still in the confessional
Thanks Noemi;
I have been distraughtly following at a distance – it seems the kids will destroy Edgeryders, and we’ll all fall into glorious limbo. This is criminal. It is also pandemic.
I appreciate all attempts to heal things but I think we ignore a fundamental truth: human beings are not always at their best on-line. Great, heartfelt effort gets poured into our work - little gets heard. You will have spent so much more time sculpting your letter than any of us will spend in reading it. At best, over-exposed minds will scan it for junctures where we can paste our already formulated opinion.
In the unMon I’ve accused us of ‘Living in Our Laptops’. I am also guilty of this: believing somehow in the value of the pure word - however, this doesn’t carry. Turning rational thought into text to be placed on the platform is not communication. Until other people absorb and can champion the ideas, it will take ages to reach any congruent use of terminology. In the meantime we flounder.
In the ER we should know this: the legendary ethos of Strasbourg was about meeting in the flesh to explore the tools of Social Cohesion. The unMonastery was a response to this desire. When we embrace the replacement of human interchange with documentation on a machine something is not completely thought through.
Apparently I don’t see the half of the growling and chest thumping as many things go on in the secret channel which only a select group of ER veterans can access. This puts some of us at a disadvantage in trying to fathom what is going on. That I should be excluded from the inner circle is a choice of the inner circle, but that which surfaces is symptomatic enough to document that all is not well.
My working premise is always that people are doing their best at all possible times; any discord or conflict is then a symptom of real or imagined pain: Ben’s petulance overshadows the principles he argues; Nadia declares herself ‘not happy’ and keeps her head down. An unConfessional was launched: half a dozen people stood forth as potential father/mother confessors: no one had anything on their conscience – My (perhaps ceremonial) entrance https://edgeryders.eu/en/comment/16579#comment-16579 was met with a request for more depth, https://edgeryders.eu/en/comment/16650#comment-16650 and then a mysterious silence… as if I had clumsily broken the very agent of our renewal. David Ridge offered to engineer something, likely felt rebuffed and even tried from afar, ( though he surely knows enough not to offer even delicate diagnosis of other people’s interactions without spending hours of in the same room generating points of joyful understanding.) So strident did some of your posts read that it was hard to believe they spoke with your voice.
I have been trying to make my contribution for over two years, it is only intermittently that anyone listens. (both on the ER and in the unMon.) My point of retreat after my post-LOTE entry (Nearing the Edge) that sought to renew the Edge we choose to inhabit https://edgeryders.eu/en/lote4/nearing-the-edge provoked nothing but a pat on the head, (or maybe like so much on the platform it simply vanished beneath the sheer volume of multiple tracks,) has been to recycle most of my post-Matera writings into a 22 page document of my grumpiness — chastising and cajoling those horrid unMoaners to work more strategically. http://discourse.unmonastery.org/t/the-unmon-wanderings-notes-for-historians/39
One option is to give up. Some of us are not programmed to support this option. Instead, I feel I have to put myself forward as a Guardian of the Edgeryder rank and file.
Demographically, I have felt that the grumpy elder anglo bloke quota was well covered by Arthur and Vinay. If Vinay is no longer desirable for some reason, and if Arthur follows him in solidarity - I should replace them given my long service and unique skillset.
When the question: Why I cherish the unMonastery? was posted, I had an impatient response. It felt as toothless as all those group tweaking exercises. Upon reflection, group tweaking is better than vacuum packing. In internal discussions in the unMon deliberations some of the younger crowd of recent arrivals have dismissed ER as a foreign, non-comprehending irritant. I have consistently countered this; putting myself forth as a dedicated Edgeryder. This remains the case.
The Strasbourg gathering was major: great brains, great ideas, relatively little flakiness.
I have not followed every detail of the ER evolution. For me it has been enough that the core key of Social Cohesion Research - Early Warning Division embodied all that I have worked for for forty some years. With projects such as : The Gods of Money, Institute for Non-toxic Propaganda, Future Protection Agency, Den Multinationale Scene and Society for the Promotion of Human Rites – not even pompous, silly names like Edgeryders and unMonastery could keep me away. Working on Social Cohesion is why I care about Edgeryders.
We, the general membership, have never been informed about the divorce from Strasbourg. I asked Nadia about it once; she gave the impression that it was a case of almost personal pique. As you point out so well in your letter, we are here to do social cohesion, we cannot allow ourselves to lose control of our vision due to unresolved moments of pain.
Efforts to resolve such matters via the platform don’t bring out the best in each other. Time chewing over the selection of emotionally charged words is less automatic when one isn’t in the same room and can more sensitively and generously absorb the core of the concerns while filtering out the impingement of emotion. Again: laptop posts don’t always invite to dialogue - one of our specialisms has to be superior communication and listening tools.
I took the ER pledge seriously and rigourously aligned my life to spend in practice 2 years in the Research Lab. This has been a considerable investment, professionally, emotionally and economically. I don’t want this investment to evaporate.