JS: What are those concepts? What do we need for groups to be more kind, helpful, and cooperative?
PA: There are eight design principles in our book that help groups to act more cooperatively [for the common good].Greater Good Magazine
Daily life requires us to cooperate with a large number of – potentially unrelated – people. This column argues that cultural variation in the ways people cooperate with each other are empirically associated with fundamentally different religious beliefs, moral values, emotions of shame and guilt, social norms, and institutions. This suggests that various psychological, biological, and institutional mechanisms co-evolved to support specific social cooperation systems.Harmonizing personal freedom of choice and action with social responsibility and the self-discipline this entails is a key issue in anthology, sociology, political science, and economics. This problem is fundamentally an ethical one involving norms, in addition to being a behavioral one involving motivation and also a psychological one involving both disposition and learning. Even physically identical twins are not identical in disposition, for example, which results in different preferences and habit structure. Similarly, cultures are diverse and the the result is a diversity of customs and institutions.
Patterns of Commoning, edited by Silke Helfrich and David Bollier, is being serialized in the P2P Foundation blog. Visit the Patterns of Commoning and Commons Strategies Group websites for more resources.P2P Foundation
“The Wisdom of Crowds” is about how accurate (or not) dozens or thousands of people are when they are guessing the number of beans in a bottle or predicting who is going to win the World Cup. The number of times their average collective guestimates are accurate is remarkable – which is the subject of Surowiecki’s book. But is that what WISDOM is really about?
If some individual could predict the outcome of this year’s US elections, would we call them wise? Is that what we proclaim Christ or Buddha as wise for doing?
I would love it if we would reserve the terms “wisdom” and “wise” for guidance that makes life better – especially useful guidance that makes life better for most or all of us – including all the creatures of this living, fragile Earth – over the long term. That’s what we need wisdom for, now more than ever.
The traditions of the world’s great religions are one source of that wisdom, if we are mindful and heartful about which aspects of them we choose to follow, such as the near-universal Golden Rule of treating others the ways we would like to be treated. That’s wise.
Various forms of systems thinking – from shamanism to ecology and complexity sciences – offer such wisdom because they deal with the wholeness and interconnectedness of the world. Nature’s ways of solving problems – as revealed by the sciences of biomimicry and evolution – also offers such guidance because nature’s solutions (and ways of generating solutions) have arisen and proven themselves through millions of years of testing.Public Intelligence Blog
The message that the simple institution of democratic voting -- IF the outcome of the vote is then effectively enforced on the behavior of all individuals -- can be hugely beneficial for overcoming intergenerational tragedies of the commons. Secondarily, that analyses of what is possible in overcoming these kinds of problems is misleading and naive if conducted in the framework of strictly self-interested agents; pro-social norms in the behavior of real people are a resource for cooperation that we can put to good use.
The Red Line has been crossed. It is a dangerous time. As it is, prospects are grim; the world is shifting to a climate from hell, and the powers that be are mostly just accelerating that demise; but if all of us, most of us, even many of us reach out, and grasp each other's hands, we just might make it across.Truthout
"An alternative, sustainable world is, of course, where resource regeneration is at least as great as resource depletion. It's a world where emissions are no greater than the ability of the planet to absorb and process those emissions. Of course it's a world where the population is stable or maybe even decreasing; where prices internalize all costs; a place where no one is hungry or desperately poor; a place where there is true enduring democracy."
It all began when I was re-reading Gordon Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution (trying to escape from obsessively tracking the DC rollercoaster.) As Wood observes, the Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians divided over basically the same issue that plagues us now: How much of a role should government play in people's lives? (Though the clash back then was so fierce, and split American society so sharply, that it makes today's politics look rather mild by comparison.
But Wood takes us deeper into the substance of the issue. Jeffersonians were willing to limit government only because they assumed that there was "a principle of benevolence ... a moral instinct, a sense of sympathy, in each human being." They were founding an American nation upon the European Enlightenment's belief that "there was 'a natural principle of attraction in man towards man' [as Hume put it], and that these natural affinities were by themselves capable of holding the society together."
