What is ERE2?

[AxelHeyst]

And yet, the meat people are often more alternative or outraged than the people here. I just can't figure out how to get them to put it all together.

I have a hypothesis related to this:

It's difficult to be outraged if you're running a system that a) takes care of your needs really well while b) making you way less a part of the problem and c) decouples you from 'the bad guys'.

I am way less mad about the bad guys now that I'm running ERE1 game, and I feel way less threatened by their shenanigans.

I also feel less of a need to be alternative. Before I found ERE I contemplated going going full DGR, or anarchist, or activist, or etc. I never did any of those things because I couldn't convince myself that any of those options were better than being a workaholic sustainability engineer. But if I'd been, idk, working some whatever job that had no connection to solving issues, I'd probably have gone further down one of those alt rabbit holes because I'd have had to do SOMETHING to take the burn off the cognitive dissonance.

But I finally feel like I've gotten my zone 0 personal life system roughly arranged in a way that's aligned with my values. And that is such an enormous mental relief that I wasn't even aware of. This is both a bug and a feature (a feature because it's nice not be so angry all the time, a bug because there's a danger of just coasting in chill mode now that I've got my own o2 mask on. Other people? what other people. Oxygen gets you high.)

And so angry and alt people who 'figure it out' become less angry and maybe less obviously alt.

And once you've been angry long enough, I think it's easy to get identified with your outrage and your alt identity, and to become very attached to the idea that we gotta take down the billionaires or whatever, and so it's hard to accept the O2 mask. It requires killing part of yourself.

https://permies.com/t/150190/change-world

thing 1: Be angry at bad guys. It's a rigged playing field, but with enough people pushing hard enough all at once, there will be change. Brute force against the bad guys. It is a difficult path, but if we can get 100 million people to get to work we can do it.

thing 2: Sacrifice. If enough people suffer, the power will be stripped from the bad guys. It is a difficult path, but if we can get 100 million people to get to work we can do it.

thing 3: Viral luxuriance. All of the advantages of "thing 2" but the opposite of sacrifice. This is what I advocate. Come up with a solution that is so good that it saves people money and/or adds a lot of luxuriance to their life. The people that want change seek the change so they can get the end result and they happen to get the other benefits too. People that are less motivated by the global change angle, make the change for the direct benefits. It is an easy path, but if we can get 100 million people to get to work we can do it.

Some people are devoted to 1 and/or 2. People who do 3... all of a sudden have nice lives and are busy enjoying their nice lives. I think 1 and 2 people see that and sense that there's a danger of becoming complacent, of sidelining themselves in The Good Fight.

Paul wrote about being frustrated how hard it is to make option 3 actually viral, how hard it is to spread the word and get adoption. I think it's because a) so few people are going to pursue 3 enough to actually get it, and b) of those very few, even fewer are going to want to turn around and take action to spread/make the message viral.

Paul also wrote about how much he got personally attacked or ignored for putting himself out there trying to help people have nicer lives from a whole variety of people. I think it was 3 years ago he wrote about how he was done pushing so hard on spreading the message, he was just gonna take a step back and stop putting himself out there to get attacked/ignored. This dynamic is relevant to ERE2 I think...

ETA: ah, here. From 6 years ago. I'm not sure what his position is now, maybe someone else knows. But that post was before he published Build a Better World In Your Backyard so obviously he didn't permaquit.

[Jin+Guice]

@AH:

Ok, interesting. Now that I think about it, the people who are doing shit are not generally that pissed off and billionaire blamey without provocation. Their anger is more existential, like they for sure think something is wrong and if you press them, they will probably be like "I dunno... billionaires?" I'm also kind of annoyed by people who are like super advocates in one direction (cue my interview on dumpster diving getting cut out of a sustainability documentary bc I'm like "I dunno, it's a lot more complicated than food waste being bad"), so this might just be me filtering out super mad people who are doing shit?

