Gathering #8 December 10, 2020 - Money & Care

This gathering emerged from this thread.

Initial Agenda::

1. 5 minutes - arriving in a space (holding this time in case @Alex Rodriguez you want to usher us into a sound-space.

2. 5 minute - short check-ins - where are you now?

3. 5 minutes - reserving this space in case @Toni Blanco you wish to say anything about what led you (and through you us) into this gathering.

4. Money Round 1: Where are you personally in terms of money and care? How do you feel about where you are?

5. Money Round 2: Where would you like to be? In what sense all that motivated joining the Microsolidarity Loomio group in the first place, and this crew later on? 

6. Money Round 3: How is specifically our work here affecting (if any) money and care in your life nowadays? In which way or ways you envision it could impact your life regarding money and care in the future? 

7. Money Round 4: From the present moment, informed by the time we've shared together in this crew, what do you envision emerging from our work together (long term, beyond the current cycle)? Are you open to the possibility of this crew implementing the generative process? In which conditions? More importantly (via negativa), what are the "no-gos"?

8. 10 minutes - closing including Alex sounding us out.

Each round is potentially three rounds of talking:

1. Round 1: Your story

2. Round 2: Ripples - things that are alive in you from hearing the others in the first round.

3. Round 3: Secondary ripples - things that are alive in you from hearing others' ripples.

Some guidelines for the gathering:

1. We are gathering for a personally & grounded conversation about money and its relationship to our crew (not a theoretical conversation about money!).

2. We will aim for conciseness that does not compromise wholeness

3. We recognize that the time allocated is not enough to cover the ground we wish to cover.

4. Yet, we will give the conversation and ourselves the time it needs.

5. We have implicitly agreed that an additional gathering (maybe more) may be required for wholesome coverage of the subject matter.

we covered points 1 - 4 during the gathering.

we did not schedule a follow-up due to scheduling conflicts.

I propose that we "continue" asynchronously on points 5 and 6 here in this thread.

I will also post another proposal for another gathering next week which we can dedicate to point 7 in the agenda. This will on Dec 24th, making it the last gathering of 2020 ... and the topic seems to be a GREAT way round-off this calendar year :)

Money Round 2: Where would you like to be? In what sense all that motivated joining the Microsolidarity Loomio group in the first place, and this crew later on? 

I'd like to be... under the sea, in an octopuses garden in the shade! Ok, sorry - now I've got that out of my head I can respond to the question in a more serious capacity 😅

So as mentioned in the previous meeting I have some reserves; not huge amounts but I'm not under existential threat. My concern is more that there is only outflow and no inflow and which means I have to live as lean as possible. To large degrees thats fine as I recognise that I'm investing into changing my vector towards more meaningful endeavours, while doing the work to get there. Like Tony's illustration of an exponential during our in person call, I can see the curve starting to reach tipping point.

With that all said, if we were not in corona lockdowns world over, my agency would be reduced - which is something I don't want. I'd prefer to increase agency, for not just myself but others also; which is what I'm working on by weaving living social networks (or viable systems). As it becomes more coherent, I'd like to scale things up to sizes large enough to deal with intractable problems, which will take serious resources... long term goals.

In the short term, I'd just like to get something going with greater benefits than costs while doing meaningful work to generate some leverage. I joined microsolidarity because I agreed with the methodology, and because I thought it would be a strange attractor for others who were likeminded. I later joined this crew because I'd met Ronen at one of the initial meetings and the practice week and was impressed with the quality of his posts as well as responses (in particular I remember a gently assertive response to Stypey that was just such a lovely mic drop moment).

Money Round 3: How is specifically our work here affecting (if any) money and care in your life nowadays? In which way or ways you envision it could impact your life regarding money and care in the future? 

I guess the work we're doing here more so inspires care; both relational and in qualitative endeavours. Now that I think about it both are verbs, which I feel is the edge thats thickening. I don't think that this crew has had much effect on money, either positive or negative.

