Land Grabs 3: words from a corner of the Liminal Web: “Bitches Gotta Eat…”
Previous two Medium Articles if you’re so inclined:
Land Grabs 1: https://medium.com/@ben.hennessygarside/land-grabs-words-from-a-corner-of-the-liminal-web-bf15df1d52f4
Land Grabs 2: https://medium.com/@ben.hennessygarside/land-grabs-2-words-from-a-corner-of-the-liminal-web-4d3e6c9989a2
It’s pretty clear we’re not always 100% sure what it is we want to articulate when we try to articulate it. In the first of the two Land Grab articles (links above) I was scratching around something. The thing I was after was the thing which sits beneath our proclivity to sell something.
What is that and where does it come from?
Some thoughts: in all forms of selling, there’s a desperation (however muted) present, which can (it’s not inevitable of course, a timely piece of advice or “intervention” given to a loved one is also a form of selling) block genuine connection / relatedness. The assumption is that either: a) the thing sold will improve someone’s life somehow, b) the money / kudos acquired by having someone accept the sold thing will improve things for the seller or c) in many cases, both a) and b). It’s almost as if the hole / gap to be filled by the transaction, prevents a genuine “being with” the other. This may not be a problem for you. For me though, one of the things to be tackled by the LW is to deepen forms of connection and community.
Scout Reina Wiley said the following on the back of my first article:
“bitches gotta eat.
what do?”
and…
“LW is wont to have a different relationship to value than modernist or even postmodern movements, but where I’m lost is what that looks like sans a complete dismissal of the concepts of commodity, capital, hierarchies of value, etc. Without a way to engage in the existing system, there’s no chance of survival. I think there are certainly ways to do this ethically.
Should we be ensuring that all LW “products” are doing well? If some “products” are doing better than others, what’s a good way to engage in an analysis of this that carries the least possible amount of bias? What is LW’s relationship to the larger economic system/the “out-groups” with which it is engaging? These are just some questions that come up for me.”
Okay, a range of themes here. Let’s see if I can distil a few, before building a response:
- If we’re trying to avoid selling, how do we survive in the current system which requires us to do just that?
- LW values (notions of better / worse) and directionality. Once we acknowledge that most forms of value are arbitrary (post-modern) how do we “make progress”?
- What about LW content / product? Shouldn’t we at least be “selling” that?
Riley might have hit on a hypocrisy of mine. An unavoidable one. By writing these very articles I’m selling something. I’m engaging in, as Jordan Hall (find him here: https://www.youtube.com/user/jordangreenhall) would put it, a “broadcast” modality. Simply by producing this content, I’m effectively engaging in a land-grab of my own. I’ve tried to counter that somewhat, by responding to real people, who responded to what I wrote, in close to real time and trying to fold their thoughts into this unfolding work though. I don’t know where these articles will end up, they’re a somewhat emergent endeavour (there’s something about emergence which can do a nice job of undermining “selling”; we can’t tell each other what problems we’ll solve if we accept as a prerequisiste that we’ll never be able to get a full grasp on the nature of the problem). Point being, the motion away from selling is just that, a form of vector, a direction to be moving in. I’m not claiming to be good at it myself! Am just trying to raise awareness of it as something to be paying attention to.
- If we’re trying to avoid selling for fiat currency, how do we survive in the current system which requires us to do just that?
As mentioned in my responses on (smelly) Facebook (apologies to anyone who was there for that), this is a problem perhaps best solved at the level of the individual concerned. What I would urge though (I should know better than “making suggestions”… bloody hell… anyway…), is that we make some efforts to shield our relationships from the negative impacts (BOLD / italics for reason!) of “cash transaction”.
This could come from refusing to sell anything for currency in and around the LW space whilst relying on alternative means of income (Game A rent seeking portfolio providing a personal UBI? Job outside of the LW sphere with time spent in the LW sphere?)?
