Meeting, Engaging and Seducing non-ERE Allies: Carrot Vectors

[AxelHeyst]

[on second thought...]

[7Wannabe5]

@jp:

I think it depends on to what extent "community" is defined by personal long-term relationships vs. the extent to which it is defined by its mission or purpose. For instance, I have subbed/tutored or taught part-time/flexible/intermittent in at least 16 different schools in 6 different districts in the relatively short time I have been a member of this forum (9-10 years?) It doesn't happen immediately, but as soon as I demonstrate that I am competent and I care about the kids, I am generally accepted as a member of the school community. I imagine the same would hold true if I WWOOFed around to various permaculture projects rather than starting my own. It has also been my experience that simply starting anything resembling a permaculture project (or a lifestyle business) on my own almost immediately starts to attract some level of community of interested others.

However, there is something off about the notion of in some sense "regressing" from a virtual community to a land-locked community. It would be better to come up with a notion that transcends either known possibility. I would note with tone sincere although ironic, that on some level, the emergence of MMGs can be linked to acceptance of the use of even more advanced technology than that which powers the forum.

[AxelHeyst]

However, there is something off about the notion of in some sense "regressing" from a virtual community to a land-locked community. It would be better to come up with a notion that transcends either known possibility.

Just checking: we're all of the understanding that ERE2 != landlocked 'community', yeah?

[Smashter]

When you think of many of the paragons of ERE -- jacob, Ego, C40, theanimal, etc -- they are known for their wanderlust and how they take advantage of the serendipity that comes with ERE.

Maybe it's because I've moved a lot, but I don't see it this way at all. I consider Jacob, Ego, and theanimal to be pretty rooted. Haven't then been in Chicago, San Diego, and Alaska more or less continuously for 10+ years? C40 feels like the only one your description applies to.

[7Wannabe5]

@AH:

For sure. I meant to convey that various takes on meeting in meat-space might not constitute that which transcends. That which would be transcendent would be helping or adding value to each other(s) in new ways, that may or may not involve meeting in meat-space, but will almost certainly involve aspects of each other(s) meat-space lives.

[jennypenny]

If ERE2 isn't at least a home base if not a landlocked community, I don't get how it can be much different than what goes on here now.

I guess I'm looking for something else. Or defining 'community' differently. Or both. I'm not looking for Retrotopia, but I am looking for connectivity IRL. I want to physically interact with people, not just type at them. I want to break bread, argue, and sit and enjoy the sunset together. I want people in my life who eagerly await tomatoes from my garden every summer, but who also bring me seeds from their travels (just got some from Tivoli gardens last week I need to translate).

If you've read my early posts (10+ years ago), you know I felt like you did once. I thought this was my tribe and online interaction would be enough. As I've risen through the wheaton levels and crossed some rubicon of ERE, I've realized that the most basic of experiences and interactions are the most meaningful. I'm not eschewing modern life at all, and this forum is integral to people's ERE journeys. It's just that, well ... ah, never mind. You'll figure it out as you go. I really hope you guys find what you're looking for.

[AxelHeyst]

@7: gotcha. I dig it.

@jp: All I meant by my comment was that ERE2 is inclusive of, but not defined specifically as, an ERE commune/ecovillage. I don't want people thinking we're merely trying to rehash an ERE-flavored back to the land naivety.

As the guy whose been aggressively hunting down ERE people irl for two and a half years, inclusive of living in their basements for months at a time, , and is currently attempting to lure upwards of 40 of you gems of human beings to my mountain redoubt so we can stare into each other's eyes over the campfire, in addition to all of the nonERE people I regularly hang out with, I get the sense that you and I aren't terribly far apart in our desires for human contact. I suspect we're bumping up against the limit of what can be expressed via text on a little glowy screen.

I honestly feel pretty misunderstood with all this ERE2 stuff, but I blame the medium of communication and not any people in particular. I'd love to meet you one day. I'll bring some seeds.

[jennypenny]

I honestly feel pretty misunderstood with all this ERE2 stuff, but I blame the medium of communication and not any people in particular. I'd love to meet you one day. I'll bring some seeds.

