Re: bigato's journal
Posted: Fri Jun 12, 2020 6:18 pm
Your pictures offer such a strong contrast from city life. I really hope the job pans out in a way that makes staying put sustainable.
---an online community leveraging 14 years of experience in resilient post-consumerist praxis
https://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/
https://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/viewtopic.php?t=1953
bigato wrote: It was actually prompted by reflections after [the Wheaton] incident, but
not directly caused by the incident itself nor by your actions.
My last message there was a bad one indeed, and I was going to
rewrite it but then I saw it had already been quoted.
Using the countertop metaphor yet again: imagine a world where
having your own kitchen in the house is just not standard. In
this world, renting and sharing kitchens is common. Like airbnb
for kitchens or some such, including kitchen owners who invite
people over to cook at their homes just to enjoy a share of the
food and good company.
Now you are one of these kitchen owners, and also happen to be
a damn good cook yourself. Over time, you attracted a sizable and
selected group of people who frequent your kitchen and have a
great time. But every now and then you start having problems with
people not keeping your place tidy and clean to your standards. Then
you start making rules and doing your best to enforce then. After
all, it's your kitchen and your house. If it's not kept clean and
orderly, you are the one that will suffer it later. So it's your
standards that should prevail. If it were at my house, for example,
I would not like to have non-vegan food being prepared. Because it
stinks to my nose and I'd have to cope with it later. At some point,
one kitchen owner may start asking himself, "why do I even do this
job of managing cooks", because it sucks.
The problem, in my mind, is the disconnect between ownership and
responsibility. It's the same thing happening in communes, except
in digital form. You own the kitchen, but I own my dishes. But if
I decide to use your kitchen to cook meth, you'd be legally liable.
Me, on the other side, could just jump from kitchen to kitchen, and
avoid responsibility for the consequences of my own actions. The
maintenance on the kitchens would be all on the owners after all.
So that made me question all my participation in online communities
and my use of instant messaging tools as a whole. I'm studying this
problem and the alternatives in this space, and I don't have a clear
answer yet, but I'll try doing without whilst I decide what's better
to do. Furthermore, I even suspect that my social interactions online
(mainly ere forums nowadays) could be taxing my limited social energy
in the real life interactions. or at least preventing me from
going out of my way to have better interactions with people near me,
because online people I can find are so awesome and they fill my
limited social needs pretty well.
Looking at it from another angle, it is as if all interactions I have
with the world sit in a spectrum between complete agency and no
agency at all. In food words, I have choices ranging from sitting in
a restaurant and ordering from the menu (minimal agency and freedom of
choice) and growing my own food and cooking it myself
(maximum agency and freedom of choice).
The same applies for communication and relationships: the maximum
agency side of the spectrum in my mind would be meeting diverse people
in the real world, developing social ties, gathering a group that I
can trust and maybe even resemble something like a community of sorts.
The other side of the spectrum, with minimum agency, there would be
options like relying on the job for social relations. Somewhere in
between would be options like subscribing to an online community or
even a physical commune where a leader already gathered a number of
people for you. Instant social capital as Alphaville put it. That comes
with its own set of rules set by the people responsible by the
community, and produce some problems stemming again from the disconnect
between ownership and responsibility. The leader owns the community
and is responsible for it, and I partially own my contributions and the
social relations I derive from the interactions.
I don't know where I'll go from here regarding digital social
interactions, maybe I'll try to find some alternative that does not put the burden for
my actions in the shoulders of someone else, and that also does not make
me dependent on someone else for a space. Or maybe I'll build one. Or
just mostly do without digital interactions, if I find them being
actually harmful for my life. The digital and real life lines are increasingly
blurry. Just this morning I read an article saying that the populist
president of my country is adopting a new social network which promises
freedom of speech. One that, as you can guess, is full of their own
problems brought about by unchecked free speech, such as widespread
dissemination of fake news. So I may not be able to just ignore digital
social life, but for the moment, I'll retreat.
You may share this message privately or publicly if you need or want to,
in case my absence raises questions. You may also share my email with
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but please avoid posting it in the public web to avoid spam.
Thank you.