Introduction to the P2P Foundation Wiki Material about Relational Topics

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This section monitors the shift from individualism to relationality as the central factor of social life. Welcome to the Ecozoic Era!

* I (Michel Bauwens) fully endorse this as the spiritual theory behind an integrative p2p theory for social and personal change: A P2P Interpretation of Soul as Intersubjective Reality and Spirit as Interobjective Reality. By Joe Corbett.

Introductory Citations

  • Cooperativity is fundamental ... There is no dictator in cell regulation, no first among equals, no master regulator, no top-down system of governance.

- Toby J. Gibson, molecular biologist [1]


  • 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)" The keys to doing this, which she works out through many practical examples, are "education, empowerment, infrastructure, support networks, liberation and love.

- Sally Goerner, The Emerging Science and Culture of Integral Society

The Context of Inter-Being

"The new science keeps reminding us that in this participative universe, nothing lives alone. Everything comes into form because of relationship. We are constantly called into relationship — to information, people, events, ideas, and life. Even reality is created through our participation in relationships. We chose what we notice; we relate to certain things and ignore others. Through these chosen relationships we co-create our world. If we are interested in effecting change, it is crucial to remember that we are working within webs of relations, not with machines.

- Margaret J. Wheatley [2]



Introduction

What kind of human relationships arise in a peer to peer context? What are their dynamics?

This section examines topics related to p2p-oriented views of relations, which are, and true to the p2p tradition, inventive and exploratory.

Only the 4 first columns of the P2P Encyclopedia concepts have been ported at this stage.

Our main inspiration for our theorizing is the Relational Typology of Alan Page Fiske; however, the Grid-Group Theory is very close, see there for why the four types of intersubjectivity need each other.

Recommended Introductory Material

  1. For more context, here's already an Introduction on Individuality, Relationality, and Collectivity, by Michel Bauwens. Comments by Adrian Chan and Nathan Lovejoy
  2. Evan Thompson on the Primacy of Intersubjectivity and Christophe Aguiton and Dominique Cardon on why Contemporary Individualization is Relational. Chris Lucas on Integral Intersubjectivity: "I" and "It" perspectives need to be complemented by "We" perspectives. Margaret Archer on Why Morphogenesis Implies Peer to Peer Socialization
  3. Paolo Virno on Collectivity and Individuality: Collectivity as a Precondition for Individuality
  4. Mark Pesce on the Four Characteristics of the Age of Connection, i.e. Hyperconnectivity ; Hyperdistribution ; Hyperintelligence ; Hyperempowerment
  5. Against Digital Dualism : the real is not separate from the virtual!!
  6. Video: Roman Krznaric on Moving from the Age of Introspection to the Age of Outrospection

See also:

  1. New aspects of the digital self, by Grant McCracken et al: Cloudiness, Exhaust Data, Phatic Communication, Ambient Intimacy
  2. Dave Pollard: The Three Constitutive Communities of the Self [3]
  3. Manuel De Landa: Hierarchies and Meshworks are always mixed
  4. Terry Anderson: Distinguishing groups, networks, and collectives
  5. Rosemary Bechler on the Difference between Individualism and Selfish Individualism
  6. Compare the New Relational Paradigm to the older one.
  7. Tim Berners-Lee: Why Sharing may require some loss of control
  8. The typology of Collaborative Community
  9. Christopher Allen: The numbers that matter for governing communities: Personal Circle; Group Tresholds and Power Laws
  10. Evolving from Egocentric Competition via Sociocentric Collaboration to Worldcentric and Kosmocentric Collaboration
  11. Digital Legacies, Online Souls, and the Burdens of Remembering

Video:

  1. David Graeber on Why the Gift Economy and the Commons Are Always Already Present

Where the scientific evidence for our cooperative and emphatic nature comes from

Summary from Joe Brewer [4]:

  1. Evolutionary Biology :: Hominid history (and that of all mammals) shows how group selection pressures give advantage to those species that cooperate successfully.
  2. Contemporary Neuroscience :: Our brains are structured to process social emotions (guilt, shame, compassion, gratitude, etc.) as part of our conceptual systems. Our mental models for cultural settings are mitigated by these feelings, elevating their influence on our daily lives.
  3. Social Psychology :: Our moral sentiments arise through group interaction. Tribal behaviors appear as short-lived “swarms” which persist so long as emotions run high.
  4. Cognitive Anthropology :: Studies of religious concepts and ritual practices reveal how our modes of thought and emotion get altered by group processes (a class of phenomena that are easily observed in all group settings, including how meetings are facilitated within a company or at a community event).

