Hello All,

Well, it certainly sounds like I missed something last Tuesday. I have been out the last two sessions .. the first because I went to New Orleans for a week to eat and fully explore the Gluttony sin (and maybe a bit of Sloth). The second meeting I missed because I was trapped in my office while my wife was sitting on I-5 watching an accident get cleared up. No deadly sins were involved with that one, I’m happy to report.

So, today I ran my old printer until it nearly shot flames from the ink cartridge … printing out all the discussion and reading and what not that I’ve missed.

I hope I don’t put anyone off by just spouting and not quoting originals (much) … but there was so much! Lastly, please forgive the preachy-ness. Please write it off as exuberance and passion!

Last Tuesday

I’m glad to see that many of you have experienced the main reason why I was interested in this in the first place – successful cooperation brings with it a certain fulfillment or euphoria. It is honestly liberating to work with other people and feel like you’ve not only achieved something, but have been able to truly share something. Sort of a Networked Peak Experience.

From all of the discussion earlier about what is or is not a cultural paradigm – what is or is not an impediment to cooperation – what is nature – what is nurture – etc. I believe we are missing the forest for the trees. There are always stumbling blocks to understanding and communication. I have an entire bookshelf full of Krishnamurti, Rollo May, Laing, etc that can make your head spin, all discussing this basic issue: Language is a crappy means of communication. It’s value-laden, it’s imprecise, it’s inherently personal. And cooperation and communication are inherently inter-personal. And it’s all we got, baby.

That’s why events like last Tuesday, where you really connect (again, I wish I was there to see it) are so uplifting. They’re theoretically nearly impossible!

Malcom came up with the wonderful bullet list of

• Commonality
• Diversity
• Locality
• Transcendence

I think if you made that an equation it would look like this:

Commonality + Diversity + Locality + Transcendence = Purpose

When people truly experience Purpose it is highly empowering.

People Gather All The Time

Jon had mentioned several activities that were avenues to finding this Purpose. (Being in a band, family, sports team). But he stopped there and was unable to come up with other avenues. I find them often. Having coffee with a person, feeling around for where the conversation is going to go, and then feeling it suddenly rush off in that direction is a favorite of mine. Focus is more and more transient today. But I notice bits of cooperation, group think, team play … purpose all around me.

When I started my company, I went out and got a business partner. He owns 50% of the company, while it was my idea and I laid much of the groundwork. People were confused by this. But, for me, I knew that I could never find true enjoyment out of the company without those moments of transcendent joy one gets when one is … more than one. Late night sessions when we are working to make a deadline and it’s three a.m. and most people say “That must have been awful” … that’s when I love it the most.

Theories Rock | Theories Suck

This also brings me to another thing that’s been troubling me, but I haven’t been able to really concretely nail down. I was surprised by the strong negative reaction to some of the concepts we have examined in this class. I probably would have been equally surprised if we canonized them and started a cult around them. I’m glad we didn’t do that.

Theories are just theories, guidelines for thought. We can examine the constructs and apply them when they are relevant or valid. But, as our discussion shows, context, culture (i.e. the people involved) dictate what tact is … tactful. Everything is not a nail … but that doesn’t negate the need for a hammer. And people are nails, nuts, bolts, screws, pins, staples, … you need a full toolkit and some ingenuity to deal with them all. Use the right tools (and hope they’re using ones that resonate with you) and you get Purpose.

“Dualities”

Nature abhors a vacuum, Jim abhors a dichotomy. But Jon referred also to “life’s duality”. The concept of the “we-dentity” is powerful and undeniable. Thinking past the “I” is one of the hardest things people (especially me) can do.

Bruce (I think) said “[Social Dilemmas] reflect learned social behavior based on cultural assumptions more than they reflect human nature.” The obvious extension to this is that we should identify what human nature is and work forward from that. Since we cannot accurately define human nature without culture, this too becomes a social dilemma.

We all have a collection of adapted or learned and adaptive or “human nature” traits. The discussion of Darwinian thinking and how it’s somehow combative and has to be viewed in a particular light to see cooperation is bizarre to me. All beings upon this earth show adaptive and adapted traits that involve some form of cooperation. The view that it solely relies on competition would make Darwin bang his head on the table.

This is further frustrated by the Nature / Nurture arguments that are so popular with everything from sexuality to choice of dinner entrée. Just as we drill down to chaos in physics, we also drill down to chaos in psychology. We reach a point where dichotomies break down.

Culture itself becomes a false distinction upon reduction-ab-absurdum. I know Chinese people who are more “American” than most “Americans” (loud, in-your-face, egotistical) and I know Americans who are more “Chinese” than most Chinese. I know gay men who are way less effeminate than George Bush or certainly George Will.

Does this mean that duality, dichotomy and culture aren’t relevant? They totally are … but, again, in context and judiciously applied.

Technology is not Neutral

I must start by saying that when Sandra said that Technology was value-neutral … I think I heard me saying it at coffee a few weeks ago. So, I am revising and extending my remarks….

I will slightly alter my original statement “Technology is value-neutral” to the marginally different “Technology is not value-neutral.” Or at least sometimes it’s not.

The reason is because, in being a thing, technology is defined by the people who interact with the thing. So technology may not be created with a specific value or use in mind, but people will assign it a moral value.

Nuclear missiles are value-neutral. They are big pieces of metal with some instable stuff inside them and can fly through the air. No value problem there. Give them to Khrushchev and Kennedy and they take on different moral values. But who creates, defines and extols those moral values? The observers. And we communicate those values through the inexact mechanism of language.

So, technology floating in the vacuum of space … value-neutral. Technology in the abstract value-neutral (Luddites and Amish aside…). But technology inserted into any human endeavor immediately takes on the values of the purposes to which it is applied. Not even it can get away with “I was only following orders”.

We can quickly recognize this in our reaction to the utterly true statement “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” Regardless of what side of the gun debate you may be on, the technology has a moral value, because you give it one.

Building Our Own Cage

We want to define what cooperation is, how we can reliably achieve it and why the (*&$ it isn’t being done all the time because Dammit! We like to cooperate!

This quickly moves us into building our own cage. We build our own cages when we begin to preemptively label things as good or bad, right or wrong, male or female, sweet or savory, punk or pastel – before giving them a chance to define themselves.

Any cage we build, locks us in and (often) the truth out. In any discussion, participants need to establish mechanisms of understanding.

The tools provided to me by Jon, Malcom, Bruce, Sandra, Ken Wilbur, Kevin Lynch, Doc Searls, Erin Ostrom, and everyone else I’ve had the luck to come into contact with are vital to adapting to the people I will come into contact with in the future. But none of them are going to always be applicable. All of them will have glaring exceptions. Alas, there is no universal truth. (Rats)

When Howard says he wants to build a literacy of cooperation – he wants to build a language. Languages are fluid and flexible (and inexact) means of communication that help us, as a group, get closer to common understandings. This is why we get “Towards a Literacy of Cooperation” or “Towards a Psychology of Being.” Howard and Maslow both recognize that their definitions, theories and observations are subject to revision. Understanding is always a process and not a destination.

Closing

Wow, you’re still reading … I thought you would have round-filed this by now. Thank you for reading through all of this. I know I went all preachy there. But it was with good intent. (Value-neutral?)

Again, I’m glad the last meeting was so powerful for some of you. I look forward to being at the next one.