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    21st Century Ideas: Silver Buckshot

    What we don't need: to get organized

    Started by: infrarad Raves:8 Badge Winner! Protovation

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    There is a persistent idea that I believe needs to be unpacked. It is an idea expressed in the statements, "We need to get organized" or "Structs are too numerous and small" and "Everyone stop structing for a minute!" and "What X people are doing isn't going to work so they should stop and do Y" ******** We have all of history to tell us that massive centralized cooperation works only for relatively short periods of time, and for relatively small numbers of people. I maintain that telling people what to do, because it is the virtuous or smart thing, does not work. What I believe DOES work is giving people a mission to do, with multi-capital rewards (engagement, fun, solving their own goals, money, whatever), which they may or may not take. ********* Consider this metaphor: Individual structs are unicellular organisms in a large sea. Unicellular organisms are have a tiny sensory range, and have very specific behaviors. If you want complex behavior, it's a waste of time to yell at unicellular organisms and complain that they're being awfully short-sighted and specific and, well, unicellular. It is a better use of time to evolve, to become multicellular, to eat other structures, to develop eyes, to domesticate structures, and develop civilization. ********* The real trick, though, is that evolution does not have a direction vector. It uses what IS, rather than what SHOULD BE. We are too unicellular to see what is going to work, and what is going to work on a small scale, and, especially, what is going to fail but fail in an interesting way. To take a popularly discussed example: I am staying out of discussions of whether homesteading is a viable food option, because I don't know anything about my food supply. I am a white-tower lily-livered academic with no callouses, and I have been buying bootlegged produce off the green market because I was born in a city, raised in a city, and know nothing real about my food supply. This is not acceptable. So, my plan is to get help raising food, so that I can at least understand what it is. Am I going to feed myself and my family with container gardens in my apartment window? Unlikely. But while I'm deciding whether to take Project ARK's relocation offer, I need to learn about food and dirt and light and growing cycle and what has gone on to feed me unseen for the past 43 years. ***************** It's not about 'the' solution that will work. It's about determining an entire web of solutions. Some of them may not be solutions, and of those, some will be terrible, terrible ideas which lead to undue suffering. But evolution works like that: given mutually exclusive strategies, try them all.

    I think there's a difference between collaboration and seeing structs get swallowed up by others. Suggesting collaborations is a great way to build a community that has common goals and needs a wider spread of talents to accomplish what it's setting out to do. Maybe thats what people mean when they say "get organized?" I agree it's too early in the game to expect huge results from individual superstructs.

    i think structs should be tools and not an end in themselves. structs are ways to communicate, to pool resources and tools, and to leverage those resources in order to increase the potential effect. but getting organized is not the only way to get something done. in fact, my superstruct "Everyday Heroes" doesn't actually organize anyone. The hope is to inspire individual action, not organize it into something bigger

    David Jay knows who said it, it's a quote from one of his professors. Maybe he'll drop by and tell us. Basically, this is what he gets at in his post "Ride the black swan,": which I posted for him before he joined.

    I think that if we look closely at the evolution of life we find that "survival of the fitest", i.e. competition is only a mechanism serving to help evolve collective organisms that are monumental examples of successful cooperation (among unicellular creatures and collections of them). Self-organizing, cooperating units are the key to evolutionary success. Imposing organization from outside or the "top" always leads to failure. See my Superstruct, Worldwide Immune System for Humanity, as an initiative to further the evolution of the collective organism that is our species, Humanity.

    I had the same knee-jerk reaction at first; 'nobody tell me to get organised' and 'I will struct whatever I feel like structing, thank you very much'. But then, this is a process: To analize the problem, to offer a solution, to implement it and to live it. On each step there is some organization needed - even if only by the few who provide the infrastructure to hold the discussion. I believe it is impossible to hold humans to a single ideal; everyone has their own take on everything. Looking at organised religion, governments, etc. we find that it is impossible to get everybody to agree on the same thing. However, allowing something we can learn from the ancient greek and roman civilisations (pre-christianity) was tolerance: they allowed different religions and beliefs to coexist. (please, let's not get into a religious discussion tough - it is only as an example). Therefore: I propose there is a need for some organisation, whichever shape it takes, to come up with the solutions. However, once those solutions are found, people themselves will need to find which solutions they identify with and micro-manage themselves. A human macro-civilisation is simply against human nature.

    Here I was hoping that you were advocating that we all arm ourselves to prepare for the upcoming food wars - and wondered if there was some form of lycanthropic disease going around that necessitates the use of silver.

    we don't need organization, we need contagion--we need good ideas to spread, hope to spread, action to spread. We need to innoculate ourselves against apathy and despair. this isn't organization, it's a form of macrocommunication.

    each time i have taken on a mission at first I am bad at it. I think I am doing it and then right at the end I figure out what I am really doing. Like signal noise...sometimes you need to skim. With this mission I have been trying to connect people in areas that allready interest me. life affinity and fun are still key. Its been eye opening to connect some of the fabbers, and gamers and 3D people and unite them under the bright green conceptual banner. people who feel that we need a tech savy and ecologically sensitive horde of solutions should join up so we can see what each other are working on and adapt. Imagine cellular units in symbiosis. No one is engulfed just each process is connected to another useful process.

    The necessary conceit of this process is that it's all supposed to take place within a framework of 6 weeks. I offer that astounding things have been invented, incredible bonds forged, and ideas whose boundaries are still other worldly have been suggested that blow the mind. And we're just in week three. While I get frustrated with some of the vagaries of the system, and the difficulties I have finding out what I want, and creating connections with as many as I desire - what I have discovered is I am willing to toy with the exercise in order to maximize my own self-defined contributions.




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