The non-mad but doing shit people I know will not talk to like 99% of people here though. Just like @WRC's blue collar friends are probably not talking to us or to my friends. I also don't know how to pitch them any of the ideas here that would possibly benefit them that they don't already do. It's fine for me personally, I just talk to them about the shit that we have in common. Not great for building a community of like minded individuals with different perspectives though.

But if we are trying to build a community from other perspectives than ERE, who do we get these people, who to me are our closest allies whom we could share goals with and mutually learn from, to talk to us?

The other group of people who don't like the mainstream but are closer to being part of it do tend to be a little more helpless and blamey. There are just way more of these people and they have the spark of crisis in them, which seems like it should make them convertible? They also have the most to personally gain. They don't have their o2 masks on yet, not even a little.


I remember Jacob talking about how his sustainability/ low consumption friends wouldn't talk to his stock market breaux friends and vice versa. Not only that they wouldn't talk to each other, but they wouldn't listen to the bridge (Jacob) tell them about each other's ideas. Did this problem ever get figured out? Bc I feel like that's where we are if we want to expand the ERE community to non-ERE1 people?


I'm also asking, is this what ERE2 is trying to do? Or am I misunderstanding?

And did we (y'all) decide if ERE2 is a community of ERE1ish people or if it is a community of "something else" where ERE1 people would all have the "something else?"

Or another way to phrase this is how few years of expenses and/ or decoupling from the consumer system does the person need to have to be a candidate for ERE2?


Here's an example:

I recently met a chick who is a tattoo artist and started a volunteer organization that collects cans/ plastic containers, smashes the cans, turns them into a scrap yard for aluminum $$ and uses the proceeds to buy food, that other volunteers then prepare. They then put the food in the collected containers and donate it to community fridges. When I met her she was trying to figure out a way to melt plastic in her oven to the point where it was combinable/ pliable so that she could make furniture out of it.

I don't know her very well, but let's assume for the sake of argument that she has no money in the bank and spends a bit on Amazon consumer good she doesn't need. Given people I know like her I wouldn't be surprised if either or both of these things were true. Let's also assume she can pay her bills in a little under 30 hours, at the tattoo shop, a job which presumably fits in ways that are not merely financial into the WoGs she doesn't have.

If I get together with her and a dude who runs a community garden with a community fridge on it (pretty ERE amount of money) and a dude who fixes bikes for homeless/ poor people with parts of other bikes he finds/ gets from donation (def no money, lives in a house he squats in) and a chick who has a pottery studio in her basement and makes her own wine (software developer, not a lot saved but almost paid off house, presumably starting to save after) and we talk shop... are we doing a small version of ERE2?

[jennypenny]

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.

That said, there's more action out there than people here realize, probably because it's people who generally don't intersect with forumites. I think it's mostly out of necessity for them, but not always. I hear 'the system is broken' a lot, too.

[AxelHeyst]

Dunno if this is useful at all but...

[ertyu]

hahaha EERE1 = mad + postconsumer

[7Wannabe5]

"ERE" as presented in the book is generalized enough that a sub-model(or set of examples) that might appeal to any MB/SD/MHC (cognitive level) theoretically could be created. The problem is that these sub-models have not been created and/or that they are so out-weighted by the sub-models tending towards FIRE and the sub-models tending towards INTJ that the field of the forum slopes in that direction, which is towards a "place" where some other people don't want to go based on their current perspective. Simple example being holding the perspective that choosing to invest in the stock market is a cop-out equivalent to "If you can't beat them, join them." and the sort of bad practice for which the truism "If you lie down with dogs, you will get up with fleas." applies.

Simple example of a sub-model that might transcend this objection would be to do something like a "Buy nothing (as little as possible)from corporations, including their associated financial products." year rather than a simple "Buy nothing" year. Surplus created through frugality could then be only "spent" or "invested" on stuff such as "sweater knit by buddy Jake" and/or "free time to coach disadvantaged youth basketball team" or "purchase of parking lot to convert to garden" and/or "loan to lover Joan who wants to create a local free-range ISP alternative."