Examples

Michel Bauwens:

"I wish everyone could read this and understand what peer to peer is really about .. it's not about technology and machines, but about human relationships, and this expresses that thought and reality beautifully. At best, and this is what the P2P Foundation is about, technology can scale the capacity for relating in this way .. it creates a global nomadic relationality, it scales small-group dynamics ... but it is not about so-called isolated and autonomous individuals who believe sociality comes from contracts and technology is there to avoid inter-connectedness and inter-dependency ... "?

Bravo Joshua Vial and Enspiral for explaining and practicing this:

https://medium.com/enspiral-tales/about-knitting-and-stitches-enspiral-as-a-close-knit-relational-network-68a7ca4538f9#.1rzjukvc4



Key Essays

This is an absolutely remarkable essay that charts the history of community within the capitalist form, from the earliest community oriented paternalism (the 'Gemeinshaft' model described by Tonnies), to the bureaucratic ('Gesellshaft') model described by Weber and Durkheim, culminating in the emergence of collaborative community, existing in tension and contradiction within the hierarchical and market environment of for-profit companies.
See: The social environment model: Small heroes and the evolution of human society. by Brian Whitworth and Alex P. Whitworth. First Monday, Volume 15, Number 11 - 1 November 2010 [7]


See also:

On the tension between two levels of natural selection: 1) At the group level, selfless behavior is advantageous 2) But at the individual level, selfish behavior is advantageous



Related Wiki sections



Visualizations

The sweet spot for convergence between individual and collective needs:

http://p2pfoundation.net/File:Ikigai.jpg#file

http://p2pfoundation.net/images/Ikigai.jpg



Short Quotes

So Hum, Sanskrit dictum, which can be translated as "You are, therefore I am". [11]


“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 [12]


We participate, therefore we are [13]


The world exists only to the extent to which you participate in it.” - Roy Ascott [14]


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

- Nicholas Roberts [15]


our differences are our strength

- Andrew Lord


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

- Alan Moore [16]


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 [17]


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 [18]


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 [19]


Our selves, the expressive monads of the world, constitute points of the world’s own expression in and through our self-expression.

- Nishida, 1993: p. 59)


"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 [20]


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 [21]


Raimon Panikkar on Why Relativity Is not the Same as Relativism

Raimon Panikkar:

"Facing the predominant absolutism of a certain aspect of reality, RP proposes a radical relativity, a total reciprocity, relationship. As he constantly repeats, however, relativity is not the same as relativism; each part of the whole has its particular value: “The dilemma is not relativism or absolutism, but rather the recognition of the radical relativity of all of Reality” (The Trinity. Una experiencia humana primordial). This concept, which has an equivalent in the Buddhist Pratītyasamutpāda , should be applied to our human relationship, to our relationship with the world to the relationship of God with that world, and even to the divine reality itself. Panikkar makes this radical relativity, total reciprocity or relationship into something constitutive of all of reality, including Divinity itself: “Everything is related to everything”, he affirms following a maxim of Shivaism. Therefore, he comes to affirm that God is pure relation: “genitive relation constitutive of reality", “the genitive constitutive and engendering of all things" (Ibid)."

(https://www.raimon-panikkar.org/english/gloss-radical-relativity.html)


Primary vs Secondary Individual-Group Mentality

A distinction originally made by Heb Shepard:

From the perspective of "primary mentality", 'individual' and 'group' are experienced as opposite... in order to have a strong group, it appears that we need to 'give up' some of our individuality; conversely, to be 'individuals', it appears we need to 'distance' ourselves from the group...

in contrast, from the perspective of "secondary mentality" 'individual' and 'group' are experienced in a synergistic way: the MORE room there is for people to be individual and unique and eccentric, the stronger a group we will have; conversely, the more real support i can feel from the group, the more individual and unique and eccentric i can be... "

- Rosa Zubizarreta [22]


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 [23]


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 [24]


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 [25], on a book by Richard Day, "Gramsci is Dead", featured here at[ http://www.btlbooks.com/New_Titles/gramsci_dead.htm])


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 [26]


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 [27]


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 [28]


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 [29]


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 [30]


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 [31]


The Relational Ethics and Perspectives of Entangled Humanism

“What is the ethical specificity of the human?

