Building foundations

Hamish, you seem to be promoting a method of governance, based upon sortition, with your many links. After scanning them, it’s unclear what problems you are solving, or how your proposed method would address those problems. To get positive attention of this community, I you may consider posting your ideas independently, in their own thread, and let the merits of your work stand on its own.

With regard to Sociocracy, I recently suggested it to a colleague who was working within an existing corporate structure. He was able to deploy some aspects of it within his group, and he reported back that it resolved some of the accountability issues he was having. I see Sociocracy as anything but Yogababble.

My simplified view of Sociocracy: when you have nested organizational structure, it tends to become a hierarchy, preferring top-down communication over bottom-up communication. By adding redundancy to each communication link, where one person is responsible for each direction, the structure can be better balanced, restoring bottom-up information flow. Moreover, having only one person in each communication link invites sociopaths, having two people, appointed via different methods, leads to more robust linkages within the organization.

Bridge building between invisible world views is the hardest thing to do, but it’s also the most productive if the bridge can be held in place. There are strong #BLOCK ing forces.

A bit more complex than that, I have known and worked with people like this group are made up of, my expirence they rearlly if EVER manage to build a bridge and if they do its knocked down as soon as their self-interest is challenged. It’s a problem that the is NO easy path to challenge/change. I don’t think as a group these people are interested, but the might be individuals who are, reach out to both groups and see what I find :wink:

You are expressing this in a way that makes little sense to me, can you think why?

A “governance” model based on a long/deep history of social movement going back to the suffragists/suffragets. Building a modern take on this classic, building from the fediverse expirence of federation as a tool for horizontal scaling of social power. Yes we do take the power out of “power politics” by sortation

We plan to mediate the last hundred years of grassroots activist “governance” in a way that works WITH not agenst this history.

The is a long history of “process geeks” coming into activism and playing a role in destroying the movements they set out to “help” - think climatecamp or indymedia as examples of this, lots of post here on this subject http://hamishcampbell.com/tag/indymedia/ or http://hamishcampbell.com/tag/climatecamp/

I did not choice the subject tital of this thried. Sociocracy likely works fine for fluffy middle class groups, it comes from the Quakers, have worked with them meany times and good people in their way.

I can set a different title for this thread if it would help. I’m afraid I still haven’t the faintest idea what this discussion is about so I might need a suggestion.

Underneath this it’s an attempt to build a bridge to put “diversity of tactics” in place, currently we are building foundations which can look a lot like demolishern but it’s not its foundations… maybe, lets see.

Assumption: this is a forum for the “fluffy” tech crew

Proposal: lets dig some foundations to see if anyone here is interested in bridge building to “spiky”.

Assumption: the world is fucked, see #XR The fluffy crew are not doing anything to change/challenge to save the day for billions of peoples futures, actually most of them are selling us out rather than helping, not saying this group here just “fluffy” in general.

Proposal: do something challenging, cooperation can be messy as well as orderly, this can be a good thing, already posted meany link to the messy “governance” project.

So, I think what Hamash means by Fluffy vs Spikey is this:

That’s a bridge too far for me. No thank you.

Working for positive change within the bounds of our existing society is quite challenging enough.

Context matters, please reread the title of the post you are quoting from: As with most metaphors (and real life) the definition is not exact

The post you are quoting from is a conversation about “Q. I remember when people were spiking trees to break chainsaws. Do you think the name came from that?

The above definition to ansear to that question.

To read on " A. yes the same movement. Spiky in both ways damage to the chainsaws and with possibility of hurting the users of the chainsaws this is meditated by clearly MARKING the area as spiked so sorted “diversity of strategy” #spiky in hand with #fluffy it works."

Please not the word mediated, spiking trees is a successful strategy for slowing/stopping old growth forest logging.

Q. Would the climatecamp example in the post be a bridge to far for you

This is exactly what this thried is about, you do understand that all your civil rights and your environmental protections you think as normal came from people doing things that you say “That’s a bridge too far for me. No, thank you.”