This was exactly the point that frightened Alexander Hamilton most. He summed up his opponents' view quite accurately: "As human nature shall refine and ameliorate by the operation of a more enlightened plan," based on common moral sense and the spread of affection and benevolence, government eventually "will become useless, and Society will subsist and flourish free from its shackles." Then Hamilton, the greatest conservative of his day, dismissed this vision of shrinking government as "a wild and fatal scheme."
The Republicans who now control the House obviously have a very different view of what it means to be a true conservative. But that doesn't mean they have become Jeffersonians. Not by any means. In many ways they would be closer to Hamilton, who scorned Jefferson's trust in human nature.AlterNet
Firstly, the term ‘social commons’ is meant to be analogous with the protection of the so-called ecological ‘commons’. Defending ‘the commons’ means focusing on that which is shared by all human beings. It is the very foundation of collective life of humanity. It also means resisting the current commodification of everything and a breakaway from the dominant logic. The ‘social commons’ are human-made commons, meant to protect individuals and societies.
Secondly, the notion of ‘social protection’ is, paradoxically, being hollowed out by the new global initiatives of the ILO, the World Bank and other international organisations. Some of their proposals have an important potential for improving the situation of poor people, but others barely go beyond the already existing poverty reduction policies. We think that in the long term, more is needed.
Thirdly, we noticed that the concept of ‘social protection’ has a very low appeal to young people who were raised in a neoliberal world in which individual freedom and competitiveness are presented as being natural. But these same young people do understand the value of solidarity and sharing with others. Changing the concept of social protection to social commons may change the perception and the understanding of an idea that may positively shape their future. It may also open up new analytical insights and lead to a new praxis fit for the 21st century.
Fourthly, and most importantly, we think that not only individuals need to be protected, but also societies. With its focus on competitiveness, neoliberalism is destroying social relationships, societies and communities. This collective dimension is particularly important when one knows that poverty is never a problem of poor people alone, but is the problem of societies with a skewed income distribution. It thus cannot be eradicated if the whole of society is not involved in solving it. This requires solidarity and active participation of all. Universalism will therefore be a major characteristic of ‘social commons’. This is based on the fact that social relationships are not purely contractual but are constitutive of each one’s individuality. Indeed, society is necessary for the survival of individuals.Global Social Justice
A recent blog post about ‘culture’ making a lousy explanation of social and economic phenomena sheds even more light on the bizarre culture that is economics.
The core criticism is that “since “culture” is compatible with any conceivable set of facts, it is not falsifiable.” Which is surprising for a member of the economics club that subscribes to the unfalsifiable belief that some utility function drives all human behaviour.
In a stroke of irony their argument boils down to “our culture is to not accept culture as an explanation of behaviour”.
So why am I so defensive about culture as a useful principle in economic theory?
I guess I should first offer an economic definition of culture. Culture is the total learnt cooperative behaviours of a society, which includes the way members of that society draw meaning from the behaviour of others. Society simply means the relevant group – such as country, State, club, school, workplace, or family.Macrobusiness (Oz)
To be more clear, culture is the way we understand the meaning of signals....
Defining Solidarity Economics
But what exactly is this "solidarity economy approach"? For some theorists of the movement, it begins with a redefinition of economic space itself. The dominant neoclassical story paints the economy as a singular space in which market actors (firms or individuals) seek to maximize their gain in a context of scarce resources. These actors play out their profit-seeking dramas on a stage wholly defined by the dynamics of the market and the state. Countering this narrow approach, solidarity economics embraces a plural and cultural view of the economy as a complex space of social relationship in which individuals, communities, and organizations generate livelihoods through many different means and with many different motivations and aspirations—not just the maximization of individual gain. The economic activity validated by neoclassical economists represents, in this view, only a tiny fraction of human efforts to meet needs and fulfill desires.
What really sustains us when the factories shut down, when the floodwaters rise, or when the paycheck is not enough? In the face of failures of market and state, we often survive by self-organized relationships of care, cooperation, and community. Despite the ways in which capitalist culture generates and mobilizes a drive toward competition and selfishness, basic practices of human solidarity remain the foundation upon which society and community are built. Capitalism's dominance may, in fact, derive in no small part from its ability to co-opt and colonize these relationships of cooperation and mutual aid....
