Intentional Society: Introductions and representations
Miss last week's orientation? Same time this Saturday July 17th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC)
Hello to the newest 20% of you reading this! I write here each week to share about what we're doing and learning "on the inside" of Intentional Society. I'll try to keep this as honest and unvarnished as I can manage - and generally keep the word count down.
The new website and some community-based promotion last week brought us to a season kick-off that was a delightfully even mix of new and returning faces. We checked in with what was present. We played the noticing game. During our streach break we humorously tried to count cooperatively without colliding (making it to four a couple times). We shared some more about ourselves.
Many relational practices take us stright to meaningful honesty without bothering with conventional social scripts. As a change this time, I added "your conventional introduction" to one of our prompts and... I saw more resistance than I expected! A few skipped - and good on them for listening to their internal tension. Others did it, but without too much enthusiasm compared to "what lit you up as a kid?" I noticed how we tend to label some things as "I am a..." and others as "I do" or "I like." How represented or seen do you feel by the typical categorization-types we take as normal? How far away does that feel from your "true" self?
This three-month season/series has a full "storyline" prepared (versus steering week-to-week previously), and this session in particular felt a bit "show"-y to my facilitator hat. This was intentional, to teach the rituals we've already grown - but it does set me ruminating once again on the tension between consumption and co-creation as different modes of participation. Will more-predictable structure take us closer to the 90-9-1 rule than we like? But then, resonating with only the 1% most-comfortable-with-nebulosity satisfy any of us? How many different frequencies can we resonate with at the same time?
I'm looking forward to finding out! Without Goodhart-ing on growth, I do feel reaffirmed in our intention to more-deliberately expand. It's good for representation: A larger community lets more people see others of their gender, their generation, their skin color. It's beneficial for finding the others within the others in the fractal of belonging. And it gives us more to integrate - across differences, yes, and also integrating across the difference-and-sameness spectrum itself!
This Sunday we'll look in the direction of growth, noticing what we really want, and of finding our "growth edges." I'll give an extra encouragement to come join us if that sounds slightly uncomfortable, if you don't have existing growth goals - or if you do and want participatory partners on that journey! Regardless, and as always, I'll let you know next week what kinds of things we learn.
Cheers,
James