Quotes on P2P and Commons-Based Relationality

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Short Quotes

So Hum, Sanskrit dictum, which can be translated as "You are, therefore I am". [1]


“Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come to being.”

- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man [2]


We participate, therefore we are [3]


The world exists only to the extent to which you participate in it.” - Roy Ascott [4]


In the past cooperation was a kind of dream, an ideal. Today its a requirement for survival.

- Nicholas Roberts [5]


our differences are our strength

- Andrew Lord


We have moved from communities of neccessity, to elective communities.

- Alan Moore [6]


There is nothing noble in being superior to some other person. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.

- Hindu Proverb


The less you share, the less power you have. And the more you share, the more possible it is for you to get social support.

- Isaac Mao [7]


The longer we listen to one another – with real attention – the more commonality we will find in all our lives. That is, if we are careful to exchange with one another life stories and not simply opinions.

- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross [8]


Online communities are not virtual. The people that we meet online are not virtual. They are real communities populated with real people, which is why so many end up meeting in the flesh.

- Robert Kozinets [9]


"The social-historical is neither the unending addition of intersubjective networks (although it is this too), nor, of course, is it their simple 'product'. The social-historical is the anonymous collective whole, the impersonal-human element that fills every given social formation but which also engulfs it, setting each society in the midst of others, inscribing them all within a continuity in which those who are no longer, those who are elsewhere and even those yet to be born are in a certain sense present".

- Cornelius Castoriadis [The Imaginary Institution of Society]



Long Quotes

1.

"Any of the three W's will get people to transcend clan bonds:

• Work (sharing risk to co-produce wealth),

• Worship (shared a higher power or, at minimum, highest good), or

• War (sharing risk to defeat a common enemy).

Facilitating commerce among self-identified "consumers" isn't among these."

- Matthew McNatt [10]


2.

"The big lesson of the twentieth century for commoners was to discover that collective decision-making is a “lesser evil,” a response to scarcity that must be limited to situations in which this is inevitable. It’s not necessary for everyone to vote on a uniform if each one can wear what they want. It’s not necessary to agree on a menu if several different things can be cooked that will completely satisfy everyone. That is, where one person’s decision does not drastically reduces others’ possible choices, the sphere of the decision should be personal, not collective. Collective choices, democratic methods and voting are ways of managing situations where, more or less explicitly, there is a conflict in the use of resources. They are a “last option” imposed by scarcity. The point is to avoid, as much as possible, the homogenization that they involve. That is why in a community committed to abundance, the wealth produced is measured by the extent of the personal decision-space. It’s no good to create more goods and income if that doesn’t have an impact on everyone’s option-space. It’s no good to defend individuality if resources are not created to make it possible without conflict. To gain ground against scarcity, build abundance and therefore continuously enlarge the material base of personal decision-space is the objective of economic activity of an egalitarian community that works."

- David de Ugarte [11]


Individuals can't think non-linearly, only collectives can

"By yourself, you can’t think non-linearly. This isn’t your fault. Individual human beings can’t think non-linearly. Only “collective intelligences,” those agents of “inter-subjective consciousness” can. To put it more simply, we implement and do things as individuals. We innovate as tribes. And the world we live in today — the world of the 21st Century — is a world of continuous innovation. In this environment, for the first time ever in history, the ability to innovate is decisively superior to the ability to deploy power."

- Jordan Hall [12]


Mutuality vs Hierarchy

""We are emerging from a long dominator era into one that demands mutuality. The dominator (hierarchical) mode appears strong, but in reality is too slow to respond to the crisis of the time. Mutualism, on the other hand, is liable to be too fragile in the face of dominator pressures: the only way to resist these, based on intricacy, “is for small circles to join hands in a collaborative network that is broader and tighter than anything domination can provide.(p 286)”

- S. J. Goerner [13]


The Logic of Affinity vs the Logic of Hegemony

Richard "Day establishes an opposition between the "logic of hegemony" and the "logic of affinity." Hegemony, he tells us, is totalizing and state-centered. It operates, equally in either what he likes to term its "(neo)liberal" or its "(post)marxist" variants, by means of demand, representation, recognition, and integration. From the very moment that politics is predicated on the demand, it implies and invokes the existence of a state before which the individual or group constituted in the demand seeks to be represented, and by which it hopes to be first recognized and then integrated. Affinity, on the other hand, begins with Exodus and establishes self-generated (and self-valorizing) communities predicated on a "groundless solidarity" and "infinite responsibility" that are always open to the new and the other."

