Thanks Alberto:
Got your invite into this here. on a previous protocol mention, but any response belongs in direct connection to this one.
I quote your final paragraph in an attempt to weave two threads into one and climb aboard in one place:
Where we depart is mostly in that I emphasise interdependence from future and potential brethren, whereas most Matera veterans draw a line at the House and at the people who they can speak to over breakfast. The departure is not trivial: it means I think of brethren as a network, which have no in-out borders but rather a gradient of centrality; and you think of brethren-ness as a category, you are either in or out. Furthermore, it means I think of “being an unMonasterian” as an identity, whereas I think of it as a behaviour. For me it’s just that I do not like to stick labels on people, because ontology is overrated.
This always infuriates me Alberto, that you credit me with no discrimination and insist on lumping me together with a bunch of other people under a collective ‘you’ to try and tell me what I think. Neither of us is that stupid - so given that I have previously given you some leeway linguistically when you once addressed me as ‘you guys’- I’d like to call you for stooping to unscientific rhetoric. (little winky face thing here)
I’d agree with you totally about unMonasticism starting with embracing a visionary behaviour, and that this is definitely nothing akin to an automatic membership in a club as seems vulgarly celebrated by some of the colourful riff-raff that you (singularly) 've saddled me with !!! If I appear to be on another side of some fence, it is perhaps because what I do is support the guys in the field no matter how stupid, soporifically slow, or wrong they may be. This, I feel, is not your forté : (the impatience that accompanies being a genius ? little face thingy #2 - see below on ER constitutional flaw) That I start with this is perhaps because I am in the field, but more because it is my discipline, I work overly patiently with (often hopeless) people.
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Your breakdown of unMon operating principles is great fun. You flagged a while back that you had reduced the mass of considerations down to three key lines; I had thought to send an inquiry at the time as in the backspin of writing the Code/unCode document (our best yet), I’d been tempted to scrawl out my grand list of essentials as an undeniable nineteen basics. (Not that I’d remember a single one off the top of my head.) These have remained under wraps. A tricky moment for me has always hampered the process since pre-Matera: I find it imperialistic to reveal my personal version of Rule; I somehow want these things to be self-evident. I could play: “I’ll show you mine, you show me yours.” - but recognise that to dare to publish even a modest 0.1 requires considerable bravery.
I like the way you have consistently brandished the Protocol term - the fruits you gather are an example of what I call mining the metaphor – enlightening as long you keep your eye upon the tenuousness of the initial equivalence. I have long resisted this language because protocol does not resonate in the same realm for me as it does for say a programmer. I get caught up in the etiquette of international diplomacy, and find the very idea stifling. Attempting to get to the bottom of your usage, I ran it by a professor friend in the concrete sciences; she sketched the binary choices model that feeds your usage. I’ll likely stick with Code as it implies personal alignment with honour and ethics – not the least scientific, and mired forever in human foible, as they may be.
The flaw, of course, with Do-ism is when one is or seems to be acting on behalf of a ‘we’. He/she who does the work can call the shots on behalf of a great many people and create much discord. Matera certainly suffered from thinly considered solo initiatives. The balancing mechanism is the ability to listen – this is a lost art etc. and takes infinite patience - the herd moving only marginally faster than its slowest straggler gets somewhere by allowing some members to be eaten. But in a humanistic community we don’t really like the idea of cannibalism - one of our interviewed monks quotes Benedict on the wisdom of listening to the novices.
There is also such a thing as a /chronic doers syndrome/, this is often accompanied by a propensity for calling shots. Suffers don’t usually exhibit large amounts of patience for the meditative contribution of group process; to them it feels like cloying inertia. One of the key flaws in the Edgeryders set up is that most of us grew up being by and large the smartest person in the room at any given moment. This is inconvenient to say the least; it leaves us with diminished social skills. I bestow my presence upon them that would benefit from my wisdom - we needn’t place ourselves in the position of learners, and have more than enough stimulus from the fireworks exploding in our own brains. But the active people are dependent upon filling the holes in their genius from the back - this requires more strategy and feedback mechanisms than applying yet more Doing…
You’ve covered some of this with being open to openness. But what this may boil down to is a capacity to being open about other people being less open than you’d ideally like. A mechanistic declaration of openness becomes in practice rhetorical. The real work is to factor in whole, fallible people in your programming.
Using truths to negotiate working together is one thing, but unMonks also live together. Truths in themselves can become pretty useless. Revealed truths are something else again; but these need constant renewal. The feedback loop that is required is that which can keep doing and shot calling choral. Father Chelsom said as much in your interview with him; in response to Maria’s question about the function of the Rule, he said to support long term harmonious living. As I recall, he pooh-poohed our chances.
To program harmony will require us to dig deeper. There can be no unMonastery for Dummies.
In my report of the post-Matera “Wanderings”, I put it this way:
A protocol that supports ‘il nostro duro lavoro’, a life of service and an unCivilisation regime will have at least two sides. Part of it can be interpreted as constraints: don’t annoy people. However, it is not an elaborate slight of hand to reverse these prohibitions; to read the same directions as how to best support one another’s reemergence from a life of urban subjugation : enjoy each other inordinately (in a non-annoying manner.)
Without challenging self-sacrifice, without renegotiating of the chemistry and rhythms of civilisation, without the visceral enrichment of spiritual camaraderie our circles will remain cramped and disheveled.
">more later…