Re the future however, I believe it has affected my care work and will probably continue to influence it. Obviously it's great to build deepening bonds, shared language and context with good people such as yourselves. It's interesting as I feel we're largely working on friendship in the spiritual realm (rather than transactional or hedonistic flavours) I must say it does feel like there is an element of our relationship that is missing in that way as it usually cascades from transactional>hedonistic>spiritual... with that said, most things that are culturally the norm should be done in reverse and now it kinda feels like were starting on a tiny wee bit of positive hedonism as theres music being shared in the Discord. It kind of make me think that we might be running spiritual>hedonistic>transactional (the money element??). If this is indeed the implicit sequence were running in I imagine the future impact could be quite large, both in having an explicit framework for the future as well as having a resilient group of friends that know how to weather a storm!

Re: non-personal care work; well... I'm sure structure and depth will increase with time too - especially given the infoset that is currently propagating around generative processes; which I'm sure will deepen into richer qualitative endeavours.

Ok, thats my asynchronous Thursday! See you guys on the 24th :)

Money Round 2: Where would you like to be? In what sense all that motivated joining the Microsolidarity Loomio group in the first place, and this crew later on? 

So I'm going to embrace the whimsical hedonistic track @Josh Fairhead laid out ... because I think that it is not just whimsy! I too was affected by the musical sharing on discord. As I was listening and sharing I had a clear sense of an outcome for our work together ... I was surprised by how emotional it was (and hesitant to speak it out) and by its stark clarity ... I don't think I've even been able to describe an outcome so clearly:

I would like our shared work to generate valuable outcomes for many people. I would like those outcomes to include a good exchange of monetary value for many participants in the space INCLUDING US. I would like that money to enable us to (post-pandemic) gather and meet physically, to embrace, to share food, to work, and to attend a good music event together.

In a way, for me, there was nothing particularly special about Microsolidarity. It, when viewed as its own thing, is another in a long string of experiments I have witnessed. What was special about it:

1. It has heritage ... deeper roots (than many other "initiatives" floating in the creato-sphere) it is an outcome of many years of work in Ensiral and then in Rich & Nati's exploration into organizations.

2. It was associated with a specific individual human being ... Richard ... who cared for it (published, spoke, etc.) and ... that made it, for me, trustworthy and tangible.

3. The doors were unconditionally open (when I encountered an invitation to the Loomio group).

Though I also think that my connection was made possible by the pandemic which brought everyone into my "remote sphere" ... It was not likely that I would have made a physical connection.

This crew was me trying to put into practice Richard's ideas about how to form a crew. Before this invitation, I put out an invitation within the Microsolidarity Week group in which I participated ... around breath ... but there were no responses to it (which I took to mean not interest either). So I wrote this invitation and gently released it, not expecting it to perform any better than the first invitation ... yet here we are.

Money Round 3: How is specifically our work here affecting (if any) money and care in your life nowadays? In which way or ways you envision it could impact your life regarding money and care in the future? 

Picking up from the answer to the previous question ... your responses to the invitation and your willingness to make time and to stick together ... gave me some sense of validation. I am still sometimes surprised that you all answered and that you are still around. This is, I believe, a projection of self-doubt. It comes from a place where I don't want to waste your time. If I, in my retreated life, am a quirk ... and if remote microsolidarity is only a response to my personal needs ... then, I feel, it is a waste of your time. However if there are others many?) out there who are facing similar challenges (without living in retreat) ... then maybe it is a good investment. The fact that all of you are still hanging around indicates to me that remote-microsolidarity may actually be a thing :)

I am also grateful for the opportunity to share and explore with you the notions of generative processes and unfolding wholeness. I appreciate the flow and ease of expression made possible by the shared vocabulary and vibes that emerged from our time together.

I am carrying in my mind a vision of a prosperous digital space where crews like ours are the norm ... a highly likely outcome. A space where efforts like Josh's to mesh networks and to amplify individual and collective agency happen ... as if naturally ... with less effort ... with correct effort.