I agree about the medium. I feel like when I take the time to choose my language carefully and say exactly what I mean, I sound annoyed or aloof. When I try to sound friendlier, I don't make my point clear enough. It's exhausting sometimes.

Hopefully we'll meet someday. We actually considered driving out to the meet, but I can't spare two weeks during the height of harvesting and preserving. Maybe another time. I'll bring tomatoes.

[jacob]

The key inflection point to all this is really WL6. Since the majority of humans struggle and abstractions and theory, the most effective approach is to "show, not tell". What you show needs to be relatable to those who are looking. For example, I have over the years put on an increasingly mainstream appearance. This is much more effective than the original "I live in a van down by the river and dress how I want" but of course only when interfacing with the mainstream.

The key to WL6 is to get people out of the hobby stage. As described in the ERE book, there are three orientations to any activity. 1) Pay; 2) Neutral; and 3) Get paid. Usually this is difference of skill level.

Most orange will have one major activity (their salaried job) where they "get paid" but will in turn "pay" for everything else. The key here is to get them out of the "comparative advantage" mindset and show that even if, say, making your own soap takes effort, the soap is better. Be careful here. I would not recommend laundry detergent as your first example. This is where aesthetics matters!

Whereas green often seems to lack that main "get paid" activity because they're either 20something and haven't found it yet or because they think money is evil and jump around between various NGOs trying to turn their volunteering into a paycheck. I think for this group, money can become another activity as per above. For green, money is an activity where they "pay" ... but skill can make this neutral or at least allow them to pay far less, e.g. frugality instead of starbucks and avocado toast. I think YMOYL (which is a thoroughly Green perspective) framed it compatible in terms of "your money or your life" or "life energy". Vicki's strategy with YMOYL was to liberate people from money in the hopes of people pursuing various kinds of activism to change the world. That didn't work. The ERE strategy is more direct in that it tries to change the world by becoming the change (postconsumer praxis).

Anyhoo ... this is the approach I would take when engaging people "on the cusp".

[7Wannabe5]

@jacob:

"Money is evil" is a mythology, but so is "Money is neutral." The kids run out to the playground for recess and resources flow towards the disciplined kid with the most skill at marbles, the clever kid selling candy at a mark-up from the dimestore, the pretty kid selling kisses in the playhouse, and the bully collecting his "dues" behind the bleachers. The "problem" at the next systems-level is that the more successful the disciplined, clever, and pretty kids become, the more likely they will come to form alliances with the bully.

Even people within systems don't often recognize what whole-system goal they are serving. To make profits, most corporations would say, but that's just a rule, a necessary condition to stay in the game. What is the point of the game? To grow, to increase market share, to bring the world (customers, suppliers, regulators) more and more under the control of the corporation, so that its operations become ever more shielded from uncertainty...Actually, it (to engulf everything) is the goal of every living population - and only a bad one when it isn't balanced by higher level negative feedback loops that never let an upstart power-loop-driven-entity control the world.

- Donella Meadows

Although Level Green for sure has its share of naive participants, at the median it is pretty much by definition LESS STUPID than Level Orange.

Anyways, that said, I pretty much agree with your analysis, but would note that although the values clarification exercises integrated into YMOYL are classic Level Green, they are inbalanced, because they aren't as equally applied to earning as spending. Every expenditure is considered in terms of whether or not it provides good value relative to life energy expended to earn its price, BUT the only values-based boundary applied to earning is "Do whatever pays the most net per hour that does not violate your core code of ethics." So, the Greenie who is currently full-time employed at a literary magazine netting $18,000 per year or as a part-time social worker/part-time permaculturalist for $16,000 per year who is not morally opposed to working full-time as a hospital janitor for $36,000/year would have to choose that option in accordance with the "rules" of YMOYL (original version, I think Vicki Robbins might have corrected this somewhat in newer version.) IMO, the problem isn't that Green folk do tend towards manifesting more/different values in realm of employment choices; the problem is that this is done semi-consciously and not accounted for. And this tendency often results in an eventual hard reactionary move as in "The Big Chill" where suddenly the broke-azz poet-type "gives up" on fuzzy ideals and enrolls in grad school to become a guy who does PR for a petroleum company replacing the Orange guy who initially was motivated by Level Orange v-meme, but experienced sudden shift towards Green when he spent day trying to cover up the number of dolphins killed by poorly maintained tanker leakage.

