Land Grabs 6: Some stuff with “Achievement” at the end.

This is likely to be the last of my little Medium series on Liminal Web “Land Grabs”, here are the previous ones:

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

Land Grabs 3: https://medium.com/@ben.hennessygarside/land-grabs-3-words-from-a-corner-of-the-liminal-web-bitches-gotta-eat-17ad4460399f

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

Moses Cirulis (here’s her Medium: https://medium.com/@mosobot64) responded to LG1 as follows:

“I have a few things to say, given what I witnessed at Emerge. Some will be comforting, others not so much. I hope that it’s helpful.

1) Like you I’m very much in agreement with socialist tendencies… I share your wariness about the Liminal space turning simply into a profiteering zone. Thankfully I’ve noticed a decent resistance to this-both in its leadership and its membership.

For proof, I can think to my treatment at Emerge. I wasn’t agreed with blindly, but I was supported there, both financially and socially, and I was not in any meaningful sense pressured to “earn” my spot. I’m in the process of writing a couple of accounts regarding this, but I think that this is one sign that the liminal web, even if it does need to throw up a paywall or two, is keeping itself diaphonous enough that regular people can still learn something from us. Given that regular people learning from us is kind of our mission statement, this seems pretty good.

2) Further proof in the resistance in its leadership and membership is probably most evident in how XXX1 ended up dropping out after considerable censure. This was mainly because he had a tendency to push particular dogmas and basically insult anyone who had come to different conclusions-mainly because he was trying to market himself and his ideas and he could not afford to show weakness, probably.

The fact that the liminal web ultimately refused this dogma means that either 1) the liminal web is inherently dogma resistant, or 2) the liminal web is presently already captured by another dogma.

3) XXX2 has unfortunately suffered a side effect of this resistance-the liminal web has a tendency to shut down dogma pushing but this has been fired up to the point that it’s also been shutting down difficult conversations, in particular conversations that aren’t felt to be adequately diplomatic-in particular PEOPLE who aren’t deemed to be adequately diplomatic.

This is a good method to resist capture by a simple dogma but unfortunately I think it might also be catching well-meaning people in the crossfire.

4) If scenario 2 I laid out in point 2 is true, then probably the dogma that people are captured by is the use of a particularly diplomatic method that does not allow for a pre-existing content.

If that’s the case, this isn’t great news for those of us who would like to achieve something!

5) Copyrighting can be good as long as we set up a good scholarly standard by which we can cite each other’s work, thus building on each other’s knowledge rather than simply sequestering it. I think it’ll take quite a bit more coordinating and some awkward syntheses before we can come to an agreed method for that for sure but European academia probably has good knowledge sharing methods that we can nick, plus we have the internet. :-D In any case-folks gotta eat but maintaining a semi-permeable membrane is nevertheless important for keeping the community lively.”

This was a wonderful response. There was a directness, groundedness but none-the-less depth to the response which I really appreciate. So thanks again Moses, it IS a very helpful response! As with the others, theme’s emerging:

• Thoughts and ideas, as supported by real events.
• Support / Disagreement
• Leadership and Membership.
• Diaphony and “the normies”.
• Learning.
• Shutting down Dogma / shutting down difficult conversation’s.
• Are we already captured by Dogma?
• Diplomacy.
• Achievement

Thoughts and ideas, as supported by real events:

These articles have been a bit “fuzzy”. I’ve been using metaphore, analogy and have been avoidant of discussing specific’s. The examples given, of two different people, experiencing forms of exclusion under different circumstances, one of whom is believed by Cirulis to be more deserving than the other perhaps, captures the problem I was trying to accomodate for by being a fuzz-pot.

To capture it a little further, I’ll outline a personal experience. I myself, left one of the Liminal Web groups on Facebook of my own accord, as I became frustrated with a particular recurring negative dynamic emerging between myself and another member of the group. They seemed to me to be too often unreasonably angered by what felt to me like perfectly valid and benign contributions I was making, written on the basis of what I believed my mind was kicking up in response to their writings. The often touted response to this, of blocking or being blocked by the other person wasn’t satisfactory for me. My thoughts were something along the lines of:

“if we can’t disagree, either about the specifics of a particular point, or a correct mode of communication, without people becoming aggressive, offensive or offended, we sure as hell won’t be able to envisage and enact a working motion towards even a vague Utopia (striving for Utopia to me is not a problem, believing you’re in a Utopia and / or thinking you know the exact formula of how to get there is dangerous, but the “striving for” contains enough humility to be safe in my opinion). Either I’m the problem, or they are, or we both are and the group can’t (or won’t) mediate or facilitate healthy and productive dialogue. All of these outcomes point me in the direction of feeling like I shouldn’t be here.”

