Loomio
Sat 14 Dec 2013 12:14AM

Voting, abstention, and political rituals

JG John Graham Public Seen by 115

Okay I started this thread like this (I'm not sure why):

Anthropologically speaking, voting is a ritual act (so, incidentally, is pressing 'Like').
Among the main functions of rituals are the indexical / indicative.
so
"When you vote or don't vote, what are you indicating, to whom?"
and
Self-indicatively,
"In choosing to vote or abstain, what are you saying about yourself, to yourself (and/or others?)"

And now for some actual context:

[with deep gratitude to the late Roy Rappaport for this ground-shifting (epoch-shifting?) book, 'Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity' (amazon link) ]

According to Rappaport, a crucial aspect of public rituals is that in the fact of their happening or not happening, an array of complex social and ecological variables are summarised in a binary way.
I think Rappaport is relevant here because of connections he makes to cybernetic theory (and by extension systems theory). - is the Loomio Community familiar with this kind of stuff?

I’m trying to be concise, and clarify my own thinking; I’m not deliberately trying to be cryptic - honest! ;)

The ‘Making of Humanity’ in his book title serves double meaning:
‘ritual and religion’ is how we got here, it’s how our ape-like ancestors became human;

and

‘ritual and religion’ (anthropologically understood) play a role, post Modernity, in the production of the positive value of “Humanity”/“humaneness”.

JG

John Graham Tue 17 Dec 2013 4:01AM

@alanna

yes-and,

would you go ahead with a proposal approved with a participation rate of 500,000 /4 million?

Or would that never happen?
Or is Loomio designed for 'human-scale' communities up to (primatologist) Robin Dunbar's number, say 120-150?

I can imagine Loomio coming in 4 distinct "models"

  1. Small, working group ( <13 people)
  2. Human-scale community ( < 151)
  3. Big ( > 120 ), mammoth, 'Let's invite everybody', mass movement.
  4. Civic ("our decisions affect everyone, not just computer/mobile users")

How are you all thinking about this group-size / scalability stuff?
I'm just trying to get a picture of where Loomio fits in the very big picture.

AI

Alanna Irving Tue 17 Dec 2013 4:48AM

@jonlemmon has been thinking deeply about how to design for scale... maybe he can comment.

JL

Jon Lemmon Sat 21 Dec 2013 5:30AM

@johngraham sorry for the late response! Been traveling. :)

Right now we know Loomio works well for groups up to around 350 - 400 members. We haven't seen anyone use it for groups larger than that. But you're right, small discussions are very different from large ones, and may need different features to suite different scales.

Right now, we're mainly focused on making a tool that works really well for helping "human-sized groups" make decisions. And once we're confident that we're doing that well, then we'll start taking on larger-scale decisions. Until that point, we suggest splitting really large groups into smaller ones.