Assemble: A Sigil for 2023

It’s urgent that we find ways to “assemble”,
in the sense of “come together”

It’s been my practice the past few years to make a New Year’s sigil: a visual form created and invoked ritually to set an intention for the years work. This year, I created a sigil for the intention, “assemble”.

What do I mean by that? Well, integration and disintegration have been on my mind a lot lately.

I don’t mean “integration” in the sense of racial integration, though a racial integration is a necessary part of an integrated society. I mean connections, the ability to work and live and play together, to come together with people who are very different from ourselves.

The trend in American society towards isolation has been a topic of discussion among pundits and intellectuals since at least the mid-1990s, when Robert D. Putnam crystallized it in his essay “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital”.

The “Big Sort”, where Americans of means move to communities of the like-minded and thus avoid exposure to people with different opinions, has literally been dis-integrating the country for decades; and the sorting of social media connections and algorithms (and outright censorship) only intensified the problem.

And then along came covid, which made it a moral duty to restrict interactions with other people. Even as the pandemic fades into endemic background risk in the US, the damage to institutions and habits that used to bring people together will take years to repair.

American society is dis-integrating, becoming disconnected. And this is not just a political problem. It’s killing people.

The 19-year-old man who murdered two people and wounded several more at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in St. Louis before being killed in a gun battle with police, left behind a note saying “I don’t have any friends. I don’t have any family. I’ve never had a girlfriend. I’ve never had a social life. I’ve been an isolated loner my entire life.”

People without connection are vulnerable to committing violence, against others — or against themselves. “Deaths of despair” — suicide, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related liver disease — were killing 70,000 Americans a year before covid, largely because of a lack of community support in US society.

So it’s urgent, on the socio-political level, that we find ways to “assemble”, in the sense of “come together” — like the old comic book war cry, “Avengers, assemble!” (Or the Justice Friends spoof of it.)

But there are more personal, positive and joyful reasons why the concept of “assemble” or “come together” has been on my mind. In 2022, I began a long-distance romantic relationship with a woman I’d known for a few years, and as that relationship blossoms into a partnership, our lives are starting to come together.

So I set this as my intention for 2023: to strengthen my ability to come together with others, from the woman I love to strangers with different tastes and values, to do the Great Work of saving all sentient beings.