Intentional Society: Where the buck stops
Next introductory call Saturday May 29th, 11:00-11:55am Pacific Daylight Time (2pm Eastern, 6pm UTC)
Intentional Society is open and welcoming newcomers (who have attended an intro call) every week. That said, now-or-soon is a great time to get engaged. Current schedule:
- 5/30 last week of this voyage
- 6/6 retrospective + group mixer
- 6/13 crew formation
- 6/20, 6/27 two weeks of small group practice
- 7/4 holiday
Last week, I geeked out about consent-based decision making. Now if we zoom out a level... who decides how we decide? For that matter, who decides who decides how we decide? And how is that decided? Is it turtles all the way down?
This philosophical recursion is not just academic - it quickly leads us to the question of where power comes from. From whence doth authority derive? I'll try to be brief, but I feel it's important to clarify how everything relates to two answers: violence and talking, war and peace.
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Physical violence was the first answer: "might makes right" (ability, not morality). Many systems since then are backed by the threat of force: law, legal systems, and contracts are backed up by law enforcement and armed forces. Those are grounded in direct force on one's bodily freedom or functioning.
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But ever since human tribes banded together, there've existed other forms of value, and thus another kind of power: social forces around reputation and influence, acceptance and shunning, trust and slander. We live in a world today where social power has almost entirely surpassed the threat of violence (physical or legal), for most people in most places. Almost. We tend to think much more about how people feel about us, our reputation and relationships, compared to the legality of our everyday behavior.
These two power systems can conflict: Say your boss comes to you and says "you're fired." The manager has that power, right? Well, but what if the rest of your team bands together and declares to the boss's boss that they'll all quit unless you're kept and the manager is removed? Suddenly, the formal authority of that manager (up the management chain to the legal officers of the organization) looks fairly weak compared to the social power wielded in and by that community.
SIDEBAR: Complicating that, if the manager above calls on the police to enforce trespassing laws on the fired employee, those police are likely to defer to the formal authority of the manager, despite the protestations of any bystanders as to the injustice of the firing. Even if the employees felt bold enough to make a human shield around their teammate, that's not the point of leverage - the social impact to culture and cohesion inside the company is much more influential.
What I want to call your attention to is that every form of force, power, or authority since the original "big guy with a spear" is socially constructed and mediated. Every other kind of force depends on belief, agreement, and social norms to function - even if it is ultimately backed by some physical force. Even when physical threat and force is involved, these days I view the battleground as ultimately social. Consider homeless activists occupying vacant houses in defiance of property ownership. They don't anticipate beating the SWAT team sent in to evict them. They hope to make a difference in public opinion, in the social norms that drive our laws.
What does this mean for Intentional Society? First, that social constructs are incredibly important and we are free to agree to decision-making processes that are different from and independent of the conventions of wider society. Second, that whatever we agree to does exist within an organizational container that is embedded within the legal framework of that society. If a group of people innovates in the former while ignoring the latter, an egalitarian eutopia can suddenly smack into the harder reality of legal ownership. Conflict resolution is usually the process that connects the social to the legal, when some sort of breakdown or stress brings that kind of force into play.
In the social space, my intent is to bootstrap a nonviolent decision-making protocol, using a consent strategy, with high freedom and flexibility. My values in doing so are: Maximum (not equal) power for everyone, with minimum coercion. Power-with instead of power-over. That every person is an autonomous agent, respected by our social constructs.
In the legal space, I commit to aligning the (future) formal ownership and control structures of Intentional Society with the social values above, to the degree possible within the relevant governmental frame. The core entity of IS shall be restricted, to the largest effective degree, to non-profit status. If for-profit ventures are created they shall be contracted in a way to disallow me or any other individual from extracting exorbitant wealth away from serving community and societal welfare.
In the interface, powerful people must hold space for the social agreements to be fully honored in spirit. It may always be possible, in the gap between domains, for bad actors to perform legally-allowed social violations. The one workable strategy I see against that is for those with legal power to publicly precommit themselves to be governed by the social contracts, to the extent that the collapse of the social agreements would nullify the value of exerting a legal override maneuver. A strong social construct cannot be governed via physical force without destroying it - and hopefully the attempt of anyone to "take their ball and go home" would leave them holding a very small ball and walking away from an intact playcourt.
I am not sure that I got all the words above correct. (Though my time box and word budget are both blown!) ...aaaand I think that illustrates once again how living, breathing social embodiment of power and principles is required for a healthy organization. A decision protocol cannot decide itself. A constitution cannot amend itself. No concrete structure of legal force can defend itself from gaming or abuse.
The buck stops with us - with all of us, firmly bound to the principle of nonviolence. That doesn't require unanimity or agreement, but does require cooperation and trust. Power exists, and power differences exist, and once again awareness is the answer for the actors, the watchers, and the watchers of the watchers. This paragraph may not yet be true - and I commit to using my power here to make it more true over time.
Cheers,
James