What is ERE2?

[AxelHeyst]

No man I think you've got it. I mean it sounds like you've gathered all/most of the appropriate questions. That's where we're at: collecting the right questions and taking stabs at answers. The question:answer ratio in this sub is >1.

It's important to make sure we've got the right questions, with which to take with us into the world as we observe and engage and hopefully generate better questions and maybe, eventually, some answers.


ERE1 is in a state of 'Here's how to do X'.
This sub, which is concerned about ERE2, is in a state of 'How do we do Y? It seems like Y is desirable - is that right?'

ETA: and I think where it's at is we more or less exhausted what we can come up with theory and questions (hence threads referencing each other for more information, lol). Well, I'll just speak for myself. I'm at a place of diminishing returns on theory and my current mode is irl engagement, while holding the theory stuff in my head. As I experience things that spark aha moments I'll come back here and try to update the models of wtf we're trying to do.

Your questions aren't out of line at all imo.

[AxelHeyst]

How is the community work Rob Greenfield focuses on any less ERE 2 than a MMG?

One more thought on this. I hope this doesn't come off as argumentative, I really appreciate your comments.

I'm not totally up on what Greenfield is up to at the moment, but let's say that what he's doing is something we'd agree is part of an ERE2 process. That'd be great. But it's not like the response would be "okay good, Rob's on it, let's shut this subforum down and just do whatever he's doing." (I don't think you implied this, but one might infer it from statements you've made about Rob, so I'm taking on that inference.)

ERE1 is about individuals exiting Plato's Cave, and each individual does it in very different ways and that's kind of the point. wolf exited the cave. Nice! I'm going to study his journal and ask him questions. But I'm not going to try to copy wolf's path out of the cave exactly because I'm not wolf. But wait, did wolf actually exit the Cave? How ERE1 is he, really?

Well, since Jacob is the one defining terms around here, we can actually kind of answer this question. Wolf is ERE1 to the extent that he is outside of the Cave, and he is outside the cave to the extent that he has internalized postconsumer praxis, and he's internalized postconsumer praxis to the extent that he has shifted from a consumer scarcity mindset to a producer manifestation mindset....

So, similarly, we can look at a group of people like Greenfield's community work. It is ERE2 to the extent that it is a process of developing a critical mass of people who have exited/are exiting Plato's Cave.

We can turn that lens on the MMG groups. Are they ERE2 at all? Well the MMGs it's a process of connecting and cultivating groups of people who are in the process of exiting Plato's Cave, so yes it seems to be an ERE2 process kind of thing. We can also evaluate the MMGs for 'emergent behavior' that would indicate they are more than just a heap of ERE1 individuals. Well, EREfest came out of the MMG groups, which to me is an indication there there are second order effects going on. (Yes, MMGs weren't a requirement for something like EREfest to happen... but EREfest didn't happen until the MMGs had spun up, so...)

---

Which makes me think about scaling.
Journals (individuals) > MMGs (combinations of individuals) > [individuals meeting IRL more frequently] > EREfests (combinations of MMGs and individuals > ?

So within the bubble of ERE people there's some kind of progression in the direction of 'a critical mass of people who've left/are leaving Plato's cave'. It starts very individualistically and is trending towards relationships/community.

There are other Orangish-rooted communities out there, but the question is are any of them communities of people who've exited Plato's Cave?

There are even more Green-rooted communities out there, but the question is are any of them communities of people who've exited/are exiting Plato's Cave?

How can, how ought, *this* community engage with these other communities? What's appropriate? What's condescending? Should we try to absorb them or be absorbed by them, or neither? How can we supporte, encourage, cultivate, etc more and more critical masses of people who've exited/are exiting the cave?

[jacob]

How do we intermingle our WoGs with people who aren't interested in learning what a WoG is?

By engaging with others using a more "concrete" interface, specifically by using the tactic of "show, don't tell" and eventually having very many people doing (showing) that so that J.R. Random many recognize someone whom to "Copy". Concrete imitators copying each other.

The whole ERE2 language is very abstract. The benefit of abstraction is the ability to see things that are not obvious and fill in the blanks of the map or even behave differently. Insofar the map of the territory is accurate, the map-abstraction makes it possible to learn by thinking without seeing.