- http://multitude.blogspot.com/2005/11/affinity.html (Source: mentioned in this commentary, at [14], on a book by Richard Day, "Gramsci is Dead", featured here at [15])


Peter Kropotkin on Mutual Aid

"We may safely say that mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle; but that as a factor of evolution, it most probably has a far greater importance, inasmuch as it favors the development of such habits and characters as insure the maintenance and further development of the species, together with the greatest amount of welfare and enjoyment of life for the individual, with the least waste of energy."

- Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid [16]


No Real Freedom for Anyone without Real Freedom for All

“Man becomes conscious of himself and his humanity only in society and only by the collective action of the whole society. [...] I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation.”

- M. Bakunin


The Three Types of Relationships

Synergic Science pioneer Edward Haskell:

  • relationships can be adversary where either I lose or you lose or we both lose,
  • relationships can be neutral where we don't lose, but neither do we win,
  • or, relationships can be synergic — good for both of us — WIN-WIN.

We can be more working together than we can be working separately. And, much more working together than we can be working against each other. This is just common sense.

  • Human synergy is working together by explicit intent. (1+1)>>2
  • Human neutrality is working separately and ignoring each other. (1+1)=2
  • Human adversity is working against each other.(1+1)<2
- Timothy Wilken [17]


The Constellation Method of Social Change

In spite of current ads and slogans, the world doesn't change one person at a time. It changes as networks of relationships form among people who discover they share a common cause and vision of what's possible.

- Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Freize [18]


Transcending the individual human mind through collaboration

"The power of the unaided, individual mind is highly overrated: the Renaissance scholar no longer exists. Although creative individuals are often thought of as working in isolation, the role of interaction and collaboration with other individuals is critical. Creative activity grows out of the relationship between an individual and the world of his or her work, and from the ties between an individual and other human beings. The predominant activity in designing complex systems is that participants teach and instruct each other. Because complex problems require more knowledge than any single person possesses, it is necessary that all involved stakeholders participate, communicate, and collaborate with each other."

- Transcending the individual human mind [19]


The Strength of Weak Ties

"the organisation of exchanges doesn't require the strong involvement of the whole community, but a cluster of very active participants can lead the community in producing a lot of external effects. In massive communities, the diversity of involvements and goals of users can easily be overcome: collective activities result from the opportunities created by personal publication."

- Christophe Aguiton and Dominique Cardon


Towards a science of relationships

"It is impossible to deny that science has made great progress by taking things apart. However, what is left out of this approach is the problem of understanding relationships between the parts.

Indeed, the importance of this understanding should be self-apparent. If all systems around us were made of the same elementary particles, and their relationships were irrelevant, then all systems would be identical. Obviously, this is not the case. Our quest to understand the parts becomes so detailed that we forget what we were trying to understand at the start. Moreover the strategy of looking at parts may blind us to the way properties of a system arise from the relationships between the components. This reflects itself in what we think about in general. More specifically, it affects how we approach problem solving when we try to solve problems in society. Indeed one of the main difficulties in solving problems is that we think the problem resides in the parts themselves, when, in actuality, it is to be found in the interactions between the parts. As a result, many crucial questions can only be addressed by thinking carefully about connections in a system as a whole."

- Yaneer Bar-Yam [20]

The New Relationality

"What is emerging in the work of sociologists is a framework that sees the networked society or the networked individual as entailing an abundance of social connections and more effectively deployed attention. The concern with the decline of community conceives of a scarcity of forms of stable, nurturing, embedding relations, which are mostly fixed over the life of an individual and depend on long-standing and interdependent relations in stable groups, often with hierarchical relations. What we now see emerging is a diversity of forms of attachment and an abundance of connections that enable individuals to attain discrete components of the package of desiderata that ?community? has come to stand for in sociology."

- Yochai Benkler [21]


Alone = All in One

"The English word “alone” comes from “all one” and if you understand the significance of this, there will be no “dissociety.” You are connected to others only to the degree to which you are connected to yourself. Therefore, “dissociety” indicates not only the dissociation from others but also the dissociation from oneself and thus the inability to be oneself.”

- Yasuhiko Genku Kimura [22]


The metaphysics of co-evolution

"The positive value of interactive relations is expressed and measured not in “oppositional” or “hierarchical,” but in “cooperative” terms. It is expressed and measured not through zero-sum hierarchies and power-relations, such as losing and winning, controlling and being controlled, manipulating or being manipulated, etc. The positive value of interactions is shown in terms of proper functioning and fitting, balance and harmony, authenticity and growth."

- Predrag Cicovacki [23]


Aligning Self-Interest with the Well-Being of the Whole

“[One of the] most important systemic things we need to do is to align self-interest with the well being of the whole. That’s how evolution has proceeded to create greater complexity over time.