It would perhaps reside in the fulfillment of this ethical capacity to the universal, in the tension towards universality, in the tendential universalism of the human species which can take the form of an altruism extended to everything. that is, to everything that exists. The human, therefore, would not be fully human when he is a specieist: on the contrary, he would never be more human than when he transcends narrow humanism, the specieist egoism that is anthropocentrism. There is in humans a tendency and a tension towards universality, towards objectivity, the absolute, the truth, which makes them perhaps and possibly the ethical species par excellence, the most ethical species. Capable of a universalism which would not be an imperialism of human reason, but also of a relativism which gives rise to a sense of perspectivism and relationalism: an ability to recognize the particularity, the singularity of each being, from each point of view, to take into account the perspective character of existence, but also the co-constitutive relations between all beings. There seem to be cognitive and emotional capacities in human beings which would enable them both to view things from a general, even universal point of view, through the point of view of the whole, and to recognize relativism. Perspectivism from every point of view - including his own. ”

Falk Van Gaver (Krisis, No. 49, 12/2018, p. 59)


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 [32]


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 [33]


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 [34]


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. [35]


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 [36]


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 [37]

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 [38], 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 [39]


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 [40]


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.”==


Losing our Bodily Inhibitions for Violence

"In a conflict between bulls, one of them retreats and violence and death are unnecessary. But because of what McLuhan termed "the media extensions of man," the evolutionary system of inhibition expressed in the body and its forms of body language is short-circuited. Consider the fact that if we bump into someone around the corner, we back off and courteously excuse ourselves. But if someone cuts in front of us on the highway in an automobile, we shout out our obscenities in a steel-encased rage. We lose the system of checks and balances expressed in the physical body with its biological systems for dealing with and containing aggression. Consider again how people on talk radio will become enraged over the day's news, or how people who live in the cyberspace of electronic bulletin boards will "go up in flames." There are no bodies in these modes of communication, so as we shift to "out-of-body forms of projection" into cyberspace networks, it is not surprising that the astral plane takes us over as we become possessed by those noetic parasites that older cultures liked to call demons."

- William Irwin Thompson [41]


Maximal narcissism vs optimal narcissism

"Psychologically, at every phase and in many situations in life, conflicts arise where a person needs to balance the maternal function – self-priority, ego-centrism, desires, imagination, needs, interests and will – with the paternal function – objective truth, established societal and natural laws, collective priority, self-restraint and consequences. Finding a balance between these two functions is a lifelong endeavour, and mastery involves, to use the phrase from addiction psychology, living life on life’s terms. This mastery means the difference between what Erich Fromm refers to as maximal narcissism and optimal narcissism. In optimal narcissism, “the biologically necessary degree of narcissism is reduced to the degree of narcissism that is compatible with social cooperation” (Fromm, 1964, p. 76). In this short definition, we see the balancing of subjective interests with the demands of society around us. Maximal narcissism is a threat to survival, as its value judgments are prejudiced and biased; fair criticism elicits intense anger and is experienced as a hostile attack on their person. Given enough power – either individually or as a group – those who are maximally narcissistic may “attempt to transform reality [representing the paternal function] in such a way as to make it conform, to some extent, with [their] narcissistic self-image [representing the maternal function].”

- Jaco Van Zyl [42]


Mattias Desmet on Mass vs Group Formation

"Every time people come together on the basis of an opinion, they form a mass. And every time people join on the basis of tolerance for different opinions, they form a group. This is the essence of the psychological process that is going on in the world right now. On the one hand we see the emergence of masses, a globalist mass united by a propagandized, ideological opinion, but also counter-masses united by other fanatical narratives. On the other hand, we see the emergence of a group based on resonant speech—a group that connects people with the most divergent opinions, that prioritizes open-mindedness and sincerity. Once the group becomes energetically stronger than the mass, the era of totalitarianism is over."

- Mattias Desmet [43]


Key Resources

  1. Citations on human intercourse with nature, and with the Other(s), including subtle beings, etc... By Anthony Judge. 2007
  2. Universal Declaration of Responsibilities of Human Intercourse, 2007, by Anthony Judge
  3. Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities, 1997
  4. NetWiki: network analysis concepts

