Furthering the Utopia Discussion, version 2.0
I have to say that just in a few days I've had some of the best conversation on the top of bettering humankind/utopia. The original post can be seen here for those that wish to see what's been discussed so far, but the intention of this post it to collect the main points, issues, possible solutions and the great reading material that's already been generated into a single place. I intend to make future posts to again organize the discussion neatly as time goes on.
Special thanks to those participating:
@hr1 @void @mor @opheliafu @bleepcoin @dr2073
https://steemit.com/steemit/@sykochica/how-to-make-a-small-utopia-and-steemit-might-be-able-to-help
Main Goal
While of course sustainability is a huge issue to figure out, the main goal of this community is to promote a person to be able to do whatever it is that they naturally do to create, inspire and grow both individually and as a group. In short, the goal is personal growth, however the individual chooses to define that. Nobody should be the same person they were as a teenager. The thing that makes an artist an artist is that they create regardless, just because it's what they naturally (at that moment) WANT to. It's easy to figure out what you need, but finding what you WANT, especially knowing that wants change over time, can really be quite hard.
Flow is the psychological state of being in the moment. As children this is seen in the form of playing while in adults its commonly seen in musicians playing music/jamming. For me it's playing chess or poker, taking in all the information and trying to determine the best move to make. When anyone is in a state of Flow, it's done with maximum effort. Who would actually decide consciously to play music or a game poorly on purpose?
To keep this brief, the goal is to gather people (virtually or physically), who have an idea of who they are, what they want and how to progress themselves from there.
Please feel free to make suggestions on the main goal, this to me is the most important aspect since it really defines the metric of success. I always have the Gross Domestic Happiness measure from Bhutan come to mind.
What's Been Discussed So Far
How to Start/Raise Capital
Originally I was pretty stuck on this short of creating a successful company, from which these ideas could then try and be enacted. In my outdated idea it was difficult to generate enough money to be allocated such that a small number of people could essentially have a sabbatical (get paid to not 'work') with the hope of something being created whether it be music, art, writing, inventing, engineering, research, etc..., whatever it was that that individual would do when given the free time. The major problem here is that it required massive amounts of capital to even provide this free time (high cost) and there was little guaranty that the creations would be monetize-able to generate the ability to pay for more sabbaticals (low financial payout.) It's worth mentioning that while its still the goal for people to create whatever they want, without money being the goal, the finances must be looked at in the sustainability/longevity sense of the project.
@hr1 provided links on various bootstrapping articles from which the business application would allocate a small percentage of an already established, profitable company and into the 'bootstrap project fund,' which once it had build up over time, could be used to enact a low cost/high payoff project that would be too risky to do as it's own startup.
Living Arrangements and Family
@hr1 shared a link for Tech Squat that has been implemented in both Prague and Singapore where multiple people share a flat, share expenses, with the goal or sharing ideas, inspriation, etc... to benefit humanity. I'm not sure of specific topics or issues they focus on, it was more the living arrangement that started discussion.
@void mentioned how multiple people living in a flat might not work so well for families, both for the want of privacy as well as to not disturb others (i.e. crying baby.)
@mor provided these as additional ideas of living arrangements; I want to live in a baugruppe and Don't Call It A Commune
This then led into looking deeper into pros and cons of families living in a shared home. Everyone would still have their own bedroom, but kitchen, workspace, etc.. was shared. Pro's included shared responsibility for kids (it takes a village) as well as other chores that were nice to already be done after a long day, on top of the main idea of sharing ideas and furthering everyone's creativity to benefit whomever.
I know I was left trying to think of what sort of things I'd just assumed regarding living situations;
-why do we isolate the home to just the nuclear family (this used to include grandparents in the past)
-what sort of shared mindset would be necessary for non-related families to live together
-what privacy would I actually need (changing clothes, sleeping, me-time/meditation, etc..)
