[Noisebridge-discuss] I'm going to go all meta here

[Dougie]

Man, after my Anthropology degree, I am so incredibly down with a post- 
postmodernist drinking club.



On Sep 30, 2009, at 2:59 PM, Christie Dudley wrote:

> I think I would love a post-postmodernist support group if there was  
> such a thing.  There would definitely have to be heavy drinking  
> involved, though.
>
> Christie
> "We have never been Modern" - Foucault
> ---
> Pigs can fly given sufficient thrust.
>     - RFC 1925
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 2:51 PM, Quinn Norton  
> <quinn at quinnnorton.com> wrote:
>
> On Sep 30, 2009, at 5:16 PM, aestetix aestetix wrote:
>
> >
> >       • I think it's harmful and dangerous to view Noisebridge as an
> > amalgamous mob that will eat, destroy, and shit out anything you
> > give it. This isn't Lord of the Flies, it is a community of self-
> > empowered folks who work on cool projects. The most important thing
> > to remember is *trust*, which is why I completely disagree with
> > Jason Dusek's argument. If you do not trust others to treat your
> > things well, why are you here?
>
>
> This gets into an interesting point about the sociology of
> Noisebridge, especially viewed as a common interests village. The
> trust within the social network is the most likely candidate for the
> magic pixie dist that makes NB work, and work shockingly well. There
> are multiple ways to create that trust network, the one we're most
> familiar with in society is through rules and enforcement. It's the
> transference of trust. I trust you because I trust Mr. Man over there
> with a gun to shoot you if you break the social contract.
>
> The thing about rules, locks, controls, punishments and logs is that
> they have a lot in common with gestation. You *can* actually be a
> little bit pregnant- it just doesn't stay that way.
>
> Rules are dominant social prions, polymorphs that metastasize in small
> cultures. You can have none or you can have a lot, a little always
> turns into a lot. Which isn't to say rules are bad, they just don't
> share space with metastable social structures based on appealing to an
> environmental level of ethics and socialization, the appeal to which
> creates the environment. This is true for Noisebridge, it's been
> tested on children in developmental psych, it works on traffic
> patterns, and 12 step groups. You can't mix the two approaches. Our
> approach requires constant vigilance- the other approach eventually
> requires guns, though usually hidden behind a justice system. They're
> still guns. (Mind you, I *like* guns, I'm just noting maintenance
> conditions.)
>
> The one worry I generally have with our system is that it's got a
> known vuln, through it come up rarely. It's vulnerable to a true
> pyschopath, who will have no ability to obey the social conventions,
> having only an abstract ability to perceive them. True psychopaths are
> rare, and even when they emerge they usually don't deal death blows
> because someone ends up menacing them away (almost like an immune
> function, I swear, it's fascinating.)  By psychopath here I mean
> clinically- someone highly egocentric, incapable of empathy, with
> limited theory of mind. Not bastards, but people actually lacking in
> these mental functions. Bastards are much easier to deal with.  Rules
> systems are highly robust in deal with psychopaths, I'm fairly
> convinced these days the concept arose as a response to keeping the
> occasional psychopath from having disproportionate effects on
> otherwise stable social structures.
>
> I've spoken to people about my nervousness about what I think of as
> the known vulnerability of the Noisebridge system, but it's certainly
> of no immediate concern. No one anywhere near that destructive has
> really gotten very involved with NB.
>
> The other thing that could collapse it is that it's an island of
> alternative social structure embedded in an environment of these
> metastasizing prionic rules based social structures. When something
> goes wrong it's perfectly rational for anyone to say 'there outta be a
> law!' without realizing how radically that would ultimately change the
> whole thing. Many people come to NB specifically to exist outside of
> the dominant structure for a time, and I think it would be a shame to
> change Noisebridge, just because there's a surfeit of the other model,
> rather than because Noisebridge is Inherently Better. Whether it is or
> not I have no real opinion, but it's a bit of a sparkly purple fairy
> unicorn, so I want to keep it like that, personally.
>
> With that it occurs to me there's another class/study group/drinking
> society/whatever I'd like to start at Noisebridge. I'm thinking of
> calling it the "Postmodernist Support Group". Who would be interested
> in that? I mean, who besides Shannon?
>
> Quinn
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