The strongest communication happens when meeting people where they're at. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_of_ ... complexity Not everybody thinks about the world in abstract ways. (Go look at some of the 1-2 star reviews of the ERE book. They'll often complain about one particular concrete example, like eating lentils or doing laundry by the bucket, while missing the point of the concept entirely.)

Thus the concept of "failure-modes" as presented in Stoa2 (towards the final 1/4). In particular how that failure-mode can be guided. (Failure is really not a great term ... "simplistification" is better.) What abstraction does is merely condensing many concrete instantiations into a summary, but not everyone wants or needs that.

Hence, there's a two-pronged strategy of both a message (a theory or more accurately, a way of theorizing) and multiple messengers. The theory (ERE2) will reach some messengers but not all. However, those messengers will reach other [messengers] and so on even if the theory is eventually forgotten.

How do we identify the other players?

"It takes one to know one". The thing is, though, one doesn't really have to "know" in order to copy/follow someone else who's already doing it.

[Western Red Cedar]

One more thought on this. I hope this doesn't come off as argumentative, I really appreciate your comments.

I'm not totally up on what Greenfield is up to at the moment, but let's say that what he's doing is something we'd agree is part of an ERE2 process. That'd be great. But it's not like the response would be "okay good, Rob's on it, let's shut this subforum down and just do whatever he's doing." (I don't think you implied this, but one might infer it from statements you've made about Rob, so I'm taking on that inference.)

My point in bringing up Greenfield and referencing other counterculture/anti-consumer groups in my earlier post is to highlight that other groups seem to be focused on emergent renaissance ecology. There have been groups focused on this for centuries. Collaborating with other like-minded individuals or groups in our local communities, as @J&G discussed, seems like an optimal use of time and energy in creating bottom-up change.

It still seems to me that we are distinguishing other collaborative efforts from ERE 2. Vicki Robins has basically been working on this for decades in the PNW. I'm not clear on why we are defining ERE 2.0 so narrowly:

What is ERE2?
It is multiplayer ERE. It's what happens when some critical mass of people come together and individual WoGs interrelate with each other. You might think of it as a WoG of WoGs. Here is this thread explaining ERE2 in more depth.

So wait, does ERE2 exist somewhere?
The short answer is no. There are probably lots of projects out there that are similar to, or come close to, what we mean when we talk about ERE2, but nothing explicit yet.

The forum is great, but it is composed of a relatively small number of active participants, and the broad geographic distribution of forum members makes collaboration and IRL projects challenging. There are a lot more opportunities in our own communities.

ETA - I just saw this when rereading your post and wanted to highlight it as it gets at what I'm talking about:

So, similarly, we can look at a group of people like Greenfield's community work. It is ERE2 to the extent that it is a process of developing a critical mass of people who have exited/are exiting Plato's Cave.

This is exactly what he is doing and has been for many years. How can we say the MMG is the first concrete example of ERE 2.0?

[AxelHeyst]

This is exactly what he is doing and has been for many years. How can we say the MMG is the first concrete example of ERE 2.0?

Where is the community of Greenfieldian cave escapees? If this community exists but have no internet presence, that's cool, but how do you know, @wrc, know they exist? Have you met them? I'd be happy to update the FAQ to point at this group.

I know that
1) Greenfield himself is undoubtedly a cave escapee
2) Greenfield does a lot of work to connect people and support community
3) Greenfield does work to help people escape the cave I *think*, although I'm not sure if he's more focused on helping people get immediate relief with things like food sovereignty and learning gardening etc. He's doing amazing stuff. Is he getting people out of the cave? Or is he getting people three steps away from the fire and then saying good luck?

There's a difference between groups that would like to pull off what we're talking about, and groups that are successfully doing it. The back to the land hippies were trying to do something like ERE2, but 99% of them failed because their approach had a variety of fatal flaws.

Perhaps I should update the FAQ to distinguish between 'Groups that are pulling ERE2 off' (of which we know of none) and 'Groups that appear to be trying to pull something like ERE2 off and are doing work in that general direction, that we should totally pay attention to and learn from but be cautious about because they might have some fatal flaw or vulnerability that we can't see yet'. Of which there are many.

