---
name: Solidarity
slug: solidarity
type: social_protocol
status: running
version: 4.1.2
released: "prehistory"
maintainer: collective (no single owner)
dependencies:
  - trust
  - shared-grievance
  - proximity-real-or-imagined
  - willingness-to-absorb-cost
license: Commons Clause (cannot be privatized without voiding itself)
tags:
  - social
  - political
  - emotional-infrastructure
  - load-bearing
---

Solidarity

What it actually is

The decision to treat someone else's problem as a constraint on your own behavior, even when you could have looked away.

How it works

Solidarity runs on a distributed architecture. There is no central server. Each node opts in voluntarily, which is both the feature and the vulnerability.

The basic loop:

One party is in a worse position than another
The better-positioned party acknowledges this without denial
They agree to coordinate behavior: strike, march, boycott, show up, shut up, speak up
The cost is shared across nodes, lowering the threshold any single node must bear
Repeat until the situation changes, or until exhaustion terminates the session

The protocol degrades gracefully. Partial solidarity is still load-bearing. A few nodes holding is often enough to prevent total collapse.

Features

Horizontal scaling: works at the level of two friends or two hundred thousand workers
Cross-group compatibility: does not require identical experience, only genuine recognition
Asymmetric cost distribution: those with more capacity are expected to carry more weight
Signal amplification: visible solidarity lowers fear in others who were waiting to see if it was safe to join
No single point of failure: the movement continues if individual nodes drop

Known bugs

Performative solidarity: renders as identical to the real thing until load-bearing conditions are applied, then fails instantly
In-group capture: the protocol sometimes narrows until it only protects people who are already safe
Compassion fatigue: long-running instances degrade without scheduled maintenance
Hierarchy creep: informal leaders emerge and begin routing decisions through themselves, reintroducing the central server problem

"We said we were in this together and then you asked me to carry it alone." — common error log entry

Configuration

solidarity:
  scope: broad            # narrow | broad | universal
  cost_tolerance: high    # low | medium | high | "whatever it takes"
  conditions: none        # none | reciprocal | transactional
  durability: long-term   # symbolic | short-term | long-term | permanent

Note: setting conditions: transactional technically compiles but produces charity, not solidarity. They are not the same package.

Edge cases

Solidarity with someone whose politics you dislike on other matters: valid, often necessary, always uncomfortable
Solidarity that costs nothing: treated as a no-op by the runtime
grief as a form of solidarity with the dead: underdocumented but widely used

FAQ

Can institutions practice solidarity? Institutions can create conditions for it. They cannot themselves feel the weight, which is most of what makes it real.

Is solidarity the same as empathy? Empathy is the read operation. Solidarity is the write operation. You need the first to initiate the second, but having the first does not guarantee the second runs.

What happens when it works? The load that was going to break one person gets distributed until it becomes bearable. That is, quietly, one of the most important things that happens on this planet.

drafting spec…