I am envisioning these spaces finding the ground ... gravitating less towards abstract noble ideas or digital currencies (though I've got some exciting thoughts about those too!) .. but rather towards food, soil, housing, forests ... where connections are made with REAL value and make it possible for REAL value to resonate back into and through the space and all of its participants.

I didn't expect my response to be so abstract and poetic ... but apparently this is where these questions find me :)

Money Round 2: Where would you like to be? In what sense all that motivated joining the Microsolidarity Loomio group in the first place, and this crew later on? 

I would like to share and scale the kind of pod/crew I started with my friend and partner Sergio two years ago. I wish and also expect to see our business situation secured next year for the peace of my mind; so now I paid my debt I'd like to work more in R&D and its open-source dissemination, and less in just billable work.     

As a part of my R&D, I follow Richard and Enspiral's endeavors, so when he tweeted about the group I just lurked a little bit with no intention to join, because. It is a long "because". But a particular issue made me think that maybe I could have interesting conversations here (and advance in my research) so I participated in a time in which I could not be busier. Then I step in to know better the people of the crew by hosting a meetup. But the format was already dying, Richard announced that he was too exhausted to attend, my name was not appealing, so only three people showed up. As a result of that intimate and productive meetup, Ronen wrote the invitation and the rest is history.  

I already said in that meeting that I would join Ronen's invitation. I was impressed by the quality of his interventions, his skills that I lacked, and his availability to work in things that matter. And the goal of the crew looked to me like the holy grail of planetary transformation, (or at least, it could get me closer to the "where I want to be" I described above).  

Money Round 3: How is specifically our work here affecting (if any) money and care in your life nowadays? In which way or ways you envision it could impact your life regarding money and care in the future? 

It is not affecting me in terms of money right now, but even if our work would end right now, I think that I learned a lot with it that will affect me in the future indirectly by improving the Pantheon framework I am working on (mostly) with Sergio. In terms of care, I am lucky that I practice microsolidarity consistently with my partner Sergio and with my partner-mentor Alfonso. Yet care feels good and more care feels even beetter. Also that it was qualitatively different because it was not the 1 to 1 type, which has been the most common kind of microsolidarity care (so to speak) I have practiced lately.
Regarding the future, I see different ways of how this crew can affect my money and care spheres. First, I have experienced how important it is for me is to work with people I admire for different reasons (including their sense of care), beyond the particular work/job. My previous experience has been the traditional path that Josh succinctly summarized as "transactional>hedonistic>spiritual", while the one that I knew from Las Indias was the "spiritual>hedonistic>transactional". I see myself consistently working in a microsolidarity space with any one of you if an opportunity arises around anything; or with the three of you in an unstoppable-microsolidarity-generator, provided that we find the generative process we are looking for. Which is a hard (but not impossible) nut to crack. 

And I stop it here because as a good (generative) sequence of questions, I am already stepping into the next one that we keep for the 24th. 

Yet I have to add that reading your responses has inspired me to elaborate and make a proposal on the 24th regarding money in the short-term. 

Oh, and I have envisioned our first face to face gathering in a quiet and beautiful Greek island that an insider told me about, but I am open to other locations.

Money Round 2: Where would you like to be? In what sense all that motivated joining the Microsolidarity Loomio group in the first place, and this crew later on? 

I often think about this in terms of how I would like to be relating to money and care relationships when I am old, infirm, and preparing to meet death. I've seen how my family of origin relates to this and what it seems to be is that I would have to save a lot of money in order to pay other people lots of money to do the difficult work of caring for me in this old and infirm state. Compound interest on financial assets and real estate investments buttressed by exclusionary laws (and the state violence that enforces them) are key components of that.

I'm trying to imagine another path for myself, one in which the actions that I've taken in my life lead to being in deep, meaningful relationship with networks of people who have the capacity and desire to care for my ailing old man body and spirit. I think of our work together in the spirit of trying to learn how to enter into and manifest these sorts of relationships. I'm finding that taking the step of actually talking about needs for care and sustenance (money is oftentimes a starting point for these conversations) can create openings for this, which is part of what attracted me to the Microsolidarity framework.