Key (theory) Approaches

  1. Relational Model Typology - Fiske: this is our main inspiration
  2. Extitutional Theory, the complement to the institutional vision
  3. Grid-Group Theory says there are four primary ways of organizing, perceiving, and justifying social relations (usually called ‘ways of life,’ or ‘social solidarities’): egalitarianism, hierarchy, individualism and fatalism. Or: Why the Four Types of Intersubjectivity Need Each Other!
  4. Social Exchange Theory
  5. Object-Oriented Sociality
  6. the Free-Goodness Model‎ based on game theoretical rules
  7. Relational-Cultural Theory: towards a Relational-Cultural Model of the Self
  8. Serial Endosymbiosis Theory: Thesis on biological evolution by Lynn Margulis: qualitative jumps in evolution depends on symbiosis with other living beings


Interaction Grammar

From the TransforMap ontology [44]:

  • bartering: Here you can exchange something: give & take by way of bartering
  • lending: Here you can borrow something (contributions towards costs). by way of lending
  • renting: Here you can rent something. by way of renting
  • gifting: Here you can give and receive. by way of gifting
  • rebuying_reselling: Here you can get and leave things that are not needed anymore. Second-hand. rebuy & resell
  • co-use: Here you can use (some)things with others. co-use
  • diy_and_dit: Here you can produce or repair, upcycle or downcycle something by yourself or together with others. Do It Yourself & Together
  • buying_and_selling: Here your can buy and sell things. buy & sell

Key Articles

  1. To read absolutely: The Historical Progression of Complexity, Networks and Hierarchy
  2. Communitarianism in a Market Culture: by A. Allen Butcher
  3. Felix Stalder: Social Media Are Re-Embedding Cultural Production into Concrete Social Relationships
  4. A Meditation on Participation. By John Hopkins.
  5. Jodi Dean on How Technoculture produces Subjects
  6. Dave Pollard on Why Our Identities In Networks Are So Fragile
  7. Transcending the Individual Human Mind through Collaborative Design. Ernesto Arias et al.
  8. The History of Community as a Concept Arun Agrawal.
  9. Robert Ellickson: Unpacking the Household: Informal Property Rights Around the Hearth: examines the relational logic within the Household as Commons.
  10. The End of Solitude. Essay from WILLIAM DERESIEWICZ in the Chronicle Review
  11. Kevin Marks: The Three Main Social Aspects of the Web
  12. The Revival of Peering with Nature. By James William Gibson
  13. David Loy: On the Relationship between Individual and Collective Awakening
  14. Tom Atlee: Strategic Synergy between Individual and Collective
  15. Paul Hartzog: Oneness, Nihilism, and the Multitude
  16. Gary Olson: The Political Importance of Mirror Neurons
  17. Ronald Logan: How Nature Avoids Competition and Chooses Cooperation (updating Darwin's and Kropotkin's view on evolution at the hand of the latest science and the commentary of Stephen Jay Gould)
  18. Ronald Logan: Coordinated Cooperation vs Subordinated Cooperation (presents the ideas of Sarkar)
  19. Denis Postle: Psychological Commons, Peer to Peer Networks and Post-Professional Psychopractice
  20. Kingsley Dennis: How the Internet Creates Relational/Ecological Forms of Awareness
  21. Zeynep Tufekci: Social Media's Positive Influence on Human Sociality
  22. Charlene Spretnak on Relational Reality


Also:

  1. The Happiness - Unhappiness Continuum

Broken links:

We're trying to recover the following:

  1. Critique of the reductionism of sociality inherent in network theory, by Ulises Mejias.


Special topic: The Ethics of Sharing

  1. Qualities of Sharing and their Transformations in the Digital Age. Andreas Wittel.
  2. The Unethics of Sharing on Corporate-Owned Platforms. Mayo Fuster Morell.
  3. Does Sharing Personal Information Create a New Public Realm?
  4. Remix Ethics. by Vito Campanelli

Key Blogs

  1. Swarming Media is an excellent blog investigating the evolution of identity in networked media, at http://www.swarmingmedia.com/
  2. the Ideant blog by Ulises A. Mejias monitors the issue of proximity in Networked Sociality, at http://ideant.typepad.com/ .
  3. Network Weaving, about measuring online relationships, at http://www.networkweaving.com/blog/


Key Books




More:

  1. Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. Interview and book (the Spirit Level) by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.
  2. Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Computers and Less From Each Other. Sherry Turkle. The title beautifully summarizes her growing concern that computers, rather than becoming catalysts for re-thinking identity, have seriously undermined our ability to connect in meaningful ways with each other. [46]
  3. Steve Pinker. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.
  4. Yochai Benkler: How Cooperation Triumphs over Self-Interest
  5. Richard Sennett. Together: The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation. Yale University Press, 2012.