Living Arrangement Reading Material/Links:
http://techsquat.com/ - cohabition going on in Prague and Singaport
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/07/two-couples-one-mortgage/374102/
The Need for Members to have done some Ego Work
We also talked about the need for those included to have done what someone termed 'ego work' such that would actually allow people to successfully be a useful group over a long period of time. Some reading on this on Why Communes Fail is out there, typcally dealing with issues of greed, lazyness and in-fighting. To me removing the acts and perception of acts based on malice goes a long way. Personally, being an optimist, I do like to believe that there are a subset of people out there that are able have some enlighted self interst where they not only do what's good for themselves AND the group.
What sort of qualities/requirements do you think are necessary? How can trivial conflicts be prevented and how can actual conflicts be resolved? It's again worth noting that nothing is perfect, but that shouldn't inhibit bettermant.
Well thought out art and fiction
@dr2073 shared a story that definitely hits on some good topics with in a fictional story entitled Manna. It gets into an automated managerial software for at first minimum wage workers and expands from there. I've been enjoying the read, calling many potential pitfalls to mind.
What other pitfalls or benefits have others found in stories or other media?
Please let me know if I've missed something important from the previous discussion as well as other things to be included in general. Remember, it's not about being RIGHT, it's about being BETTER.
Thanks for such a great summary of the discussions we had!
One possible direction is to discuss our individual visions of such community. Mine is quite simple: I am looking for ways how to do what I wanna do: AI research. For that I need
The last one being the most important and most difficult. For the last one it's obvious that a community or a kind of organization is necessary, but for the other 3 things a community can make things easier - sharing lowers the costs. On the other hand community makes things more difficult - everybody is different, so friction will necessarily arise.
How to lower the friction? We talked about the 'ego work', but this is very general and also it's kind of individual responsibility for each member of the community. Is there something else we can do? Do you think there exists a set of rules or a way of organizing the community which will decrease the friction?
I think the 4 priorities you mentioned is are pretty on point (even though heating and air conditioning is up there for me, lol.
I kinda lump a couple together as 'to have food/water/shelter' or basic needs. I totally agree on the need for a place to work, both in having work to do as well as a physical location to do it. The final bullet point is just spot on. I would assume others would want to include something about family too, which I guess might be included in the people concept.
Now as to the 'How to lower the friction?'...I break my response a few ways...
*** Selection/Membership Requirements: The discussion of 'ego work' was basically dancing around this issue. If there are certain things necessary of a prospective member, such that there is some level of trust and shared understanding required...WHO GETS IN? This is typically a very dangerous rabbit hole to go down...
-what is the selection criteria
-who gets to make the decision (only certain members/all members/something else)
-are we comfortable that such decision makers exists (i.e. who has the right to judge)
-what happens when its deciding an existing member should be forced out, etc.. (it's bound to happen)
Now I do think that there can be some higher level characteristics we can tease out from 'ego work' such as the 'not acting on malice', being in control of greed, envy and other externally focused negative emotions, etc..
(Please help tease out this list of characteristics)
I don't want to simply read a resume, give an interview and simply hope that the decision makers radar is effective enough to sense if the person is truthful. I'm sure we've all seen resumes that were full of crap, or how about the dating scene...whew. My point is that most humans are used to painting that facade to show why they should be accepted, that really had no truth or substance to it. Because of this I would figure that who ever were to choose acceptance, would have to have enough exposure to the prospect to really get to see the REAL person.
*** Trivial Conflicts: I label these 'trivial' conflicts because they typically arise over a miscommunication, where what is meant is taken the wrong way, or a misinterpretation of an action. The only fix for these are through verbal reconciliation (i.e. talk about it.) This seems like a 'no duh' sort of statement, but when looking at current society, people are so quick to be insulted and fly off the handle, that many people won't even begin the discussion out of fear the other person becomes emotional. Simply by having certain characteristics of 'ego work' be required, I would assume it would make it easier for community members to have enough trust and understanding (and that they won't become angry or other negative emotion) to start the simple discussion of "Did you really mean it that way" or "Did you mean to do that?". While this won't solve trivial conflict, I do think they will be greatly diminished.