It could look like selling a / select groups of product(s) / services, whilst also building some genuinely “for free” engagement into your time, in which you really are able to be with people from the LW scene? I think this is tricky personally (but I’m not you, so if you can make it work for you, please go ahead), because any time you sell something to someone for cash, an expectation presences. You owe them something and they’re then tempted to evaluate whether you delivered what they thought they would get, rather than being present with you in the moment. We get caught up in what we think the truth aught to be, rather than what it is. The question is, do you want to minimise your genuine connection to fellow LWer’s by “selling” to a portion of them? If you are doing that, how are you ensuring that when money is no longer on the table, you are moving back to a place without expectation of the kind outlined?
Am open to a discussion around the setting up of some form of institutional response from the Liminal Web for this problem. Could we pool resources and / or find other solutions for the cash problem in LW spaces? Hit me up if you want to have that discussion.
2. LW values (notions of better / worse) and directionality. Once we acknowledge that most forms of value are arbitrary (post-modern) how do we “make progress”?
This is where meta-modernity wins. Value isn’t simply arbitrary. It both is and isn’t. Across a range of domains for example, we’re tied to our biology. We need to eat, most of us need to f*ck, most of us need to love and be loved, most of us need to play, most of us need to explore, most of us need to feel secure, some of us need to be pregnant etc. If we don’t get these needs met sufficiently, then our psyche’s (at the behest of our limbic system’s probably) find all sorts of whacky ways of letting us know we aren’t or haven’t been able to meet them (depression, avoidance, defensiveness, addiction, social censure etc.). These values aren’t arbitrary. They’ve been selected for by billions of years of evolution (pre-life was / is also subject to evolutionary processes) and none-the-less can’t be wished away (or indeed wished into being where they aren’t present in a given individual).
Our capacity to abstract though, is probably where the arbitrariness of value comes from. An example:
The peer group I’m surrounded by selects Nike Air Max trainers as an “In-Group” marker. As such, I think I want Nike Air Max trainers (arbitrary value, some people like Converse, others socks with sandals etc.). What I actually want is love and connection with others of my species (none arbitrary: nearly ubiquitous value across mammalian species) and / or to attract a member of the opposite sex by pea-cocking. An arbitrary value, masking a none arbitrary one.
So this is perhaps THE question: what is it that we actually need, none arbitrarily?
The post-modern critique emerged out of a failure of the modernist setting to produce what it promised. So often we think we need things that we don’t and don’t think we need things which we do, not least because (you got it!), people keep selling us bullshit. I think the LW needs to do a better job of supporting people into knowing what it is THEY actually need and then helping them get it. Whatever that is, that’s what we should be aiming at. As such, I ask, what is it that you ACTUALLY need? What do those around you tell (“show” is perhaps a better term… an addict might tell you that they need the thing they’re addicted to, but one of the factors of addiction is that addictions mask a different need) you they need?
Let’s get started on providing that for each other. If we do that genuinely, it won’t ever be an entirely pre-packaged fix-all solution, it won’t involve US telling THEM what they need and then us conveniently providing the solution for them. Not least because what a certain percentage of us need is to be in the driving seat of our own lives, creatively, with support from each other sure, but none-the-less building our own solutions, to our own specific problems.
3. What about LW content / product? Shouldn’t we at least be “selling” that?
I would argue (sell to you… LOL) that no, we shouldn’t. We need to work out the secret sauce to living as happy and fulfilled a life as possible (which for many of us will include within it, service of various forms, perhaps to God / Gaia, perhaps to the “down-trodden” etc.), take the necessary actions to acheive that and then just be those people. I’m nearly 100% certain that for every individual, that’s going to include some form of connection with others, where we’ll come into contact with people who may well notice our fulfillment and might ask us, without any prior “selling” on our part: “What’s the deal with that? How come you’re so happy?”.
Then, because we’re genuinely happy and fulfilled, we tell them what we did, without charging them a penny for it.
Links to the follow ups:
Land Grabs 4: https://medium.com/@ben.hennessygarside/land-grabs-4-words-from-a-corner-of-the-liminal-web-who-owns-what-600a932c1ba6
Land Grabs 5: https://medium.com/@ben.hennessygarside/land-grabs-5-a-bowl-of-emergent-soup-please-ba9e46f8767d
Land Grabs 6: https://medium.com/@ben.hennessygarside/land-grabs-6-some-stuff-with-achievement-at-the-end-486b01124178