I'm actually working on a way (sub-model) to convert the semi-consciously-too-conservative-surplus created by the 3-4% SWR Rule into sub-model that might be more motivating/appealing to lower-income, more laid-back, leisure-loving, less risk-averse types (such as young version of myself)who aren't necessarily oppositional to investing in the stock-market along with the billionaires*. I'm thinking I will name it Semi-Retirement-Supreme.

*Although, I do think that hanging out only with billionaires would result in dogs-fleas. The trick which makes Level Yellow in some ways kind of natural for ENTPs is that we like to hang-out with highly varying company, and/or have little difficulty debating one side of argument on Tuesday and other side on Thursday. The main problem is figuring out how to combine multi-mirror-image "Yes, but..." s into one "Yes, and...."

[candide]

If I get together with her and a dude who runs a community garden with a community fridge on it (pretty ERE amount of money) and a dude who fixes bikes for homeless/ poor people with parts of other bikes he finds/ gets from donation (def no money, lives in a house he squats in) and a chick who has a pottery studio in her basement and makes her own wine (software developer, not a lot saved but almost paid off house, presumably starting to save after) and we talk shop... are we doing a small version of ERE2?

Even better. You'd be doing good things for known good reasons. Having known good reasons, aka deliberate practice, is especially... good because the actions can be replicated, and just as importantly, abandoned if the circumstances change.

ERE(2) can only be a set of tools for the good. You are not a tool for ERE(2), nor is the good things you do with others.

[Jin+Guice]

I'm asking these questions because I'm trying to figure out what it is we're trying to do and where we're trying to go to gauge what level of help and participation I'm going to have.

I'm also wondering if anyone has solved the problem of getting individuals who are theoretically close to ERE but culturally or socially distanced from us to do more ERE stuff, bc it seems like maybe that is what we are trying to do?

[candide]

I'm asking these questions because I'm trying to figure out what it is we're trying to do and where we're trying to go to gauge what level of help and participation I'm going to have.

I am outsider to the ERE2 project, but sometimes being an outsider can offer perspective. One of the following seems like it is true: either 1) there is little-to-no ERE2 happening from people from the forum or 2) those doing ERE2 don't like writing about their actions (yet for all those cases I can think of, framework/model talk still is appealing) or 3) those doing ERE2 don't want to claim it...

Having this short back-and-forth at least bumped your part of the thread, increasing the chances for help or participation. This in itself will give you the better gauge. Without the need to go into any details, did anyone give your a private message on the matter?

Whether the above was ERE2 -- I'm not qualified to tell you that. But I can tell you it is good.

[AxelHeyst]

The killer feature of ERE is that it empowers people to both take care of themselves *and* others, both passively and actively. ERE helps me take care of myself by earning my autonomy, building resilient, avoiding harm/ruin, etc. It ALSO puts me in a position to help/care for others because a) I'm taking less stuff by consuming way less, and b) I can use my autonomy to get involved in caring for other people if I'm into that.

My personal experience of my 20s is that I really wanted to help other people/the world but my efforts were frustrated by my lack of self care: I lacked autonomy, I had to solve personal crises all the time because I wasn't resilient, etc. And an element of this is that I didn't think I 'deserved' to take care of myself - some part of me thought selfcare was indulgent.

I suspect that a key to spreading ERE memes is to connect the dots between selfcare and othercare.

[jacob]

I'm asking these questions because I'm trying to figure out what it is we're trying to do and where we're trying to go to gauge what level of help and participation I'm going to have.

The best analogy is that we're trying to create a [massive] multiplayer game on a foundation of most games still being individual on a static background and isolated from each other. Using the analogy, the aim is to go from 1995 where everybody paid $30 or $100 to play a scripted game (cf FIRE paying $200k to 2000k for the strategy) to 2010 where people play with others online with much less cost as the strategy emerges for free while developing the script as they go.

There are three stages.

