Coming Community, part 2

(I first wrote about the coming community in January 2012.)

During the last couple of months I have had an interesting social experiment. In the beginning of June I established a Facebook page called Ihmekahvila – Café of Beat, a type of inclusive community group with the point of organizing events with a group of people. While the concept is yet to catch fire – currently posting event proposals feels awkward because there is no strong sense of community – I have had social experiences which I believe will build towards a practical understanding of the coming community:

[F]or Agamben, the coming community is a community that ‘do[es] not possess any identity to vindicate or any bond of belonging for which to seek recognition’.

I understand Agamben’s “whatever” like this: the members of the community can be whatever they are, and it doesn’t affect their belonging to the community. Allowing “whateverness” doesn’t mean indifference towards diversity, but gentle curiosity towards it.

Here are some practical characteristics of the coming community:

• inclusive vs. exclusive –> no specific identity, fluctuates in different situations (e.g. the organizer, the spectator, the mediator)
• leadership –> emergence of ideas and practices; importance of charisma and rhetoric
• self-confidence of individuals: “my thoughts and ideas are important and I want to share them with others; I’m not deeply hurt by criticism”
• partly technology-mediated: Facebook enables social possibilities without social imperatives (e.g. event invitations can be easily sent to people who don’t often take part in them)
• rapid adaptation through feedback and dialogue: Facebook makes it easy to have feedback discussions with group members, for example about the behavior of some other members. In addition to the higher-level “coordinative publicity”, there are many “feedback publicities” in the community. Some able individuals work as mediators between them, transmitting the feedback messages to the community coordination. This allows quick adjustment of collective behavior.

A couple of new books

I ordered these two books from the Book Depository:

Philip E. Tetlock: Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?

Sven Steinmo: The Evolution of Modern States: Sweden, Japan, and the United States

Currently reading (from the library):
Julkisuus ja demokratia (a collection of articles about publicity and democracy)

Ilpo Laitinen: Moraalinen logo. Organisaatioiden arvovallankumous. (about the social responsibility of companies and how to promote it)

Expect some new insights into these in the coming weeks.

Religion and Personal Narratives

Have you ever wondered, why some deeply religious people seem to live in a state that makes you wonder if they have been smoking weed? You know: the calm voice, open-mindedness and smiling all suggest that there’s some external substances involved.

Yesterday I met a couple of evangelizing Christians who were just like this: easy-going and easy to talk with – to the point where their evangelizing began. At that moment the warm atmosphere started to turn ice-cold, because my Buddhist friend couldn’t stand them imposing “Jesus, God and Heaven”.

Similar experiences and backgrounds prepare the soil for common argumentation.

I listened to one story of conversion because I was interested in the ways of thinking he had gotten into. What I noticed was fascinating: it is the personal narrative that plays a part in a converted person’s happy state of mind.

When one is converted into a religion or a movement, the person becomes inclined to create a coherent narrative of his/her life. This narrative includes past wrongdoings (such as alcohol usage, crime and ignorance towards fellow humans), the moment of realization and the present moment of happiness and life free of temptations.

The story in itself creates a sense of meaning for the person: a path from darkness to light is formed in the mind. Telling the story in a group of fellow believers is important, because it creates coherence in the group: we all have our dark past, but now “we are here together to praise the Lord”.

The narrative may be successful among people who share the same literary topos, the “places of valid argumentation”. For example: if you drink lots of alcohol and feel bad about it, or neglect friends and feel bad about it, you are probably more open to the religious message than a person who doesn’t have those experiences. Similar experiences and backgrounds prepare the soil for common argumentation.

However, evangelizing is more difficult among people who’ve “been there, done that”, people who have had the time to study religion from a neutral viewpoint or people who are satisfied with their life. It is not so easy to convert you if you feel good about yourself.

Evolution of States

Big Society is full of potential, but it needs more substance

Some type of shared utopian view is beneficial to a society, as it paves the way for large-scale coordinated reform. This view has to be positive in order to be truly motivating and empowering. Big Society has the potential to become the utopia of the 21st century, but only if two key concepts are included: mutual respect and open dialogue.

The archbishop of Canterbury recently denounced David Cameron’s Big Society as aspirational waffle “designed to conceal a deeply damaging withdrawal of the state from its responsibilities to the most vulnerable.” The response is understandable, as the ongoing austerity drive doesn’t show much of the responsibility, mutuality or obligation that Cameron underlined in his 2009 Big Society speech. On the contrary: cutting social benefits with the excuse of balancing welfare budget seems irresponsible and short-sighted – especially when billions of taxpayer pounds and euros flow to keep financial institutions up and running.

Big Society, as I understand it, refers to the joint effort and common responsibility in the society, and moving away from politician-centered and hierarchical government towards multilateralism and networked cooperation. The historical context of the Big Society is, of course, the crisis of the welfare state. An essential question in this ongoing crisis is: How to make the transition to socially and environmentally sustainable economy while remaining competitive and maintaining the living standards of most people?

This question has no answer, which refers to the fact that in the current crisis, we are dealing with one huge wicked problem:

A wicked problem is a social or cultural problem that is difficult or impossible to solve for as many as four reasons: incomplete or contradictory knowledge, the number of people and opinions involved, the large economic burden, and the interconnected nature of these problems with other problems.