[jennypenny]

Is Peter Limberg (Stoa/Less Foolish) a forumite? He wrote a piece this week about communities.

[Jin+Guice]

viewtopic.php?p=266655#p266655



Linking to this post from the ERE2 FAQ. It explains Jacob's thought process behind ERE2 and where is thinking was at when he made the subforum and introduced the concept.

I think a lot of my confusion was missing his struggle that was specific to the Deep Adaptation** community. This struggle can certainly be extended to other communities, but I don't think it is the only or most important* struggle we face

*I could be wrong about order of importance.

**My only knowledge of this community is the frustration/ lack of understanding that Jacob expresses in the post-above. As such, I'm using them as an example of "stick passers" or people who get things done only by committee agreement. I'm not sure what this community actually has to offer or what they have accomplished... presumably something other than they way I'm generalizing them here.


I personally don't deal with talking stick, we all need to agree with each other people. I'm not personally interested in a group of people who are trying to solve a problem that could be solved by me in 1-2 days, but have been working on it for a year.

I see the appeal of these people if they "get it*" because not a lot of people "get it." I also see the appeal if they have seemingly strong social cohesion/ group dynamics and we are lacking in social cohesion/ group dynamics.

*it = post-consumer praxis.

But the talking stick people are not my people. Imo they are false profits of social cohesion and emotional intelligence. I think a true socialite or highly emotionally intelligent person integrates personal and group goals, they don't obliterate personal goals for the group or group goals for the personal. So I find little in the social dynamics of the "everyone must agree and feel good" people that is worth emulating, which is not the same as being entirely against some form of agreement or saying that feelings are unimportant.

I am not the only person on the ERE2 journey though. Those who "get it" but insist on group social dynamics where everyone must agree are for sure strong potential allies. They are not the allies I am personally initially interested in dealing with or learning from.

We also realize that if we try to bring our ERE1 ideas to other valleys that are NOT inhabited by highly educated, high income, engineering-types, we're likely to get our head chopped off by the local residents who think our ways are evil and scary and will cause the downfall of their tribe because we dress weird and talk funny.

...

So the mission is to figure out why that is happening... and eventually how to not only avoid losing our heads but actually spread the ERE1 ideas in order to avoid being stuck in our own valley. Because our valley is small.

This question is the interesting one to me:


How to identify and seduce potential individual allies and groups of potential allies to work with us and each other and how to integrate our post-consumer praxis ideas with their ideas?

[peterlimberg]

Is Peter Limberg (Stoa/Less Foolish) a forumite? He wrote a piece this week about communities.

Hey.

[Jin+Guice]

Brainstorming question:

Where are other people looking for ERE allies? Where do y'all encounter people or communities who are ERE adjacent?



My answer:

In my mind there are three characteristics to look out for: 1) People who are disgruntled by some part of the consumer-praxis. 2) People who are on the same page about the post-consumer praxis*. 3) People who have skills that will be useful in the post-consumer praxis.

*I'm still not sure we are all on the same page or at least have a full understanding of the post-consumer praxis.


If I encounter someone who only has characteristic 1), I have a really hard time reaching them. This is the largest group I encounter.

I rarely encounter 2). I wouldn't have even thought of this group, but Jacob's characterization of the Deep Adaption community seems like a group of people who are interested in building the post-consumer praxis, but lack the skills and cultural environment to move beyond that desire.

3) This is the group of interest for me. I usually meet them when I'm out and about by asking people what interests them. These people usually share a singular focus on whatever skill they've developed. If someone is into recycling they don't usually see how the need to recycle fits in the larger picture, even if they also have characteristic 1). They lack 2).

I don't seek out communities or intellectual groups. I don't use the internet to find groups of people who have these interests, I meet them in meat space, ambling around at various social events or chatting with people in the street.

[Viktor K]

Has Tiktok marketing come up? I think for organic reach nothing can compare to it currently. Short form tips and tricks, and long-form deeper dives with a tried and true winning formula of:

Hook + Describe problem / relate / empathize + Quick win solution

could go a long way.

[Ego]

Where are other people looking for ERE allies? Where do y'all encounter people or communities who are ERE adjacent?

I go where the decomposers go. Those who are there as a result of economic duress can be interesting because necessity is the mother of invention. Those who are there by choice are interesting because they have found ways to make decomposing fun and profitable.

When we were in a game park in Africa, we would navigate the van to a water hole, pop up the top, lay in the bed with binoculars and watch the fun. After a while the elephants and zebra where boring. That's when we began to notice the dung beetles. Truly amazing what they accomplish. They are the unsung heroes of the continent. My spirit insect.

[Jin+Guice]

I wanted to re-ask my question in terms of the Keepie-Uppie analogy.

So... we are trying to seed "soccers" emergence, except that we don't know what soccer is, because it has not emerged yet. In trying to seed the emergence, how do we recognize others who are playing a game similar to keepie-uppie, that they might help us develop soccer? How similar do they have to be to keepie-uppie players? Are there any novel places we might look? How do we invite them, even if keepie-uppie is a game they don't enjoy?

[AxelHeyst]

I think these are the right questions, but they need to be paired with "How to answer the preceding questions without unintentionally establishing an orthodoxy?"

I think the answer is something like to go out IRL and try different things from a position of curiosity and play. Hold these questions in your mind, come up with various ideas and theories, and then try to set them out of mind and go out in the world doing stuff. The questions will inform action and observation and inform the iteration of the answers to them.

Which I'm pretty sure is what mF was saying in his comment a while back...

Ah, here it is:

I think that it is actually way to early to tell or even be making these distinctions at this point. I realize that we want to go back and forth between theory and practice, but this seems like we need some real world data of all the combos above before we know what it is going to look like. This is fine IMO. We should be able to hold uncertainty in our minds, perhaps for years (speculation is fine of course). I for one am going to take these ideas and experiment with them by interacting with ERE folks (my definition is rather broad) and non-folks and see what shakes out and what we are able to create together. I will retroactively do an analysis and add nuance. Let's be on the lookout for various ways to interact with all groups and learn from one another. This is perhaps the green portion that is missing in the common orange way of interpreting ERE1? Cast a wide net and then gradually filter as necessary. Learn from other folk's strengths as well as their blindspots?

[AxelHeyst]

A phrase that's been rattling in my head the last few days is 'ready for trouble'.

Maybe one attribute of potential allies for the game are the many and increasing numbers of people who agree that trouble is coming/unfolding/already here/likely to get much worse.

So one thing to keep an eye out for, and one way to talk to people, is through the lens of being/getting ready for the trouble, as broadly or narrowly understood as makes sense for that particular interaction. ERE1 is an excellent way to get ready for the trouble, although it's not necessary for that to be your primary motivation.

[Ego]

So one thing to keep an eye out for, and one way to talk to people, is through the lens of being/getting ready for the trouble, as broadly or narrowly understood as makes sense for that particular interaction.

My position as the person others turn to when they are experiencing trouble has caused me to measure our tenants through the lens of ready-for-trouble. Assigning value to those around me by their usefulness is not something I am particularly proud of, but in this environment it is logical.

I divide them into three groups.
1. Those who would likely be ready and able to help in times of trouble.
2. Those who would likely be unwilling or unable to help.
3. Those who would likely amplify or exacerbate the trouble.

Our current census is about 10%/10%/80%.

Many of the coming problems are no longer solvable. They can only be managed. Often with unwinnable decisions.

Those who have arranged their lives so that they never experience unsolvable problems simply cannot cope when the unsolvable problem arrives.

In the context of this thread, one way to deal with this situation is to seek out those who will probably do well in troubled times. No brainer. Easier said that done.

In my mind, more important than that is to prepare myself for those who will be incapable in troubled times and - depending on my relationship with them - limit my exposure to them. I will have to refuse to take on their unsolvable problems and I will have to get better at being okay with that. For someone who likes to help whenever I can, this is not easy.