As I say, “fluffy” is a big part of the problem we face and a small part of the solution - am looking for people to balance this better.

Just to highlight, am not asking anyone to through petrol bombs at the police. I am asking people to look at the social/tech project we are outlining at the #OMN (which has a lot of overlap as the coop movement as it grows from the same place) and write a supporting statement

Ps. if you are interested in my thoughts about throwing petrol bombes at the police

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Thanks for the suggestion @clarkevans - I’ve changed the title of this thread as it seems to have drifted away from its original topic (and my apologies for the poor choice of original name).

I’m not entirely sure how useful this discussion is, but it seems to be remaining reasonably well tempered, if still somewhat impenetrable to me. So I don’t think this topic necessarily needs closing.

A reminder to anyone subscribing via email, you can choose to mute individual topics using the “bell” menu at the bottom.

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So, here’s the thing. Cooperatives are legal entities. You could think of them as a compatibility adapter between the economic world we are building, and the broader economic world we are subject to. Some of us focus inward, building better tools for cooperatives. Some of us focus outward, working our broader world so it might be more hospitable to cooperative thinking. These forums are focused on those using technology to advance cooperatives, or conversely, technology firms organized as cooperatives.

My sense of balance is about having the minimum necessary bridge to the broader world, while maximizing bottom-up economic independence, as people who choose to organize democratically. This frame of reference presumes non-violent action of those building useful things via economic activity.

I hope this helps. The very best luck in your search for world travelers.

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I saw this debate between Fluffy and Spiky approaches in activist and co-operative circles over 30 years ago.

Not much has changed.

Use the appropriate tool in the appropriate circumstances to get the most effective results for what you are trying to achieve.

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The changing of title is telling for what we are talking about here “Fluffy” vs “Spiky” is the perfect example of the problem.

Fluff/spiky debate and the respect for diversity of tactics is the bedrock of affective activism that social change/challenge is built from. Yes the coop movement is well on the fluffy side, in this it can complement the more spiky side and should play a role, no matter how limited this is.

An example of this history would be the Greenham marches who often stopped overnight in Quaker halls and were feed by cooperative businesses. These marchers then went on to tear the fence down on the nuclear missile base as a protest agenst the Cold War escalation.

I made a film about this, that varies coops sponsored

“Fluffy” vs “Spiky” you understand that this tital is a problem, yes?

To highlight meany activist have strong connections/come from the coop movement

Meany of these angles come from a worker coop, the action was organized by a coop.

Meany coops have been supporting this protest for more than 30 years.

This action came from the community that meany of you are likely to be connected to.

A workers coop.

OK if you guy are going to demolish the foundations(“Fluffy” vs “Spiky”) I will leave you to do this, there is much to do, and few people actually doing. The “governance” project is an attempt to expand this tiny group Statements of support - openwebgovernancebody - Open Media Network

Nice that translates exactly into “Fluff/spiky debate and the respect for diversity of tactics” good to use clear language.

Thanks! I’ve done my best. Stepping away from this thread too now. Best of luck.

I would agree that this is not about fluffy vs spiky. Fluffy and spiky are merely two points on a spectrum. They both bring value to any effort to make change happen. I don’t see any value in the spiky people slagging off the fluffy types, or vice versa as that simply gets people’s backs up and they pretty quickly stop listening.

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Yep, it’s not a good look and is clearly not a debate more a argument blocking foundation building that’s needed, what to do about this?

Maybe changing the tital to be less passive-aggressive might be constructive.

Middle-aged men and pissing contests come to mind over much of this tried, its interesting to look back and see talking about this problem was how it actually started Suggestions to have productive discussions about governance?

Personally I’m unconcerned by the title of the thread. What’s more important is the way that people talk to each other. I’m partway through getting my head round Pages - openwebgovernancebody - Open Media Network and if I get to the end and have the time I’ll feed back here with any thoughts.

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I’ve updated the title of the thread to Respect for diversity of tactics, if anyone has a better suggestion it can be changed again…

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Building foundations :slight_smile: