In Theory, Yes
A Muse of Fire
People often ask me where I get my inspiration for blog posts.
I don’t really have a good answer to that.
Being somewhat prone to melodrama, when I’m in desperate need of inspiration I think of the opening words of Henry V – O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention.
But those words, calling for the type of inspiration that could set the world ablaze, seem, perhaps, too much for my every day needs. Would my words could call forth the vasty fields of France – but some days such art is not in the cards.
Some days showing up is about all I can muster.
And that’s the best part of blogging every day. Committing to writing every day means accepting that not every post will be a masterpiece. (Quite frankly, it would be miraculous if, after decades of blogging, I managed to summon one masterpiece from this abyss, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Blogging every day is a commitment to being publicly imperfect everyday. Of course, we are all of us publicly imperfect every day, but I generally would prefer to try to be imperfect only in the privacy of my own home.
The most challenging thing about blogging is figuring out just how imperfect to be.
Sometimes, I just sit down and write whatever is in my head. Those are the best posts, I think – where I can be somewhat stream of consciousness and somewhat coherent simply by articulating something that’s been knocking around in my head for awhile.
But I have several topics in my head which aren’t quite…baked. I think about writing them and suddenly I’m hit by a flood of things I need to know or understand before I can write about them.
Most of the time, this challenge is easily surmountable. For many of my posts I look up specific facts and figures – information I know generally in my head but which I can’t reliably cite.
But sometimes even that doesn’t feel like enough.
So then I’m stuck with an interesting quandary – try to articulate some half baked idea I don’t know nearly enough about or wait until I’ve had time to learn more and perfect my imperfections.
When I started blogging I didn’t worry about this too much – I wrote on whatever topic caught my fancy and simply acknowledged my many shortcomings as I went. But more recently I’ve found myself with an increasing number of topics which I want to write about – but which I don’t quite have the brain space to process.
And all this has left me wondering – just how imperfect should I be? Perhaps one day I’ll know.
O, for a muse of fire…
Burning Man as a Commons
The Burning Man festival held every year on the desolate salt flats of Nevada is usually associated with the culturally avant tech crowd of the Bay Area – an image that is accurate as far as it goes. But the event is really much richer in implication than that. Burning Man is a rare space in modern industrial culture that actually invites people to give expression to some of their deepest artistic impulses and cultural fantasies while requiring them to show significant self-responsibility, cooperation and social concern. It is an immersive enactment of a different spirit of living that actually carries over into "real life" after the event itself.
Burning Man is a one-week commons of 60,000-plus people that has occurred every year since 1986. The event is, as Peter Hirshberg puts it, “a pop-up city of self-governing individualists.” That’s the title of his chapter in a new book, From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond: The Quest for Identity and Autonomy in a Digital Society, which I co-edited with John Henry Clippinger of ID3. (The chapter -- copied below -- is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonComercial-ShareAlike license 3.0 license. The book is available in print and ebook editions, and also at the ID3 website.)
Hirshberg is a former Apple executive and tech entrepreneur who is now chairman of Re:imagine Group and cofounder of the Gray Area Center for Arts and Technology in San Francisco. He’s also been a Burner for years.
When Hirshberg told me more about Burning Man (which I’ve never attended), I was astonished when I first read the “Ten Principles of Burning Man,” which cofounder Larry Harvey wrote in 2004 to convey the cultural ethos of the encampment. The ten principles have enormous moral and social appeal and serve as a functional blueprint for a better way of living. The principles (discussed at greater length below) call on all Burners to honor radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation and immediacy.
As you will see by reading Hirshberg’s chapter, the Burning Man principles are not idle abstractions; they are a lived reality for one week in the desert under extremely harsh natural conditions (heat, blowing sand, no water, only the stuff that you’ve brought along). The ten principles of Burning Man are a wonderfully vivid, passionate elaboration of some of the core design elements that sober-minded social scientists often ascribe to the commons.
Burning Man helps us remember that design principles of commons need not be MEGO experiences (“My Eyes Glaze Over”). They are the essence of what it means to be fully human.
Burning Man: The Pop-Up City of Self-Governing Individualists
By Peter Hirshberg
When friends first started telling me about Burning Man in the 1990s it made me nervous. This place in a harsh desert, where they wore strange clothes or perhaps none at all. Why? Whole swaths of my San Francisco community spent much of the year building massive works of art or collaborating on elaborate camps where they had to provide for every necessity. They were going to a place with no water, no electricity, no shade and no shelter. And they were completely passionate about going to this place to create a city out of nothing. To create a world they imagined – out of nothing. A world with rules, mores, traditions and principles, which they more or less made up, and then lived.
Register TODAY for NCDD 2014 before the Late Fee Starts!
Look, we know everyone procrastinates. I do it, you do it, we all do it.
But if you haven’t registered yet for the NCDD 2014 conference yet, today is your last day to get registered before the extra $100 late fee kicks in. So if you’ve been putting it off until the last minute, now is the last minute!
Make sure to get registered before midnight tonight at www.ncdd2014.eventbrite.com.
You wouldn’t want to miss all of our great workshops, the D&D Showcase, our brand new Short Talks, the exciting field trips, or our wonderful plenary speakers, would you? So stop procrastinating and register already!
We can’t wait to see all of you at NCDD 2014 in just over a week – it’s going to be our best conference yet!
A World with no Friction
In physics, it is common to tackle complex problems by starting with a simplification of the scenario.
Want to understand how an object move along a surface? Start in a world with no friction. Assume a standard downward force, g, and understand the simplest version of what is going to occur.
Once you have a simple formula for the simple situation, then you can add friction and other real-world complications. Little by little you can expand your simple model into a complex model, slowly but surely adding the detail that’s needed to understand how things really work.
This is one of the beautiful things about the mathematics of science. When you truly come to understand the equations, you can see how clearly g, the force of gravity on Earth, is derived from G, the gravitational force of the universe. You can see how the formula for an object traveling at the speed of light is actually just the same as an object moving at an every day speed – it’s just that for every day purposes the complex factors become so small they are irrelevant.
There is nothing wrong with the world without friction. This model is a crucial first step for deeper understanding. It’s the place you have to start, the model you have to truly understand before you can move forward.
It is not uncommon to criticize the social sciences for their lack of a predictive model. Physics can describe the future trajectory of a moving object, why can political science describe the future trajectory of a government.
Frankly, I don’t find that concern all that compelling. I am rather relieved that social sciences can’t predict my every move, and I am dismayed as a matter of principle at big data analytics which seem to move in that direction.
But, from my vantage point far outside these fields, the social sciences do seem to be stuck in – or perhaps, slowly moving out of – a world without friction.
I’ve been glad to see the growth of network analysis within the social sciences. Still in its nascent stages, perhaps, but slowly adding the complexities of reality onto social science models.
People interact with each other. Organizations interact with each other. Organizations, governments, and yes, even corporations, are made of people interacting with each other.
A government doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There is – as we well know – friction within our society. Using network analysis to get at these more subtle interactions is a critical step in moving social science understanding beyond the simple – but valuable model – of a world with no friction.
on retreat
(en route to Baltimore, MD) I am heading to a three-day retreat focused on combating polarization and dysfunction in national politics. We’ve been asked to put aside our phones and other electronic devices in order to focus on the conversation. I think that’s a good policy. As a result, I’m going to sign off the blog until Thursday.
The post on retreat appeared first on Peter Levine.
John Holloway on Changing the World Without Taking Power
John Holloway, a sociology professor in Mexico, recently gave an interview with Roar magazine suggesting how to introduce a new social and economic logic in the face of the mighty machine of neoliberal capitalism. Holloway's idea, recapitulating themes from his previous book and 2002 thesis, is to build "cracks" in the system in which people can relate to each other and meet their needs in non-market ways: "We have to keep building cracks and finding ways of recognizing them, strengthening them, expanding them, connecting them; seeking confluence, or preferably, the commoning of cracks."
This strategic approach has immediate appeal to commoners, it seems to me -- even though some engagement with state power is surely necessary at some point. Below, Holloway's interview with by Amador Fernández-Savater. It was translated by Richard Mac Duinnsleibhe and edited by Arianne Sved of Guerrilla Translation.
In 2002, John Holloway published a landmark book: Change the World Without Taking Power. Inspired by the ‘¡Ya basta!’ of the Zapatistas, by the movement that emerged in Argentina in 2001/’02, and by the anti-globalization movement, Holloway sets out a hypothesis: it is not the idea of revolution or transformation of the world that has been refuted as a result of the disaster of authoritarian communism, but rather the idea of revolution as the taking of power, and of the party as the political tool par excellence.
Holloway discerns another concept of social change at work in these movements, and generally in every practice—however visible or invisible it may be—where a logic different from that of profit is followed: the logic of cracking capitalism. That is, to create, within the very society that is being rejected, spaces, moments, or areas of activity in which a different world is prefigured. Rebellions in motion. From this perspective, the idea of organization is no longer equivalent to that of the party, but rather entails the question of how the different cracks that unravel the fabric of capitalism can recognize each other and connect.
But after Argentina’s “que se vayan todos” came the Kirchner government, and after Spain’s “no nos representan” appeared Podemos. We met with John Holloway in the city of Puebla, Mexico, to ask him if, after everything that has happened in the past decade, from the progressive governments of Latin America to Podemos and Syriza in Europe, along with the problems for self-organized practices to exist and multiply, he still thinks that it is possible to “change the world without taking power.”