Wicked problems of the society are rife with conflicts of interest, anxiety and fear. This is what has preserved them for centuries. Currently, however, they are getting out of control (see the news on Euro crisis or climate change), so new approaches are needed. Big Society is a utopian mindset with the aim of promoting a change in the culture – our patterns of thinking, feeling and potentially acting – that is at the root of these wicked problems.

The Big Society mindset is promising, but currently it has one big problem: it lacks a solid view of mutual respect – the cornerstone of social stability -, and open dialogue on policy decisions. The lack of mutual respect is deeply intertwined with antiquated party structures which manufacture dissent while maintaining the phenomenon of ‘preaching to the choir’. The absence of dialogue, on the other hand, enables decisions to be made quickly but at the expense of the wider social context.

So what should be done to promote mutual respect and open dialogue in the society? I set an open challenge to all citizens and parties, in Britain as well as in Europe. Together we should try to answer the following questions:

• What is good in the Big Society mindset, and what is lacking? If you fundamentally disagree with the concept, what is your alternative utopia?
• Big Society has the potential to guide global social policy efforts. Could it be the British approach to the crisis in Europe? Could the approach even be spread to development cooperation?
• Reducing the power of central governments also leads to gradually moving away from the war economy in which national politicians manufacture and support armed conflicts abroad for political and economic purposes. What kind of Big Society institutions encourage the use of soft power in global networks and make the use of violence unviable?

When we learn to maintain respectful dialogue throughout the society, we are much better equipped to face the long-awaited social reforms. At the same time it is essential that we find the fine balance between cynicism and idealism. In this process, approaches such as Theory U and participatory design may prove beneficial.

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PS. I wrote this text Comment is Free in mind, but as they refused I decided to publish it here. (I guess it was too intellectual for the general reader.)

On Social Innovations, and Politics as a Collective Innovation Process

One definition of politics is that it is the art or science of running governmental or state affairs. However, because it consists of social relations involving authority or power, it is rarely innovative; instead, it can take decades for new approaches to be accepted and spread.

Representative democracy has structural issues with innovations. The majority of the voters aren’t able to judge the quality of other people’s ideas because of lack of expertise:

“Very smart ideas are going to be hard for people to adopt, because most people don’t have the sophistication to recognize how good an idea is.”

I’m currently reading The The Social Innovation Imperative: Create Winning Products, Services, and Programs that Solve Society’s Most Pressing Challenges by Sandra M. Bates. In the book Bates argues that the time-tested tools found to be effective in corporate innovation should be spread to the social innovation sphere, too. At the core of this paradigm shift is the division to idea-based and needs-based innovation. Instead of trying to solve society’s wicked problems by coming up with lots of ideas which are then accepted or not accepted by the free market of politics, the innovating process should be needs-based. This means that the situation should first be studied and described as clearly as possible. This includes e.g. identifying the members of the social ecosystem, studying the social and cultural context and reviewing environmental and human constraints.

The book goes on into more detail from there (also covering practical innovation tools such as idea cards), but I find this initial phase key to the social innovation process. Many issues in the society (such as financing, environment or health care) are in a continuous crisis since no baseline review has been conducted which would seek to create as clear picture of the current situation as possible – so that everyone is talking about the same subject.

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Politics needs to be rebuilt so that it supports needs-based social innovation. This means it requires effective coordination rather than strong hierarchial leadership. Let’s approach this through a practical example: the US health care crisis. Coordination in this case can mean:

1. Establish an official, multilateral and inclusive project to study the situation, conduct research and give policy suggestions.
2. Create a website which features blog posts from the key actors: politicians, authorities and doctors. The message doesn’t have to be uniform, as the point is also to openly discuss the topic and resolve conflicts. There can be different series of posts under which the debate is conducted.
3. Use the website to collect research, and discuss the research in the blog posts. The idea is that all basic information is available that needs to be internalized by the participants.
4. Commenting is open to anyone, but the comments are moderated to make sure the discussion stays on topic.

One website makes sure that there is one body that is aware of the state of the discussion, which makes it easier to later put new approaches and innovations into practice. Inclusiveness ensures social legitimacy, since no-one can claim that the project is only for the elites. Gathering and displaying research openly makes the discussion accessible to anyone. The steps can be summed up as:

1. Create a platform for discussion and coordination of efforts
2. Include all stakeholders in the process
3. Direct the discourse with research

I call this the social project approach. Perhaps it could be thought as a primary innovation in the social innovation sphere?

Different types of societies

Society has many faces. Even inside a particular society there are numerous different ideas of what the society consists of, depending on e.g. the personal education, background and influences. The ideas also vary between different discourses.

It could be thought that the “average” of these ideas is what the single society (such as the Finnish or American society) is. However, the nature of a society is never fixed, but the society is always fluctuating and changing its shape. Therefore a lot of this discussion has to do with mental images, currently dominating ideas in the mainstream media and personal interests. We see society as we view our own lives, and vice versa.

Here I have tried to build four categories into which the societies could be put.

Focus on Civil Society
- adopted by educators, volunteers and government innovators

Focus on Market
- adopted by entrepreneurs, CEOs, economists and contemporary government officials

Focus on Government
- adopted by government bureaucracies and nationalists

Focus on Family
- adopted by children, housewives and the politically indifferent