Flow / Value / Effort

or is this a healthy rhythm? are my expectations out of alignment or unhealthy?

I feel you Ronen. Should we talk about this during our next sandbox time? Should we consider different intensities of involvement?

Am I simply too busy to give this time that I want to give it? If so, am I interested in tending to my busy-ness so that I can make time for this crew work? Is there a way in which the crew can support me in dealing with this?

I have been to busy to give it the time and care I would have liked. I've been situated in a very turbulent environment with a lack of space, which I covered a bit in our 1:1. It feels like this is passing right now and my availability is opening up after a period of severe compression "having tended to my busyness", which I can only describe as "the thickness of the present moment", which is now -thankfully- much thinner.

Is there a gap between my spoken (and even intended) values and my defacto values? When I prioritize (consciously or unconsciously) other efforts I am involved in, does that match my intended priorities or am I consumed by priorities that feel beyond my control? If so, how can I tend to this gap? Is there a way in which the crew can help me to explore and address this gap?

I feel my values are in order, which is to say I'm here as much as I can be; I value the present moment and in the chaos of life that means I have to deal with things as they come. I don't have any illusions of control and the only thing that I do control are my thoughts, intentions and actions. If I make a promise it will be kept, bar acts of god. I do however have influence and where possible I'll "prune the graph" to make time or keep the structures I value in place, this group is one of them but there are others which also compete for time and attention. Relationships and people I will prioritise until this group outweighs them, as much as I love you guys. Then there are the external pressures that also demand attention, many of which I'll do my best to judo flip but some are unavoidable, I have purpose and I'll make sure to keep following those north stars at all costs and without compromise. Luckily there hasn't needed to be any, but help getting closer would alleviate some weight - your already helping in fact, but I feel we could be more effective!

Do I have doubts about the true value of the work we are intending to do in this crew? Is it something I authentically believe is needed in the world (as I perceive and experience it)? Or does this feel like another "great idea" like so many others I've witnessed, that will come and go like the tide? If I have doubts, have I acknowledged them to myself, to the crew? Is there a way in which the crew can help me to express and address these doubts?

It depends on the nature of "work" as perceived by our interior collective, I'm not sure we've articulated it yet (I know I haven't) but thats perhaps a longer exercise. For me its implicit and qualitative; I get a feel from Ronens efforts that we have deep alignment there but I haven't been able to put in the same amount of energy due to the many factors inherent in my daily life. I do have some doubts we'll make it because I feel we lack of requisite variety, at the same time I'm not sure how much energy that would take to sustain and feel we're still too fragile as a group to handle it, at least without taking a risk. I also feel we're a way off from sustainability, but we might get there and I'm willing to keep putting in the time to see if we do. It doesn't feel like the many fuster clucks I've been a part of based on mythical and neurotic ideas of the future, our fundamentals (structures) could be better, but our coHEARence is growing which I appreciate and treasure. Given greater viability and more purposeful action, I would be able to make space to dedicate more time.

Does money affect my ability to be available to this crew, and if so, how? We've never talked about money, we've never connected the work we are doing to a discussion about income that can support us and enable us to continue to be available to invest in this work. Is this a discussion I'd like to have with the crew?

Yes. I'm on a pretty radical mission to debase the notion of ownership and diversify our perceptions of value. This requires leverage, and I need a lever long enough to move the world. I'm gunning for Wall St. and building cross network organisational capacity to hit target. I'd love this crew to be a part of that (as I value the interior depth thats getting generated here) but I do want that lever. Right now I don't need the income at a personal level but I do need capital at the collective level, which requires me to dedicate time towards many projects in parallel, learning a lot, working hard and building things of value while living from a place of integrity. It's also a matter of complexity and often seems inherently paradoxical - which makes it hard to easily explain to people or raise funds. That said I will need income in the not so distant future as my runway is dwindling despite lean living.

Are there other obstacles preventing me from engaging with this work? Have I shared them with the crew? Have I explored dealing them with the crew?

Time is my scarcest commodity, I simply can't afford to waste it. I don't feel I'm doing this here or I wouldn't have spent the last two hours catching up, reading and writing posts to finish up at 01:30 in the morning, but please don't ever take our work for granted. I'll meet the energy where its at and take it as seriously as the group does.