When the self-interest of the parts and the well being of the whole are aligned, then when the part does well for the whole, it [the part] benefits. And when the part harms the whole, then it harms itself in some way.

So it is in its own self-interest to do the right thing to the whole. It’s called “consequence capture” – the impact of individuals and groups, for good or ill, must be reflected back to them.”

- Michael Dowd [24]


An Adaptable Self, always in relation to the world

"The reference to “northward arm” and “southward arm” is typically Wintu, and its usage suggests a cultural wisdom so deep and unconscious that it was embedded in the very structure of language. In English we refer to the right arm and left arm, and we might describe a certain mountain as being to our right or left, in front or in back of us depending on which way we are facing at the moment. We use the body — the self — as the point of reference against which we describe the world. The Wintu would never do this, and indeed the Wintu language would not permit it. If a certain mountain was to the north, say, the arm nearest that mountain would be called the northward arm. If the Wintu turned around, the arm that had previously been referred to as the northward arm would now be called the southward arm. In other words, the features of the world remained the constant reference, the sense of self was what changed — a self that continually accommodated and adjusted to a world in which the individual was not the center of all creation."

- From the Book: The Way We Lived: California Indian Stories, Songs and Reminiscences. [25]


Rank Thinking vs. Peer Thinking

’I define rank thinking as the belief that only a few in any organization should be given special privilege to monopolize information, control decision-making, and command obedience from the vast majority either through coercive or manipulative power. Peer thinking, on the other hand, is the belief that everyone in the organization should have equal standing to share in information, participate in the decision-making process, and choose to follow through persuasive means. Peer thinking assumes that we each have equal privilege to speak and an obligation to listen.”’ Peer-based organizations create a space–an arena–where we come to recognize and respect one another as equal participants in organizational life.”

- From the book, “The Myth of Leadership” by Jeffrey S. Nielsen. Davis-Black Publishing, 2004

What are the most productive incentives to promote cooperation?

In a society where most people cooperate, then it will be costly to reward them all, while a society in which most people defect would pay a high price for trying to punish them all. So the obvious way to transform an uncooperative population into a cooperative one would be to first provide positive incentives, and later punish the few remaining individuals who refuse to be swayed.

- Christian Hilbe and Karl Sigmund [26]


The Era of the Globalization of People

“Globalisation is not a new phenomenon. As analysed by Thomas Friedman in The World Is Not Flat, in the 16th and 17th centuries empires became global, whereas in the 20th century it was companies that became global, and the differential factor is that since the end of the millennium, ten years ago, it is people who are becoming global. And again it is a third technological revolution that is promoting the transformation: the revolution promoted by new information and communication technologies, of which the internet is the most transformative expression.”

- Josu Jon Imaz [27]

Converging Self-Interest with Mutuality

"Much of modern ideology emphasises how problematic it is to be both self-interested and mutual, to be economic as well as social, we might say. When culture is set up to expect a conflict between the two, it is hard to be both. Yet the two sides are often inseparable in practice and some societies, by encouraging private and public interests to coincide, have managed to integrate them more effectively than ours. One premise of the new human universal will thus be the unity of self and society."

- Keith Hart [28], p. 7


On a Remediated world

We must completely abandon the notion that there is a real and a virtual world, as if the two were opposed. Instead, we must look at how new media is layering over existing spaces, thus reorganizing them. Graham is building on the notion of Bolter and Grusin; remediation. It is constituted (the virtual) on top of our real world. Remediation is taking place constantly. Remediation of painting, film and television, of cities, houses and streets. The old notion of holographic pods, parallel worlds, cyberspace, does not exist. We are far from it."

- Stephen Graham [29]


Twosomes are a key form of relationship

"For me, it is not individuals (or the masses) who change the world, but twosomes. It is couples who create the next generation. It is in private meetings between two individuals that we learn how to exchange encouragement and to feel what another person feels. Big changes are superficial unless they are the sum of a lot of little changes in the way we understand and treat one another. Our life stories are dominated by the encounters we have had with particular individuals, and by our constant search for new encounters. The underprivileged are those who meet only other underprivileged people and can create no spark between them. They need intermediaries to bring about other sorts of encounter."

- Theodore Zeldin [30]


Jung on the virtue of imperfection

C.J. Jung on the preconditions for human renewal:

"A human relationship is not based on differentiation and perfection, for these only emphasize the differences or call forth the exact opposite; it is based, rather, on imperfection, on what is weak, helpless, and in need of support—the very ground and motive for dependence. The perfect have no need of others, but weakness has… it is from need and distress that new forms of existence arise, and not from idealistic requirements or mere wishes. What our world lacks is the psychic connection; no clique, no community of interests, no political party, and no State will ever be able to replace this.”