Sign Up for an NCDD 2014 Field Trip to “Toast”
We are excited to share the invitation below from Marla Crockett – NCDD Board member and one of our DC site coordinators for NCDD 2014 – to join her for a great field trip during NCDD 2014! Find out more below and read more about our field trips by clicking here.
Join us for Toast during the NCDD Conference!
Wondering what to do on Saturday night during the NCDD Conference? Tickets are still available, so sign up for our field trip to Capitol Hill to see Toast. Produced by the highly respected theatre group, dog & pony dc, the show is described as a “participatory-performance-meets-science-fair.” You and other members of the audience will get drafted by a “secret society of inventors” to help push the boundaries of technological invention. It’s a fun and creative way to explore engagement and innovation, a few things we’re all interested in.
I saw a performance of dog & pony’s Beertown a few years ago and loved how they got the audience involved. We all became citizens of this fictional community in order to help the cast, playing city officials, determine which items should come out of Beertown’s time capsule and which ones should go in. We made up characters and played our parts seamlessly, arguing and weighing how to best represent life in “our” community. I would expect the same sort of role-playing and interaction with the actors during Toast.
In addition, dog & pony will be helping us integrate the arts during our conference, so you can reciprocate by helping them finish their show!
We’ll get started around 4:30, take the Metro to Capitol Hill, have dinner in the neighborhood, and then head to the theatre for the 7:30 performance. Tickets are $15, and transportation and dinner are on you, so join our group for a fun evening on beautiful Capitol Hill!
We have a limited number of tickets, so register for the field trip soon at http://ncdd.org/16398. Thanks!
CM Call on Rural Brain Drain, Oct. 9th
We are pleased to invite NCDD members to join our partners at CommunityMatters for the next of their monthly capacity-building calls series. This month’s call is titled “Rewriting the Rural Narrative”, and it will be taking place next Thursday, October 9th from 4-5pm Eastern Time.
This month’s call will feature the insights of Ben Winchester, research fellow, University of Minnesota Extension. CM describes the upcoming call like this:
Brain drain – the loss of 18-29 year olds – dominates the conversation about rural population change. Yet at the same time, a lesser known migration is occurring. A majority of rural counties are, in fact, experiencing “brain gains” as newcomers age 30-49 move in.
Most communities aren’t tuned in to positive migration and miss out on the opportunities that come with newcomers. Ben Winchester, Research Fellow for the University of Minnesota Extension, Center for Community Vitality, has studied the trend and has great ideas for making the most of positive migration patterns.
Join our next CommunityMatters® and Citizen’s Institute on Rural Design™ webinar to hear Ben’s research on rural migration trends and the impacts they have on social and economic opportunity. Learn how communities are responding to these trends and what can be done in your town.
Make sure to register for the call today!
As always, we encourage you to check out the CommunityMatters blog to read Caitlyn Horose’s reflections on brain drain as a way to prime your mental pump before the call. You can read the blog post below or find the original by clicking here.
Brain Drain or Brain Gain? A New Narrative for Rural America
It seems the rural story has already been told. Small towns keep getting smaller. Schools and businesses are closing their doors. Young people are packing their bags for the city.
The loss of youth following graduation, the “brain drain,” dominates how we talk about rural population change. Hollowing Out the Middle describes the emptying of small towns. Fear feeds a narrative about rural areas “dying” or becoming “ghost towns.”
It is true that most counties – rural and urban alike – lose young people following high school graduation. Yet at the same time, a less recognized migration is occurring, and has been since the 1970s. Many rural counties are experiencing “brain gains” as newcomers age 30-49 move in. This migration is keeping small towns alive and contributing to a new narrative about rural places.
What is influencing brain gain? Research on newcomers points to quality of life as a driving force. Young professionals are looking for simpler schedules, better schools, affordable housing and recreational opportunities for themselves and their families. And, they are escaping the crime, congestion and fast pace of city life.
Surprisingly, jobs aren’t a chief motive. The quality of life factors appear to trump economic factors. However, telecommuting opportunities and the prevalence of rural broadband allows people to move into rural communities and stay employed through distant employers, even when local jobs aren’t plentiful. These trends have helped to diversify the local economic base across rural America.
Newcomers may be getting a better quality of life in small towns, but what do they bring in return? Rural communities can benefit from the unique skills and ideas of new residents. Newbies contribute to civic life - they volunteer, hold leadership positions and donate to charitable organizations. They spend money and start new businesses, aiding local economic development.
Most communities do little to recognize migration patterns or capitalize on them. What can your community do to build on this positive trend?
Join Ben Winchester, research fellow for the University of Minnesota Extension, Center for Community Vitality, for an hour-long CommunityMatters® and Citizen’s Institute on Rural Design™ webinar on rural migration trends and the impacts they have on social and economic opportunity. Learn how communities are responding to these trends and what can be done in your town. Register now.