1) Everybody staying in Plato's Cave. (Careerism/Consumerism)
2) Individuals breaking out of Plato's Cave (ERE1)
3) Everybody (enough) staying outside of Plato's Cave (ERE2)

I'm also wondering if anyone has solved the problem of getting individuals who are theoretically close to ERE but culturally or socially distanced from us to do more ERE stuff, bc it seems like maybe that is what we are trying to do?

That's the goal. It's likely more of a process than a solution.

[AxelHeyst]

One of the following seems like it is true: either 1) there is little-to-no ERE2 happening from people from the forum or 2) those doing ERE2 don't like writing about their actions (yet for all those cases I can think of, framework/model talk still is appealing) or 3) those doing ERE2 don't want to claim it...

I think there is protoERE2 stuff happening from people on the forum, and it gets talked about, but very very rarely are any of these interactions or discussions of these interactions talked about using the jargon we use in this sub when we're trying to talk *about* ERE2.

[jacob]

I think there is protoERE2 stuff happening from people on the forum, and it gets talked about, but very very rarely are any of these interactions or discussions of these interactions talked about using the jargon we use in this sub when we're trying to talk *about* ERE2.

Yes, the MMGs are the first concrete example/manifestation of ERE2.

Theoretical abstractions are not generally recognized but they do influence the concrete behavior.

[Western Red Cedar]

In some ways I think the WL table can hinder imagination. It represents a common path toward a sustainable household for those coming from the FIRE/personal finance background, but some of the people you are talking about don't necessarily fit well in that framework:

Here's an example:

I recently met a chick who is a tattoo artist and started a volunteer organization that collects cans/ plastic containers, smashes the cans, turns them into a scrap yard for aluminum $$ and uses the proceeds to buy food, that other volunteers then prepare. They then put the food in the collected containers and donate it to community fridges. When I met her she was trying to figure out a way to melt plastic in her oven to the point where it was combinable/ pliable so that she could make furniture out of it.

I don't know her very well, but let's assume for the sake of argument that she has no money in the bank and spends a bit on Amazon consumer good she doesn't need. Given people I know like her I wouldn't be surprised if either or both of these things were true. Let's also assume she can pay her bills in a little under 30 hours, at the tattoo shop, a job which presumably fits in ways that are not merely financial into the WoGs she doesn't have.

If I get together with her and a dude who runs a community garden with a community fridge on it (pretty ERE amount of money) and a dude who fixes bikes for homeless/ poor people with parts of other bikes he finds/ gets from donation (def no money, lives in a house he squats in) and a chick who has a pottery studio in her basement and makes her own wine (software developer, not a lot saved but almost paid off house, presumably starting to save after) and we talk shop... are we doing a small version of ERE2?

Artists, hippies, punk rockers, homesteaders, conservationists, master gardeners, dirtbag adventurers, rubber tramps etc.. -- they all seem like candidates to enter WL 6+ from a side door, rather than climbing up the ladder. Or maybe they are already there...

I'm personally invested in working with and connecting with these folks IRL. Not necessarily out of any desire to participate in an emergent movement, but simply because we may have similar interests and I value IRL social interaction. I feel like I learn as much from some of these relationships as I do on this forum.

A lot of the folks who are living outside of Plato's cave aren't going to be interested in an online community, or learning the jargon. They are, however, likely open to some form of community. I don't try to overthink this stuff or evangelize ERE, I simply try to build/maintain relationships with interesting, creative people.

[AxelHeyst]

A lot of the folks who are living outside of Plato's cave aren't going to be interested in an online community, or learning the jargon. They are, however, likely open to some form of community. I don't try to overthink this stuff or evangelize ERE, I simply try to build/maintain relationships with interesting, creative people.

I think this is great, and I think it's worth stressing that I'm pretty sure none of us ERE2 nerds think that mass membership in an online community and/or learning specialized vocabulary is necessary or even desirable part of this desired process.

eta: I'm trying to think of an analogy here. Occupational therapists or, say, kinesiologists know an enormous amount of jargon about musculoskeletal systems and movement dynamics and all sorts of stuff, right? But the average person just wants to be able to wipe their own ass, or reach across to buckle their own seatbelt, or do a deadlift with good form, or run efficiently. They don't need to know all the jargon! It would be a mistake (or at least unnecessary) for an athlete who just wants to improve their stride to attend a kinesiology conference and be able to hold forth on the latest theory of movement or whatever it is kinesiologists talk about.