At its core, solidarity economics rejects one-size-fits-all solutions and singular economic blueprints, embracing instead a view that economic and social development should occur from the bottom up, diversely and creatively crafted by those who are most affected. As Marcos Arruda of the Brazilian Solidarity Economy Network stated at the World Social Forum in 2004, "a solidarity economy does not arise from thinkers or ideas; it is the outcome of the concrete historical struggle of the human being to live and to develop him/herself as an individual and a collective.
Similarly, contrasting the solidarity economy approach to historical visions of the "cooperative commonwealth," Henri de Roche noted that "the old cooperativism was a utopia in search of its practice and the new cooperativism is a practice in search of its utopia." Unlike many alternative economic projects that have come before, solidarity economics does not seek to build a singular model of how the economy should be structured, but rather pursues a dynamic process of economic organizing in which organizations, communities, and social movements work to identify, strengthen, connect, and create democratic and liberatory means of meeting their needs.
Success will only emerge as a product of organization and struggle. "Innovative practices at the micro level can only be viable and structurally effective for social change," said Arruda, "if they interweave with one another to form always-broader collaborative networks and solidarity chains of production-finance-distribution-consumption-education-communication."
This is, perhaps, the heart of solidarity economics—the process of networking diverse structures that share common values in ways that strengthen each. Mapping out the economic terrain in terms of "chains of solidarity production," organizers can build relationships of mutual aid and exchange between initiatives that increase their collective viability. At the same time, building relationships between solidarity-based enterprises and larger social movements builds increased support for the solidarity economy while allowing the movements to meet some of the basic needs of their participants, demonstrate viable alternatives, and thus increase the power and scope of their transformative work.Dollars & Sense — Real World Economics
Games are also bounded by natural constraints. This is what I bet on!Multitude
Can we design a strategy that takes into consideration natural constraints to play the open game in the favor of those who contribute to open products?
The concept I propose can be summarized as such: The network designing, producing and distributing open products MUST create a COMPLEX value proposition that cannot be easily replicated outside of the network.
Open value networks are very well positioned to do exactly that. The complex value proposition is... complex, and has many dimensions.
Game theory [competition] or gift society [voluntary cooperation for mutual benefit]? The narcissistic vision of the homo oeconomicus has failed to acknowledge long-documented evidence of the primacy of cooperation. In this Friday essay, Adrian Pabst explores the liberating potential of an anthropologically informed economics for the age of austerity.Our Kingdom — Power and Liberty in Britain
Schweik and English conclude that FLOSS commons will be more successful when:
- The project has a relatively clearly defined vision and a mechanism to communicate the vision early in the project’s life, before getting to the growth stage;
- The software produced has a higher utility as perceived by the end user community;
- The project has one or more leaders who generate excitement and demonstrate “through doing.”
- The project has well-articulated and clear goals established by the project leader(s).
Schweik and English found no support for the hypotheses that projects succeed because they add functionality to core FLOSS technologies; because they are components of a computer operating system or other foundational infrastructure; or because they are built on certain programming languages that are popular in developer circles.
What’s particularly impressive about Internet Success is the painstaking rigor of the data collection and its use of sophisticated statistical and social science methodologies. This book is no anecdotal, conjectural account of why and how software commons function. It bores deeply into the social phenomena of software commons by studying a large, representative sample of projects. (Full disclosure: Schweik is a friend and I provided a blurb for the book jacket.)Read it at David Bollier's Blog
Progressives are easily kept on the defensive through the age-old strategy of Divide and Conquer
A fantastic overview of group selection can be found in E.O. Wilson’s groundbreaking new book, The Social Conquest of Earth, which builds a powerful argument for how humanity’s social nature enabled us to dominate every ecosystem we have entered in our 2 million year history.*
The argument goes something like this:
1. Throughout history, a tiny number of species have developed a capability known as eusociality — advanced social organization comprised of large numbers of individuals with differentiated roles including members that span more than one generation.
2. Most eusocial species discovered in the fossil record are the social insects — ants, bees, termites, and wasps. Every one of these species has been so successful at thriving that their bodies contained more than half of the biomass in the ecosystems where they lived, meaning that they completely dominated the niches populated by them. This pattern continues up to the present.