See also:

  1. The New Networked Social Operating System. "Networked", Book by Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman. MIT, 2012
  2. Writing the Self: traces the history of the idea of the self, in diaries, memoirs and other first-person writings, from the Iron Age to the age of the Internet.


The classics:

  1. Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. Watts, Duncan. Norton Press, 2003 [47]

Also:

  1. Technically Together: Rethinking Community within Techno-Society. By Michele A. Willson.
  2. Connecting: How We Form Social Bonds and Communities in the Internet Age
  3. The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age. Joseph Turow and Lokman Tsui, Editors. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press and University of Michigan Library, 2008.


The Science:

  1. Mirroring People: The Science of How We Connect to Others. Marco Iacoboni. [48]
  2. Why Humans Cooperate: A Cultural and Evolutionary Explanation by Natalie Henrich and Joseph Henrich (Oxford University Press, 2007)
  3. The Compassionate Instinct: The Science of Human Goodness, coedited by Dacher Keltner, Jason Marsh, and Jeremy Adam Smith (January, WW Norton), 2009
  4. Why We Cooperate, by Michael Tomasello (Boston Review Books), 2009 [49]
  5. The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society, by Frans de Waal (Harmony Books), 2009
  6. Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson, Unto Others, Harvard University Press, 1998: For group selection giving rise to cooperation


The Politics:

  1. Jeremy Rifkin, The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness. In A World In Crisis. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2009
  2. The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies. By Scott E. Page. Princeton University Press, 2012. [50]
  3. Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many. By Hélène Landemore. Princeton University Press, 2012 [51]
  4. Collective Wisdom. Principles and Mechanisms. Edited by: Hélène Landemore and Jon Elster. Cambridge University Press, 2012 [52]


The Spirituality:

  • You are Therefore I am: A Declaration of Dependence. Satish Kumar. Green Books, 2002
  • The Cosmotheandric Experience: Emerging religious consciousness. By Raimon Panikkar. [53]

"Every person is “a knot in the net of relationships… reaching out to the very antipodes of the real. An isolated individual is incomprehensible… Man is only Man with the sky above, the Earth below, and his fellow beings all around”.

The first part of The Cosmotheandric Experience, “Colligite Fragmenta: For an Integration of Reality”, describes “three kairological moments of consciousness” and formulates the intuition that kosmos, theos and anthropos cannot be conceived separately. “The cosmotheandric vision does not gravitate around a single point, neither God nor Man nor World, and in this sense it has no center. The three coexist, they interrelate and may be hierarchically constituted or coordinated… but they cannot be isolated, for this would annihilate them”.

The second part, “The End of History” analyzes the threefold structure of human time-consciousness by distinguishing a nonhistorical consciousness, a historical consciousness, and a transhistorical consciousness that is quietly arising in our time. The book concludes with the epilogue “Anima Mundi, Vita Hominis, Spiritus Dei”, stating at the outset that “the Earth is alive” and inviting us to overcome the dichotomy between so-called “nature-mysticism” and “theistic mysticism”, for “the entire reality is committed to the same unique adventure”." [54]


Course:

  1. This Is Me: = workbook to help students discover and construct their Digital Identity

Relational Economics

  • Reciprocity, Altruism and Civil Society. By Luigi Bruni: "Bruni's historical-methodological analysis of reciprocity is a way of examining the interface between political economy and the issue of sociality, generally characterized by 'two hundred years of solitude' of the homo economicus." [55]

Key Podcasts

  1. Judith V. Jordan on the Relational Shift in Psychology‎
  2. Martin Luther King and his Cosmology of Connection
  3. David Seamon on the Relational Dynamics between Humans and their Built Environment


Key Webcasts

  1. Digital Dossier - Individuals must become more aware of the digital footprints they leave behind. This fictional story of Andy demonstrates the importance of understanding one’s digital identity.
  2. Identity 2.0 - Dick Hardt’s excellent Keynote at OSCON 2005 is a brilliant introduction to the concept of digital identity, and what this may mean in the future.
  3. Yochai Benkler on How Cooperation Triumphs over Self-Interest
  4. David Graeber on Why the Gift Economy and the Commons Are Always Already Present
  5. Watch this fascinating interview/conversation: Bruce Lipton on Why Natural and Human Evolution is Communal, not Individual


Practices

(Neo)Traditional Gifting/Sharing/Cooperative Practices:

  1. Ayni
  2. Corima
  3. Guelaguetza
  4. Maloka
  5. Minga
  6. Mutirao
  7. Potlach
  8. Tequio