over individual ones? To focus on healing not just individual cells, but whole bodies; not just individual humans, but whole communities? 

This sounds simple, but actually requires that we overcome generations of reinforcement that ‘survival of the fit’ is a sacred truth; years of participation in meritocratic races to outcompete our peers; and daily attention shift away from airbrushed consumption culture ‘self-care’ memes. 

Our work with Interstitia illuminates the social interstitium metaphor to help people perceive the webs of interconnection we are embedded in – whether we like it or not – and then practice towards healthier relationships, not just with those emotionally closest to us, but with a broader network of neighbors. 

A lot has been written about the challenge of the loneliness epidemic, and how essential it is for all of us to rebuild matrices of personal support. These are the dog walkers and soup-bringers we know and can call in an emergency. The shoulders we can cry on when personal tragedy strikes. Collective immunocompetence builds on these webs of direct connection, and it requires a broader sense of reciprocal responsibility to the neighbors and strangers our actions impact without our knowing. 

It can feel impossible to pour into the pool of community and collective wellbeing when the ground is so dry that it sucks up all of the care and resources offered and shares nothing in return. Right now, the systems we rely on - from health care to food supply chains to interstate bridges - are breaking down. When our doctor’s office calls to cancel our regular check up again, or the store is sold out of eggs, there is a strong instinct to retreat into self-protective dens and stockpile (metaphorical and literal) nuts to try to survive the dark winter. 

And yet, from the triumph of Minneapolis’s aggressive neighborliness in the face of state violence, to the grassroots campaign strategies that helped Mamdani win his seat as Mayor of New York City, one signal from the last year is that we have to try anyway. 

For 2026, my daily focus has been trying to increase the proportion of time I show up in community with a generous presence.This is material - increasing charitable donations to local community groups and going over to shovel snow for elderly neighbors - but it’s also emotional. I am smiling more at strangers in the grocery store, reaching out to acquaintances when they pop into my mind, and sending extra thank you notes. 

It’s not easy. I often slip into my own urgency or frustration. But when I do manage to show up in an intentionally generous way, the interactions feel disproportionately meaningful. It feels like one small way to heal the damaged connective tissue of our communities - like the interstitium flowing immune cells towards bruises and papercuts. 

What if waves of these small but intentional actions added up to communities with the equivalent of kick-ass immune systems, so that when germs, storms and cancerous ideas swept through, we staved off infection or recovered quickly? What if building relationships with neighbors created strong and flexible community fascia that helped “everything glide and work together smoothly”? 

Our fates are bound up together, whether we like it or not. How can we contribute to Newkirk II’s “concert of action and purpose between each” human to restore the possibility of collective health for us all?