*** Practical Conflict: These are usually over resource allocation or mutually exclusive goals. While the main goals for this community include food/water/shelter, place to work, people, who are interested in similar things, so we can share ideas and help each other and whatever else is included, I again see a good chunk of these conflicting never even occurring, with greed (ideally) being taken out of the picture, and fundamental needs taken care of. I feel it's best for the community as a whole to decide upon how to deal with the practical conflicts.
@hr1 this is great! I'd love to see the visions of others. It's a great way to get the discussion going further by seeing what priorities, metrics, goals, etc everyone has. I can compile them together so we can keep a running list.
I thought this pamphlet called Design Your Own Utopia that might be helpful as we move along. It has a pretty nice outline of questions to cover, almost like a checklist.
Great discussion here! Thanks for linking me to it @sykochica! Having bootstrapped my own business over four years of working a full time job on the side, I know it's possible. I've now been doing it full time for 5 more years and though my business partner and I probably could take a sabbatical because our small team is awesome, I still put in 8+ hour days (less so recently because of Steemit). I too want to research A.I. stuff, specifically the morality of A.I., but I know my team and my customers benefit from my work.
Many view work as a terrible thing, but, I think, it's often that their job sucks and they aren't doing fulfilling work. As they say, if you love what you do, you'll never work another day in your life.
As to practical approaches to sustainable and community living, there are some interesting things going on, even here in Nashville, with co-housing concepts where meals are shared in community spaces. It's pretty interesting stuff... but I also love my home with my family in the suburbs. :)
Glad you joined us!
It's definitely nice to hear of concepts like the business bootstrapping concretely being successful, adding hope.
I actually just read Killer Robots: Artificial Intelligence and Human Extinction in the last few days and got me thinking again on the topic, specifically the pros and cons of AI both as far as protection from extinction as well as the side of determining what's good for the human psychologically. Simply giving a person EVERYTHING they would need or making everything too easy can lead to sloth or other negative behaviours. The concept of needing challenges seems an important part of us. I actually through out this type of AI discussion as a topic for the steemit talk podcast I've started doing with @winstonwolfe .
Here's the pilot we'd done, which didn't have an in depth topic yet: Pilot Steemit Talk
The 2nd one we did earlier today got into the Free Will question that referenced a steemit post. He'll be posting that one tomorrow at noon CST I believe. Were hoping to continue the 'deeper topic' sort of thing.
While it's not a direct analogy to humans, I found this mouse utopia experiment interesting.
It started with a handful of breeding pairs and the mice were provided all the food, water and security from predators they could need. The one limiting factor in this experiment was the Space they were housed in, which could comfortably fit about 600-700. As breeding continued and the population passed about 660, researches started to see changes in behavior. Mice had a hard time getting around each other to do their routine and a few violent behaviors were noticed to occur. As the population continued to grow, more fights between adults happened as well as violence towards the babies started to occur.
The population peaked about 1200 or so and them collapsed due to the mortality rate of young as well as adult deaths. Most the population has actually stopped breeding all together towards the later stages. My interesting take away from this...
Even after the population had dropped back to comfortable space levels, the old behaviors didn't return. The new ones continued and the whole community collapsed to essentially zero. Strange that even after the space restraints returned, the 'civilized' behavior did not.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure I need sleep. Yep, definitely need sleep. I look forward to future discussions :)
I've had some fun conversations with @winstonwolfe as well, and I also put something out there on determinism which was fun. I'll have to check out what you all are up to. Yeah, I've been fascinated with the mouse utopia experiment as well. I'm glad humans have more advanced cognitive abilities than mice. :)
It's a shame that killer robots post didn't get more attention. I just gave it my upvote, for what it's worth.
Haha! I couldn't remember the post @winstonwolfe had brought up to start the Free Will conversation, but it was actually in referrence to your determining determinism post. The 2nd podcast is now posted if anyone is interested.
Steemit Talk Podcast 2 - Free Will
Listening now, thanks! :)
How do you define evil?
Great question!
I define evil as action an done with the goal of negatively effecting somebody in something tangible, physically, emotionally, etc... I truly can't consider a person with an 'evil' though that is not acted upon as evil.