In our initial interactions in the monthly calls, I was grateful to be in the space with Toni and Ronen for that one call that almost didn't happen, and I saw you two as genuine, no-bullshit kinds of thinkers who were also trying to engage meaningfully on these terms. So far, that assessment seems to check out!

I also had a weirdly specific longing/aspiration arise in our asynchronous phase that is spookily resonant with Ronen's post above. When Ronen shared that drawing that was a response to my story about being born 8500 km away from my wife, I had this thought: "what if that's the album cover for my first record?"

A bit of additional context: I've had a very conflicted and complicated relationship to my musical "career" and study ever since my early teens when I first picked up the trombone and started learning to play jazz. But I also never was able to put in the dedicated study and practice of the specific, esoteric lineage of bebop and post-bop that was the threshold for moving through the gatekeepers of the jazz art world, so instead I became a music writer and sort of fought from the inside for other people doing weird creative things that didn't always fit in the "right wrong notes" that I had been told was how to play well.

Sometime during my last period of living in Santiago, Chile, I realized that I wanted to record an album of Ornette Coleman-inspired small ensemble music with some of my friends there, and we had a few rehearsals but never got enough together to record. (You can hear a recorded excerpt from one of our only live performances here.) I've even known the title of the record: Somewhere Else!!!! (a play on Ornette's Something Else!!!!). I realized that so much of our work in remote microsolidarity is actually a continuation of this work I have been struggling to do with my Chilean musical compatriots, a struggle that began during my first visit 15 years ago. And this confirms for me that it's intimately tied up with my own unique and personal struggle to, in the Buddhist lingo, free myself and others from suffering in this lifetime.

So I've been feeling into what this "crew" could actually become ... and given all of the musical talent and listening proclivities, I'm thinking, "damn, could we run a boutique record label??"

It actually feels a little hard to even write this, to let this dream escape the private realm of my own fantasies and offer it into this space, given the detailed level of careful abstraction and non-attachment to formal outcomes that we've been holding thus far. So maybe we won't actually start a record label in our next cycle. But that's the sort of thing I'm dreaming about.

Money Round 3: How is specifically our work here affecting (if any) money and care in your life nowadays? In which way or ways you envision it could impact your life regarding money and care in the future? 

I'm finding so far that our interactions in this space are tending to reinforce and support my developing relationship to money and care, moving away from a need to rely on the systems I grew up around and into a place of more creativity and adaptability. I also notice more room for more emotionally mature impulses and ideas to arise in that space, and have been able to offer some of this in my other work (Bhumisparsha has been the most prominent example where I've seen this happen.)

I really resonated with Toni's idea about the fractal growth curve ... I'm already starting to feel like something is about to "pop" for me and I'm trying to set intentions with people who I trust now. Being in this inquiry together feels very supportive of that intention. And I also appreciate Ronen's articulation of healthy skepticism and doubt -- that resonates with me as well, although not enough to be destabilizing.

I loved the recording Alex ... it drew me in and wrapped around me ... I wished it was longer ... or a track on an album. Maybe when we gather for a Jazz Festival on a Greek Island we will be attending your concert? :)

Years ago I founded a project (named: Sweet Clarity) that aimed to bring marginalized visual arts (informed by my own photography exploration) to the screens that were beginning to occupy our public and common spaces. I imagined that, like me, there were so many intrinsically motivated creators making beautiful things ... likely to never be picked up by the institutional art scene. Listening to your music sent me back to that exploration. I created a UI mockup for an "ambience control" that would combine visual and audio presentations: I imagined the same (for example) restaurant being able to change its "art mode" from "bright morning mode" to "reflective evening mode" ... and the audio playlist changing together with the art work. I Imagined "ambience DJ's" who curated "ambience sets" ... I have tried to leave it behind ... but it seems it hasn't let go of me yet :)

I feel sooooo much ... soft, resilient, mature vitality in this thread ... thank you all for speaking out here 🎇