I have a gaming group that I regularly spend time with, they are about as diverse as you can possibly imagine. We have back-country gun-toting conservatives playing alongside college campus protesting trans girls, hispanic immigrants, US marines, housewives, people from China and Philippines, midwest American Christians and one extremely loving gay couple who do everything together.

While we do have a few ground rules, more like courtesy guidelines, like no arguing about politics, it’s not something I’ve ever had to enforce or moderate, and if you were to overhear the group on an average gaming night, you would think they are just the closest and tightest group of people who lift each other up, help each other out, laughing together and telling lewd jokes until they laugh so hard together that they wheeze.

This group has been the end-product of years of “distillation” in that the people who have issues with other people’s identity or politics or can’t set aside ego to have fun with people and make new friends, they just have naturally fallen by the wayside, so what’s left is a group of people who are bound together by something much stronger than politics or ideology, and that’s intelligence.

The one common thread that everyone left here has is that they are sharp, they like to talk through issues, they talk about ideas and science and sociology and relationships and enjoy the very simple act of trying to understand other people.

Curiosity about others will carry you through life far, far further than one might think.