Subject: A Simple Formula We’re Living Into: Align Tech, Revillage, Play Music
Email:
Hi Nate,
I’m writing from a small civic experiment in Gardiner, NY called Full Circle. You may remember a message I sent a while back—this one is more direct, and comes with a clear invitation.
We’re living through a time that feels increasingly incoherent, and many of us are asking the same underlying question: What still makes sense to do?
At Full Circle, we’ve been quietly living our way into a simple three-part answer:
Align technology with love and connection
Invest in village centers as civic infrastructure
Play more music together
This isn’t theory—it’s practice. I’ve included a short document below that outlines how these three threads are taking shape here, through:
A minimal local media app (codename: The Handshake)
A civic platform we’ve built called Full Circle
A participatory, non-performative music gathering called The Circle Set
The document is not a pitch—it’s a pattern. One possible way to remember what matters.
We’re not looking to scale or monetize any of this. But we do want to learn alongside others who are serious about coherence, social capital, and systems-level transformation that starts with relationship.
Would you consider coming to Full Circle? To visit, speak, and sit with others doing this kind of work on the ground? We can offer you a meaningful gathering, a thoughtful audience, and a chance to spend time with people who are trying to build something humble and alive.
Thank you for your time and your mind.
Warmly,
Mike Benevento
Attachment: A Simple Formula for Connection
A Simple Formula for Connection
Align Technology with Love. Invest in Village Centers. Play Music Together.
We believe the future of human flourishing lies not in scale, but in coherence.
At Full Circle—a small but living experiment in the Hudson Valley—we’re building a test case for something ancient and urgently new: a way of life rooted in connection, local trust, and relational intelligence. We don’t pretend to have answers. But we’ve noticed a pattern, and we’re following it in three simple directions:
1. Align Technology with Love and Connection
The Local Media App (Codename: The Handshake)
Social media promised connection, but optimized for attention. It eroded trust and made strangers louder than neighbors.
What we’re building instead is local media. A simple, open-source platform designed not to scale endlessly, but to deepen intimacy in place. It’s something like a cross between a contact book and a blog platform—but it only grows through real-world connection. You add someone by being physically present with them, exchanging a handshake-style “bump” and answering a personal prompt that invites mutual recognition. That’s it.
No likes, no metrics.
No feeds, no algorithms.
Just shared reflections from people you’ve chosen to connect with—people you’ve looked in the eye.
The platform is minimal by design. It’s not about virality—it’s about presence.
And it’s entirely open-source. Anyone can take it, build on it, fork it, remix it.
The idea is to spark a wave of local tech—tools that reinforce, rather than replace, our social fabric.
This is just one expression of what becomes possible when we align technology with love and connection. Imagine the human ingenuity that will follow if we recognize the social capital potential in this kind of design.
2. Invest in Village Centers
Full Circle – A Living Civic Platform
Full Circle is a small village center at the base of the Shawangunk Ridge in Gardiner, NY. It’s not a nonprofit. It’s not a commune. It’s a civic layer—an ecosystem of businesses, public events, trails, food, and culture built to reinforce the social infrastructure of our town.
The project brings together:
A community bakery with pay-what-you-can nights
A local trail network and pocket parks
A community studio hosting public meetups, storytelling nights, yoga, and grief circles
Microbusinesses supported through incubation, shared infrastructure, and aligned mentorship
A nonprofit (Trailunity) that offers civic tools, trail design, and donation-based recreation
It’s a platform, not a brand. A test case for what it might mean to re-village intentionally. We’re not trying to “go back”—we’re trying to go forward in a way that brings coherence to our relationships, our labor, and our presence on the land.
If the 20th century built malls and highways, Full Circle is building the new village green. A place to gather. A place to belong.
3. Play More Music Together
The Circle Set – Music as a Civic Technology
Our third experiment is musical. The Circle Set is a recurring, non-performative jam where strangers and neighbors come together to improvise, listen, and co-create sound. There are no rehearsals. No shows. No audience.
Just a circle.
One of our youngest players, a 15-year-old drummer, described it best:
“I love listening to everyone and trying to make what they’re doing sound better.”
That’s the ethos. It’s not about mastery—it’s about attunement.
The Circle Set has already begun to reshape how people relate. It fosters trust. It softens conflict. It builds new neural pathways for collaboration. In a time of escalating division, we believe this kind of shared practice—where enemies could become co-musicians—may be one of our most potent civic tools.
A Living Framework
These three efforts are not a program or a platform. They’re just one expression of a deeper impulse: to live in coherence with all that lives.
We don’t claim to have a model. But we do have an invitation.
This work is open-source—in code, in spirit, and in structure.
We’re hoping others will join us—not by scaling what we’ve built, but by listening to their own hum, in their own place, with their own gifts.
What happens when we stop building for scale and start building for soul?
We’re finding out.
And we hope you’ll join us.