Thank you @Josh Fairhead for investing in this. I read your thoughts three times and the words that most cling to me are:

"please don't ever take our work for granted."

I feel dis-ease in the presence of that comment ... and I'd like to tend to it and its origins.

I don't know how!

Lot's of relevant issues here; I will try to be succinct (and perhaps too pragmatic). 

There is a concern on efficacy (do we will achieve the expected outcome at this pace?) and another of efficiency (is the time that is requiring this crew the best use of my time right now?) Oddly, I do not feel concerned but any dimension of performativity. We do not have an external deadline of any kind, and our work so far is quite good (at least, in my view.) 

I would not take anyone's work for granted, but I do have some expectations about commitment once we agree to do something because we are a crew. I would be very conservative from now on regarding what we commit to doing, taking into account our (mostly) busy lives. Lack of bandwidth will be the context (or at least the rationale) of most of the people willing to experiment with microsolidarity (I am just guessing after the activity on the general Loomio group.)

On a meta-level, I think that the flow of the process "failed" because when objections were made, those that objected miscalculated the impact of their objections in terms of work. Or better said, miscalculated the value of raising those objections at that point in terms of cost/benefit. Of course, this is only a hypothesis, but if I am right, then it would be nice to have the option to step back once we realize that and move on. 

I put myself in a bottleneck when I said I wanted to wait for Alex and Josh takes. Maybe another way to deal with this is that someone did not put the expected work is because it was not a good idea in the first place. And even if it is not expressed, by not putting the expected work, the message gets even louder. So if any other member of the crew things that deserve the work then, do it. If not, keep going.   

I wrote this when listening to the album The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories by Felt.

Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts and really ingest them Ronen; please don't worry or feel dis-ease with it - it's mostly a spiritual statement and wasn't directed anywhere in particular other than as a personal values statement - but maybe left the impression that it was pointed. Apologies for that and the miscommunication.

To me, existence is a gift thats taken for granted more often than not; vicarious living, externalisation of costs, capture paradigms and extractive behaviours. These are things I want to minimise in practically every dimension of my life. I've also had those patterns imposed on me many times throughout my life which has been painful, so perhaps the sentence would better rephrased as "please let us never take our work together for granted". I hope this response alleviates any misconceptions I might have generated :)

On the subject of words, I've been listening to this album a lot recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e2IZxJPG3U&list=PLfiMjLyNWxebXQlVGih-ta-lIoHafXebq.

Thanks for your time and concerns as well Tony, I'm keeping responses separate for ease of discussion.

I tried to answer as honestly and directly as possible, so I'm glad you found the responses relevant. Re: efficacy; I don't think we've articulated an intended outcome, and get the impression we are doing something more generative and implicit which is good with me, though I think its along the right lines. Efficiency (optimisation) I value as well but I'm not particularly concerned about our pace, its more so that I have competing priorities and relations to attend to and many of them have been seeded and progressively deepened before I joined this group. Some of them are integral to my life, others are not, as I progress through life I prioritise the most nourishing (I assume its similar for everyone) - I'm just being honest about that fact. As we've been deepening our relationships I feel that there is less chance of this group becoming something similar to a group of drinking buddies, but I also don't want it to become emotional hedonism either which I guess is what cycle two is about.

on a meta-level, I think that the flow of the process "failed" because when objections were made, those that objected miscalculated the impact of their objections in terms of work. Or better said, miscalculated the value of raising those objections at that point in terms of cost/benefit. Of course, this is only a hypothesis, but if I am right, then it would be nice to have the option to step back once we realize that and move on. 

Yeah, if I'm interpreting you right; thats my bad on the space discussion. Thanks for depersonalising and not pointing fingers but I'll own that one as its on me. I don't think we failed though, just rabbit holed and I would also like to pop the stack - thats part of the generative process right? Pause, reflect and undo if necessary! :)

I put myself in a bottleneck when I said I wanted to wait for Alex and Josh takes. Maybe another way to deal with this is that someone did not put the expected work is because it was not a good idea in the first place. And even if it is not expressed, by not putting the expected work, the message gets even louder. So if any other member of the crew things that deserve the work then, do it. If not, keep going. 

