Community Narrative

[ruta.zem]

Summarising community organisers meeting (Community Narrative group) 16/3/2020.

Answering question:
What type of narrative(s) can support local and global Holochain communities and events during the COIVD-19 outbreak? Why are we doing what we are doing and how can we support each other and introduce new members.

In order to stay focused we have to clarify and know what is important. To tune out the noise that surrounds the actual signal (not the app!). In the ongoing event of COVID-19, humanity continues to generate enormous amounts of fear, which consequently leads to misinformation, distrust and separation within communities.

And so, as a community we can decide to turn it around and use this time to deepen our values and truly see why we are doing the things we are doing. It is a definitely a clarifying moment to put our priorities straight.

First, let’s address trust. To be able to trust each other, we have to see that someone else has our best interest at heart, as we have theirs. We have to clearly understand what those best interests are - ours and others, in order to take action that is aligned. This applies to any scale, from individuals, to organisations, to countries.

So, in this time, how can we implement trust within our communities?

• To deeply listen into what are those best interests of people - what problems are communities facing. Clarify what is important, and what is secondary. What deeper needs are there problems are pointing to? Diversify community to hear wider array of voices.

• Address and design solutions locally.

• Human/community problems many times might end up being universal. Share cross-community solutions.

• Scale when applied and needed.

We are fortunate enough to have this platform, to meet like-spirited people and collaborate towards the future that is being created NOW. There is no better time, as we face “real world” problems, that ask for real solutions - not hypothetical ones.

Time of crisis can be used by corporations, governing bodies, etc to induce new laws and regulations, to reshape democracy in a way that would serve their own best interest - which is all possible when society is suspended and destabilised by immense shock (market collapse, pandemic, natural disaster, etc).

And so, we should not be afraid of word “opportunistic”. In contrary, we should use this time to take action and implement high-level ideas/ideals into tangible solutions, with real people. Defining clearly our goals and what it takes to reach them. - Currently, a simple “No” is not enough.

The real subversion in the age of segregation is coming together (for now, digitally) to weave the new pattern.

gathered resources to get inspired:

https://teamhuman.fm/ - Team Human Podcast by Douglas Rushkoff
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine - The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/business/china-coronavirus-surveillance.html

Please ping in more contributors & contribute
@ilan @lenara @bear @AdriaanB

[sidsthalekar]

Thanks @ruta.zem, this is great. Any idea if the recorded version of the call will be made available for those in unfavourable time-zones?

In general, I resonate with what you’ve summarised. These times call for a re-evaluation/questioning of our underlying assumptions. They also open windows for new systemic designs.

Some of my conversations (with @pospi and HoloREA) have included re-thinking supply chains at a time when most operations across the globe have been disrupted (Just today, in Singapore we’re fearing potential food shortages with Malaysia announcing a lock-down of its borders). At Sacred Capital, we’re constantly pushing for a move to a more resilient economic system that functions on the basis of contextual, reputation frameworks.

I’m wondering if the Community Organizers role could also include driving public conversations around topics like these? I’d be interested to contribute, organize and support.

[AdriaanB]

This is great @ruta.zem. Thanks for the amazing write up, it is really motivating and inspiring.

I dropped out of the conversation because my laptop ran out of juice and bad connection. Would love to continue the conversation! Shall we plan a new session somewhere soon and explore some small solutions people could work on?

I am fascinated by small practical solutions for problems everyone is facing now. Being segregated for an unknown time. What do we have now that we could use and what problems could we solve with it? Can we utilize holoscape or holoports in some way? Would self hosting hApps be possible and make sense. Maybe even come up with centralized solutions that could morph into decentralized ones in the future?

[AdriaanB]

This is a good resource @bear shared at the end of the conversation. https://blog.crisp.se/2016/01/25/henrikkniberg/making-sense-of-mvp

[ilan]

I just finished reading this. It maps very well to some of my thoughts on the approach we discussed yesterday about reaching out locally to one or two groups within our communities.

While doing this in Berlin will be an interesting challenge, I was really inspired listening to this episode from Next Economy Now talking about how a community in the Bronx and find ways to recognise and leverage existing resources that help the community, and there appears to be a call for finding ways to facilitate exchange cooperatively.

[ilan]

Cheers to @ruta.zem for pulling this document together and all the people who provided input on it.

I am excited with the possibility of being able to facilitate a group of devs to work on something that we can test locally and gather feedback on. This could be very small at first. Maybe something along the lines of two or three types of local business and community sources who are willing to experiment?

I am currently on several telegram groups working locally on self organising. It’s actually working and inspiring to see people reaching out. But it still feels like one is walking through a faceless and impersonal fog.

One thing that I have seen is that the ‘system’ for connecting people offering help and people needing help is at this point basically a google spread sheet someone put together. Of the close, to as of this writing, 2000 people in the group where I found the link to this doc there are only 6 entries, one of them including me. This is after two days.

As I am somewhat addicted to this kind of interaction I will try to make my time with it meaningful and continue to observe what is happening taking mental notes as I go.

On a similar note for looking for opportunities, I recommend listening to a new episode that came from Steal This Show. One of the guests is a writer who wrote a Sci-Fi book titled ‘Liquid Reign’.

He talks about how data collection is being used as @ruta.zem mentioned, but also mentions the Taiwanese approach about personal data permissions, and apparently he is involved with a discord group that is also trying to work this out with some people. I can reach out to him via twitter and ask if we can connect should it be useful.

[bear]

I’m looking at this again, nearly a month later, @ruta.zem - it’s so well put. I’m feeling like things are moving, and wonder where we might want to look with this narrative and how to share it out more. I’d love to meet with the folks on this thread this coming week to get some strategy together to share this out beyond the forum, and figure out whether there’s an action step, or, like, a non-action-step that we could connect it to . . .

[ruta.zem]

Thank you! totally up for it, action step sounds really good and grounded. I also came back to it actually, yesterday, and maybe wanted to tweak or just review:)