It's also interesting to note, now that I'm working with this analogy, that we don't think it odd that a kinesiologist with a 350# deadlift might be able to help someone go from an 850 to a 900 deadlift. The athlete doesn't need to know the jargon, and the kinesiologist doesn't need to be at the bleeding edge of performance although they certainly need some practical experience.

And sure, people have been lifting heavy stuff or recovering from injuries that prevent function for a long time. But kinesiology and occupational therapy nerds have done a lot to contribute to pushing the performance envelope of athletes and function regain.

[Western Red Cedar]

I think this is great, and I think it's worth stressing that I'm pretty sure none of us ERE2 nerds think that mass membership in an online community and/or learning specialized vocabulary is necessary or even desirable part of this desired process.

I guess I'm not so sure about this based on what @Jacob just posted. This seems to indicate that ERE 1 is a prerequisite for ERE 2:

Yes, the MMGs are the first concrete example/manifestation of ERE2.

It seems like there are plenty of people living outside of plato's cave but who don't necessarily fit well within a particular WL. Perhaps I'm thinking of ERE 2 more broadly than what @Jacob is envisioning.

There are loads of examples of non-consumers collaborating on projects. How is the community work Rob Greenfield focuses on any less ERE 2 than a MMG?

[AxelHeyst]

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

Is it? ETA: If Rob Greenfield's community work has anything to do with the cultivation/direction of critical masses of Cave Escapees, then it's ERE2 (or we might more accurately say it's part of the process of our culture figuring out/moving towards ERE2...)

ERE2 is pointing at groups of people who've gotten out of Plato's Cave. Groups of postconsumers. Holons of postconsumers as opposed to heaps. It doesn't matter how they got out of it. ERE1 is *one* way out of the Cave. Others exist. Part of the 'work' of ERE2 theory is identifying and learning to interact with these other routes out of the cave, these other communities of people who are getting out of the Cave.

eta: this is the whole point of Jacob's efforts to figure SD Green out as I understand it.

1. Jacob was familiar with/living in an SD Orange society.
2. Jacob figured out a way to exit Plato's Cave from SD Orange, and documented it. This is ERE1.
3. Now, many Orange people have a map out of Plato's Cave who were previously stuck.
4. Jacob's been trying to figure out a way for SD Green people to exit Plato's cave, with the goal of documenting it so SD Green people could use it to exit the cave.

[Jean]

amish are full ere2, but i don't think any is here.

[AxelHeyst]

viewtopic.php?t=12627

[Jin+Guice]

I feel like this is going in a circle, not the least bc that thread links to this thread for a more in depth understanding.

I get that we are looking for emergent properties of people who have exited Plato's Cave. I get that we don't know what these communities will look like yet. The thread that says it is for examples of ERE2 communities has no examples in it?

Is all we have the definition?

I know there were a bunch of attacks on ERE2 when it first started. I'm not trying to attack or be like "gotcha! You nerds only have a definition." I'm genuinely very interested in this, particularly going off book with other people who might not "get" ERE1. But maybe we aren't there yet?

I feel like people keep explaining stuff to me and then sort of giving a tl;dr treatment, but like what am I supposed to read? I'm reading different threads in this forum and I can't get the answers I'm looking for.

How do we identify someone who has left Plato's Cave who isn't into ERE?

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

The best analogy is that we're trying to create a [massive] multiplayer game on a foundation of most games still being individual on a static background and isolated from each other.

How do we identify the other players?

That's the goal. It's likely more of a process than a solution.

Or is this the answer, which is more like we don't know yet? Which is totally fine! I want to know where y'all are at and what y'all are doing. Like are we stalled out on this question right now? Is it an important question for ERE2 or am I missing the plot?