I define 'good' in the same sense in that it is an action done with the goal of positively effecting somebody.
How do you define Good?
I define 'good' in the same sense in that it is an action done with the goal of positively effecting somebody.
hello you sycho :)
me likes, Im not sure what that says about you
I just am what I am and try to emanate good things along the way. :)
After reading over this conversation, along with some meandering thoughts of my own on a similar subject, I have to pose a bit of a question. Whereas I have nothing against furthering the thought of local, centralized communities and communes, which do require solving for all of the variables mentioned in this article, one has to wonder about how to best spread that message and incorporate new blood in to the mix, how best to grow sustainably.
However, looking at it from a different viewpoint may answer many of these questions while of course raising many others. What if you had a decentralized commune? A community of sustainable culture that anyone could "opt-in" to, and profit from, without needing to sell everything they own and possibly acquire a visa to a foreign country just to be a part of?
Steemit and other crowdfunded or social networking platforms have already proven a good basis and shown that the foundation can be conceivably built, but how best do you implement it? One route is the Tinder dating style "communes in your area" that more closely fit your needs personally, spiritually, and creatively. Of course that would require a good deal of active communes to participate, but you get the idea.
I feel like there's something here, something to it, that I haven't discovered yet and need to mull over more. Something just out of my current reaches of thought. But I feel like decentralization protects us the most (no de-facto leaders, best ideas rise to the top, less likely to get a SWAT team involved etc.) while also giving individuals the space and comfort of participating at their own level. I dunno, more thought is required, but I figured I would share what I have to the discussion to see what others might think.
The joy of this discussion is that everything is on the table, especially here in the stages before some idea have gelled together. The few things that seems to have come together at this point I could see are:
-a place to live
-a place to work
-something to eat
-people, who are interested in similar things, so we can share ideas and help each other
(quoting @hr1 in above response)
-maybe something on the goal being around personal growth of members/community
To me the first thing to find common ground on is the goal of the group. With the next focus being on a common vision, which I believe is the current part of discussion. (We're looking for the vision others have, you can see @hr1 's vision in an above reply or what I drew out at some length in the first utopia post of how-to-make-a-small-utopia-and-steemit-might-be-able-to-help. Don't feel it needs to long, any ideas or points are helpful)
With that said, I see there being pros/cons of both centralized and decentralized communities. Since the vision and/or requirements will differ from person to person, requiring a multi-model option. I suspect that we'll end up looking into some split between these two and maybe others.
Regarding the centralized community approach we've had a few models brought up in previous discussion including Tech Squat, baugruppe, and Dont-Call-It-A-Commune. I like the Tinder'esque Communes in your Area idea, especially as it scales up.
In regards the decentralized, interesting questions come up. Does everybody need to be at a physical location to be considered a community? Between the internet, online banking, online ordering and shipping, and other modern technologies we have many outside the box options available for us if people did NOT want to be in a centralized location, have to leave their home/sell things, or other sort of things that some people don't want. There is also nothing to say that a decentralized member couldn't travel and pass through/vacation/visit. This is all still up in the air :)
What are your goals, vision, requirements, etc? Do you think you'd be a more centralized or decentralized sort of person?
Lastly in regards to incorporate 'new blood.' To some degree that's what were doing right now. We are all, on some level, pulling the handle of the one-armed-bandit called Steemit, with in depth thoughts and discussion towards an idea it sounds like a lot of people have thought about but not had the chance to put it together with others with the same passion.
I don't want to speak too much on 'new blood' outside of that, due to the 'marketing' really depending on specifics of the vision, community setup, resources available. Unfortunately, to some degree, the community membership needs to grow hand in hand with financial/resource growth.
I find my flow in Art, but you already know that! However, I also think it's important to support others. This a selfless and selfish act. Why? I naturally want to support and encourage people, I think this comes from years of teaching, I think you can see that in some of my comment posts. However, if people are not into supporting others because it's the nice thing to do, they should see it as strengthening the quality (of posts) and therefore potential value of Steemit.
Hi! This post has a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 12.9 and reading ease of 52%. This puts the writing level on par with academic journals.