[AxelHeyst]

It still seems to me that we are distinguishing other collaborative efforts from ERE 2. Vicki Robins has basically been working on this for decades in the PNW. I'm not clear on why we are defining ERE 2.0 so narrowly:

The forum is great, but it is composed of a relatively small number of active participants, and the broad geographic distribution of forum members makes collaboration and IRL projects challenging. There are a lot more opportunities in our own communities.

Yes we are distinguishing other collaborative efforts from ERE2. The definition of ERE2 is not 'people who care about global issues and are working together to try to solve them'. There are a ton of groups that meet that definition, and they are great, and no one here is saying that those groups aren't doing good work and that we shouldn't participate in them and support them. And most of us *do*, most of us *are* involved in groups like that.

I don't understand the pushback against a narrow definition of what ERE2 is.* It's okay to invent definitions of groups that almost or exactly no one currently meets. If we defined ERE2 broadly enough to encompass all of the groups out there doing good work already, we haven't contributed anything! We've just made up some nerdy name for stuff people are already doing which would be totally pointless.

This is a both and situation here. All the non-ERE2 groups doing good work out there are great. Yay those groups!

AND.

Groups running ERE2 could be a cool thing. Couldn't that be a cool thing? Perhaps it could. All those in favor of ERE2 groups, keep your eyes out.

*To be really clear: A narrow *definition* of ERE2 does **not** imply that the experience of being in an ERE2 group is narrow/exclusive, or that the purpose of ERE2 is to get similar-typed people to join up and exclude 'the others'. Rather the opposite. I believe that a good-faith pursuit of ERE2 would result in more relationship bonds with a greater diversity of kinds of people. Put another way: if I noticed that my social life was getting narrower and more exclusive and less diverse, I would take that as a sign that I was doing something wrong.

[AxelHeyst]

So, to build on this, perhaps we've been getting hung up because we've framed the question to date as 'IS this group ERE2 or not', but a more productive and generative question is 'how does this group's dynamics relate to our idea of ERE2 and how a group might arrive at ERE2? Where in the process of becoming ERE2 are they?' etc.

In the same way that we don't dismiss a new forumite just because they haven't crossed the WL7 threshold or whatever. We're curious where they're at, we find richness in understanding the nuances of their snapshot-location as well as trajectory, and we'd like to be helpful in their journey if we can with good feedback etc.

Perhaps we can take another crack at the examples of ERE2 thread with this in mind.

On that note, mF's sketchnote is brilliant and relevant. viewtopic.php?p=277205#p277205

[Jin+Guice]

Ok, I feel like I get it now, thanks everyone.

[jacob]

@WRC - Insofar it doesn't come down to splitting hairs, what distinguishes ERE2 from other efforts is that ERE2 aims to connect ERE1-type people (Heinlein's "competent man"-type character), whether physical or virtual to see what emerges when universally competent people interact with each other.

Whereas ERE1 is about what happens when a universally competent person interacts with the general mono-specialized society---essentially living off of the economy by finding clever solutions such as FIRE.

And whereas typical attempts at community uses community to compensate for a lack of personal competence.

IOW,

ERE2 = a bunch of ERE1 people interacting with each other in whichever way. (TBD, work in progress)
ERE1 = ERE1 individuals living in an environment of non-ERE1 people (typically careerists and consumers)
Typical communes = a bunch of non-ERE1 people interacting with each other in whichever way due to lack of self-reliance skills or assets
Consumers and careersts = non-ERE1 people living in an environment of other non-ERE1 people

As usual, this is not a black or white determination. There's a gradient or a scale; hence the Scotsman caveat. If there exists a community of universally skilled renaissance people already, developing ERE2 from [nearly] scratch is mostly a waste of time. It would be easier just to join or copy something that already works. I'm not aware of such a group or community though. Most intentional community efforts fall under the third category above. People joining together to compensate for lack of personal skills and assets.

Why is this interesting? Because we just don't know what is possible when a bunch of universally competent people get together. Whereas we already know what happens when a bunch of averagely incompetent people get together to form a community in order to compensate for their lack of skills (harsh! I know...): It usually falls apart because competent people don't actually want to join anyway as the community needs them more than they need/want the community.