3. Humans are the only eusocial species to have the additional properties of strong emotional bonds between group members and advanced cognitive abilities that enable us to form coherent gestalts of meaning — especially the capacity for shared cultural narratives and tribal identities — which have enabled us to out-compete and dominate less socially adept animals in every ecosystem we have entered.
4. The key strategy underlying this pattern is that well-organized groups, which elevate the needs of the whole over those of individuals, are more successful at acquiring resources and consolidating power than those individuals or groups that are less organized.
Sound familiar? In American politics, we see the top-down authoritarian worldview of Conservatives enabling them to fall in line and take marching orders. They form strong loyalty bonds through religious affiliation, old money networks, and various social clubs that give them an immense capacity for social cohesion.
And what about Progressives? We are divided into issue silos, unable to form lasting coalitions that bond us together under the same ideological flag, and easily kept on the defensive through the age-old strategy of Divide and Conquer.Read it at Energy Bulletin
Well, coliving — pooling to share a commons — never died, but after the Seventies, it was largely an underground phenomenon that most mainstream people would have been unaware of. I lived in shared housing with other people as much in my adult life as not, and it began in the military, the US Navy to be exact. You can't find much more of a coliving experience than on a naval vessel, and several of the junior officers would pool to rent a nice beach house while we were on rotation in the the US. So it was good practice for things to come.
Communes and group living were widely associated with DFH's in the Sixties and Seventies, and there was a lot of truth to that. But there were also a lot of professionals from virtually all fields, in addition to the usual suspects like artists and musicians. At one time or another, I colived with professors of different disciplines, physicists, engineers, lawyers, artists, musicians, CPA's, physicians, IT professionals, business people, and assorted canine and feline companions. No economists or financial types, though, as far as I can recall.
Pooling resources in a commons generates a lot of leverage, and cooperation and coordination allows for living way beyond one's individual means unless one is born to wealth. But it goes far beyond just sharing space and stuff as a type of alternative housing. It is really about creating community based on sharing in a commons that was intentionally constructed and nurtured.
In the following post, Jessica Reeder narrates how this lifestyle is again coming to the fore in a new generation.Read it at Shareable | Work and Living
In 2006, Jessy Kate Schingler and four other young engineers landed jobs at NASA’s Ames Research Center. They suddenly needed a place to live in Silicon Valley, but rather than opt for cheap housing with a long commute, they pooled their resources and rented a palatial 5,000 square foot property in Cupertino. The Rainbow Mansion was born.
It was more than just a luxury home full of brilliant young minds. Dubbed “an intentional community”, The Rainbow Mansion was an experiment in a new type of cohabitation. The house began hosting hackathons and salons in its library, inviting Silicon Valley’s best and brightest to participate. “Right away it set itself in motion,” Schingler says. “It had this sort of accidental mystique about it."
In the six years since, the Rainbow Mansion has housed 60 people from 12 countries, along with employees from Google, Apple and Tesla. One of Schingler’s cofounders, Chris Kemp, became CTO of IT at NASA. And Schingler herself has become an advocate of coliving, the practice of bringing extraordinary people under one roof to live, work and change the world together.
A prescription for how human cooperation evolved will provoke much-needed debate about the origins of society
New research shows there is a biological basis for co-operative and empathetic behaviour.
Biological research is increasingly debunking the view of humanity as competitive, aggressive and brutish.
"Humans have a lot of pro-social tendencies," Frans de Waal, a biologist at Emory University in Atlanta, told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Monday.
New research on higher animals from primates and elephants to mice shows there is a biological basis for behavior such as co-operation, said de Waal, author of The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society.
Until just 12 years ago, the common view among scientists was that humans were "nasty" at the core but had developed a veneer of morality - albeit a thin one, de Waal told scientists and journalists from some 50 countries at the conference in Vancouver, Canada.
But human children - and most higher animals - are "moral" in a scientific sense, because they need to co-operate with each other to reproduce and pass on their genes, he said.Research has disproved the view, dominant since the 19th century, typical of biologist Thomas Henry Huxley's argument that morality is absent in nature and something created by humans, said de Waal.
And common assumptions that the harsh view was promoted by Charles Darwin, the so-called father of evolution, are also wrong, he said.Mainstream economics is based on game theory, and game theory presupposes that humans are individualistic and driven by self-interest, so that they are naturally competitive rather than naturally cooperative.
