

Having a hobby with community helps a lot because it gives you the option of channeling that extra ambition into the community. For example, I do historical reenactment (Society for Creative Anacronism) and one if my hobbies is making coins. I’ve taken commissions, sure, but I get a lot more enjoyment out of learning and teaching about historical coin making and giving my coins away to people who don’t make their own (which is most people).
And of course there’s a smaller community of coin makers within the SCA, and we get to share our work with each other, talk shop, collaborate from time to time, etc.
Community really makes a big difference.




If you’re the person being arrested, your options are to surrender or fight and hope they only beat you within an inch of your life without actually killing you (with the understanding that the chances of them killing you are increasing every day). Unless you manager to use legal force against them in which case you are 100% dead.
Community defense is when OTHER people come to rescue you, typically using nonviolent methods to harass and inhibit the agents until they give up and leave. Of course, the chances that agents will just kill them are increasing every day, too. Either way, once you’ve been targeted you’ll likely need to go into hiding, and engaging legal council is probably a good idea even if you’re a citizen.
I don’t think this is pessimistic or nihilistic. I feel like it’s a pretty accurate assessment of the likely possibilities. I’m open to hearing other interpretations, though.