[Western Red Cedar]

@Jacob - thanks for the reply. That post helps clarify ERE 2 more than anything I've read to date.

@AH - the pushback on the narrow definition is because the movement will be limited to a few hundred, maybe a few thousand people if ERE 1 is a prerequisite. Particularly if WL 5/6+ is necessary. I think this naturally makes it exclusive.

I think the emergent nature of ERE 2 would actually be more dynamic if it had a wider umbrella. We might be exposed to some holes in our worldviews, and help others see their own (ex: like finances for the permies).

Where is the community of Greenfieldian cave escapees? If this community exists but have no internet presence, that's cool, but how do you know, @wrc, know they exist? Have you met them? I'd be happy to update the FAQ to point at this group.

Greenfield has pretty deep roots in the permaculture community. For those interested, they can check out the interview with Greenfield on HappenFilms where he details his philosophical growth and emergence from the cave. There is a broad community in NZ and Australia, but it would probably be more accurate to describe them as Holmgrenians (influenced by David Holmgren) than Greenfieldians. Their stories are documented by Jordan and Antoinette:

https://happenfilms.com

Here is a link to some other escapees on his website, but there is much more if one wants to dig around and go through his videos:

https://www.robingreenfield.org/features/

For those interested in Vicki Robins' journey, this interview with the MadFientist documents her own journey out of the cave, and her attempts to collaborate with others. I see strong parallels between her work and the ERE 2 movement:

https://www.madfientist.com/vicki-robin-interview/

[AxelHeyst]

I think the emergent nature of ERE 2 would actually be more dynamic if it had a wider umbrella. We might be exposed to some holes in our worldviews, and help others see their own (ex: like finances for the permies).

Aren't you implicitly assuming here that people who are fans of the ERE2 idea are going to preferentially have minimal contact with people who aren't ERE1?

I'm not going to stop hanging out with people who are <WL6 anytime soon. I am going to continue to engage with communities like the permies, preppers, my rando friends, activists, sustainability people, etc. *And* I'm going to seek opportunities to connect and build relationships with ERE1 people because 1) sounds fun ERE1 people are great and 2) maybe some ERE2 magic will happen.

The concern that ERE2 isn't going to be dynamic because it 'only consists of ERE1 people' misses the reality that every ERE1 person is a nexus of a web of relationships, like everyone. There is no reality where an ERE2 group isn't going to be massively enmeshed in, engaged with, influenced by and influencing a wide umbrella of other people and groups.

It's just that right now if you graphed the relationships between all the people in the world, you would notice almost no clusters of ERE1 people in amongst everyone else. ERE2 is 'what would it be like if there were ERE1 clusters *within this soup of relationships*?' Could be cool. Let's let that happen.

Again... widening the umbrella would just be making a new term for things that already exist. 'A group of people where there are one or only a few ERE1 people' describes literally every group I'm in except this forum and the MMGs.

[jacob]

@AH - the pushback on the narrow definition is because the movement will be limited to a few hundred, maybe a few thousand people if ERE 1 is a prerequisite. Particularly if WL 5/6+ is necessary. I think this naturally makes it exclusive.

As an individualist, I personally think that "inclusiveness" is a bug rather than a feature. I think intentional communities tend to fail because "membership" (for the sake of membership) gets valued above all else. As such, we get strategies like,

Step 1) Form or join a community.
Step 2) ????
Step 3) Kumbaya

I think that includes Transition Towns. This is why I don't really see the parallel between ERE2 and ideas like TT. In particular, these communities tend to fail because its members are still glued to the consumer-economy having never freed themselves, yet hoping that merely getting together with others to share a row of tomato plants in a community garden will solve their [food] problems.

As far as I see it, ERE2 is more the other way around:

Step 1) Solve all your individual problems first.
Step 2) Make connections
Step 3) ????

So the goal is not specifically to create a survivalist community ... The idea behind ERE2 is to see what happens if ERE1 people start interacting/interfacing with each other rather than "the rest of the society". In order for this effect to materialize or emerge, a critical mass is needed. There needs to be enough people who are close enough whether physically or virtually to start interacting with equally capable/transdisplinary minds. Once that happens, there may be a chain reaction. As long as critical mass is not achieved, we'll continue to see single "heroes" interacting with the rest of an unchanging/stagnant society.