I'm uncertain of what you're referring to, can you be more specific? It sounds like you're referring to when we were finding at time for the first cycle two meeting, and if so then that objection was part of the consent process and entirely justified IMO. I think I agreed with you that an abnormal consensus moment was justified in that particular instance... but I think you might be talking about a comment or response also? I'm not sure so please elaborate if you don't mind :)

@Josh Fairhead Now I realize that I was "depersonalizing" not even because I was thinking in both Alex and you, but because I see the process as an unfolding mandala, and then I see that something happened in the flow so we now draw these fixes (our posts of today) to bring back the harmony to the whole, so to speak. The sociocratic pattern triggered the expression of matters of concern... during a very abstract-level conversation. The intellectual due was huge and bandwidth consuming, more than we thought. We miscalculated when accepting the pattern; we experienced de consequences (always in my view). I think that @Alex Rodriguez expressed this very well. It took Javiera Mena (I like her too a lot, saw her in Barcelona not so long ago) to just address Ronen question! :-)

So I just was referring to what happened since our last synchronous meeting. Ronen suggested you write about a very abstract and generic issue (contextualized in the crew level AND the meta level), and we just accepted the idea and wanted to go ahead. To find later that was not such a good idea after all. Or at least, this is my understanding. I think that you just needed more time to mature such a complex task. And I guess that each generative process has its pace, and in the case of crewing, a parsimonious one. And in the case of ours, even more parsimonious! Maybe its because I have also the foreign-language-cognitive-load, but sometimes it is hard to follow. As Alex suddenly exclaimed the other day, "wait, are we meta now?".

Thank you @Josh Fairhead My heart opened to that clarification and my sense of dis-ease morphed into an "amen brother" ❤️

It is because I share your sensitivity to imposition that I felt alert in reading your statement. Almost all attempts at "community" that I've come across seemed to be built on some (explicit and implicit) externalized costs and subtle exploitation. I cringed at this and ultimately became doubtful (still am) whenever I hear talk of "community."

In @Toni Blanco response I recognized the tension between "commitment to myself" and "commitment to the collaborative effort".

I met this personally in my first years living in the village. In my case the tension was between a community inside me. There was a felt-experience me that didn't want to go out on a cold cloudy day to prepare firewood. There was a disciplined me that was concerned about having enough firewood to keep warm in winter. Both of me's were "right" :)

The "resolution" came not in the moment but in the longer game and wider context. I learned to prepare firewood years in advance (I since have 2 or 3 years worth in storage). I gave the "operation" of preparing firewood plenty of space: order in spring, process and store by winter. This way, instead of having a chore to complete, I had a physical meditation to attend whenever I wanted some quiet physical presence). This way, the disciplined me is more relaxed and the felt-experience me can stay indoors when it feels too depressing to be outside.

This tension between internal integrity and communal integrity is a big one! Josh, I feel that you described it well when you wrote:

"I value the present moment and in the chaos of life that means I have to deal with things as they come ... I have purpose and I'll make sure to keep following those north stars at all costs and without compromise."

It isn't just "taking for granted" that I want to avoid ... it is TAKING. PERIOD.

My wish for this crew is to create and softly hold an experience of attraction. I want our experience together to openly, intentionally, consciously and INEVITABLY "judo-flip" you into deeply desiring to be involved .... to GIVE (correctly) of yourself.

No taking ... internal or external!

Splitting Responses

I want to embrace what @Josh Fairhead did in "splitting" his response and I would like to encourage this as a deeper pattern.

I want to suggest that even when we respond to a single comment from a single person that we be attentive to what arises. If numerous themes arise, maybe consider separate replies. This way each reply can become a seed for an exploration of one theme.

I also want to suggest considering if instead of replying it may be useful to open a new thread (to give the theme more weight and longevity) and provide a link from the seeding thread (where you were going to comment) to the new thread.

I feel that we touch on a lot of precious materials, but that some threads are lost in the jungle of the conversation.