[AxelHeyst]

It occurs to me that one of the cultural markers of the average ERE person is to be closeted, and that this is a problem for the goal of reaching critical mass. Seriously, most of us act like we're double agents. This is understandable from a 'I don't want my boss to find out and fire me' angle but after that, what the hell.

There's a vegan movement because when people go vegan they won't stfu about it. There's a crossfit movement because crossfitter's wont stfu about it. Ditto permaculture. There's no mass ERE movement in part because you have to torture most forumites to get them to admit they're into ERE. There's very little word of mouth going on.

This is a bug.

[Jean]

why would people who solved all their personnal problem ever go trough the hassle of colaborating?
All work is done for a reason. Collaborating is work.
Without a common goal, there is no reason to collaborate.
When universally competent people live together (like were i live), they'll just mind their own business, occasionnaly asking for a hand when having to move something heavy, or wield something special.
Their is more community in squat or ZAD, because many people their are train wreck, and competences you have will be more needed by the others, resulting in more collaboration.
Amish work as a community of competent people, because the community itself is the goal and they are very self reliant by ideology.
I think i you want ere1 people to collaborate, you'de either need them to be persecuted enough to make collaboration a necessity, or move us all to a place were life is harsh, like donbas or baffin island and see what we come up with.

Other solution, would be to set a very difficult goal no one can reach alone, then collaboration could follow.

[jacob]

Other solution, would be to set a very difficult goal no one can reach alone, then collaboration could follow.

[my bold]

This is it. It doesn't even have to be difficult. ERE1 is currently excluded from any hypercompetent activity that isn't either a solo-effort or an interaction with specialists who are too busy earning a living to do anything. This is why ERE2 is also relevant to the "what to do after ERE1"-question, where most answers are currently engaging fulltime in recreational non-ERE activities like traveling, fishing, gaming, or puttering around in the garage.

[jacob]

Also, to avoid misunderstandings, ERE2 does not equal Green ERE1.

Rather ERE2 would probably include Green ERE1s as well as the other colors.

[Jean]

so, who is up for colonizing antartica?

[chenda]

so, who is up for colonizing antartica?

I'm well up for this.

[guitarplayer]

I'm reading Neil Howe's new book. If you adhere to his ideas, it's possible that the lack of ERE2 cohesion is because we're in the midst of the fourth turning. The appetite for social cohesion and reinvention comes afterwards.

Very interested what you think of the book!

I am completely convinced that ERE rhymes with 'This Ugly Civilization' (this is a compliment jacob).

[midnightembers]

Hello. I don't know what my WL level is and I was never ERE1. The jargon on SD and WoGs and Kegan and all the rest is interesting and helpful and also bogs me down. My SO says I'm a non-consumer but I've been buying tools and stuff lately because I need them. I don't think I'm in Plato's Cave but I still have a job and am seeking a new one, for the time being, for the sake of our relationship. We're over here trying to become 25% self-sufficient and also build community in real life with other like-minded folks who are also trying to do the same and who also recognizing that full-on self-sufficiency is a pipe dream (though it may well become necessary in our lifetimes). I'm trying to skill up on several fronts and wish I had a local mentor who wanted to come build stuff with me and help me learn how to steward a small parcel of land.

Meantime I'm working hard on, and having better luck with, the front end of cosmo-localism, and in that realm I recognize a lot of people who I would say are ERE2. They're leaving jobs or scaling back or reuniting with their small town roots and families or trying to build resilience and community on smallholdings in rural areas or in suburban backyards. They're growing food, raising animals, downsizing their footprints, and mostly still working for paychecks too. They're living in the modern paradigm while inching or leaping towards offramps. They see the cave exit and are scrambling towards it. They're collapsing now to avoid the rush. I happen to think that some are ripe for more advanced nonconsumer praxis, and assume they would be welcome here. If they (and me) had questions that pointed at WLs or SDs out of whack with this subgroup, I would hope that they (and me) would be gently redirected to helpful ERE1 threads or other sources. And meantime, maybe there's perspectives outside of the more traditional ERE trajectory that will be helpful to the whole. Here's hoping. Either way, I've learned a lot from this forum and appreciate lurking around it.