To sum up, in all three cases (XXX1's, XXX2's and my own case), someone was land grabbing. We might well disagree on who was and to what degree, whether someone deserved to have their land grabbed or not etc., but we can’t disagree on the fact that it was happening. That’s why I’ve been vague up until now, but once again, I very much appreciate the grounding provided by the specific examples. Personally, I’d like us to strive for ways beyond land grabbing “as such”. How do we support each other in feeling secure enough, in all the spaces we’re doing the Liminal Web thing, to move beyond (beneath? around?) it?

Support / Disagreement:

Disagreement is a feature of a “striving for Utopia”, not a bug. When someone agrees with everything we say, we know they’re full of it and are probably attempting a land grab of a different sort to that which happens when the truth is told too vigourously in a weaponised way. It’s very heartening to hear that Cirulis wasn’t agreed with blindly at Emerge, but none-the-less felt supported. 100 points to all who contribute to the felt sense of whatever that is in others! We might ask: “Am I cared for, but not lied to? Challenged where appropriate but not crushed?” or “Am I caring, but not a liar? Challenging where appropriate, but not crushing?”

Leadership / Membership:

As outlined in LG4, I’m feeling grumpy with the Titan’s and also “Titanification”. Who are the leaders? Do they deserve it? If we’re a “member” and not a “leader”, what does that mean? Are we to accept the leader’s grabbing our land? As I reflect on this, I might accept “Demi-Godification” under certain circumstances. If one of the rules for becoming a Liminal Web Demi-God is that to be one then you have to genuinely support others into becoming Demi-Gods in their own right, then that’d be fine in my (holy?) book. Land-grabbing though is an act of weakness, not strength. Titan’s grab land.

Diaphony and “the normies”:

There’s something about the Liminal Web which is of course, not normal, in a WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) context. We do things like this very collection of articles: Invent words, mix metaphors and symbolism, strive for something beyond what we’re handed, look for the places between and beyond, try to see the water in which we swim etc.

That said, it’s good to be able to have a positive impact on people…

This means being accessible...

Am sorry people, but we fail here and we fail HARD. We love huge and obscure words [like “diaphony”, which I had to Google ;-D], far too often choose as much abstraction as possible, without rooting ourselves in the real world (although our maps are often highly detailed and so in one sense they’re pretty real, they’re also often largely useless to many of us LW’s without hours of clarification, let alone those outside of the scene!). As it’s a largely online scene, meeting real people in meat space (both local to us and those other Liminalists living on the other side of the world) is going to be challenging, but the question is, what are we doing about it? Stuff like the Emerge conference Cirulis mentioned is good, but can we support each other into doing MORE awesome stuff, out there, in the real world. Like, genuinely making the world a better place? If you want to tackle this issue, I’d love to try and tackle it with you (caveat outlined at the end of LG4 applies though, let’s start with an open space, not a filled one), please reach out if you want to work on that!?

Learning

“Learning is good M’Kay.”

Yes.…. and again, we need to get better at this.

How is us listening to another vaguely “land-grabby” Podcast any different from me sitting in a classroom behind a desk circa. 1996 watching a VHS produced in 1988, playing on a cathode-ray TV? Why when we’re Zooming, do we insist on sitting still for a pre-defined period of time to have a conversation and then simply leave when it ends? Why do conversations need to be the same old exchanges of rationalised opinions and facts, made up of complete sentences?

There’s sooo much space to play with regards to communication timing, modes of communication and communication aims (or lack of aims), all of which will deepen our understanding across a range of modes of knowing. Let alone practicing established forms of art together, we can build our very own (always better if it’s our own no?) art forms to come to more deeply understand the world with if we want to.

We know why Broadcast modalities are old, boring and crap… and yet, we keep doing them. Like… Why do we do that???

Shutting down Dogma / shutting down difficult conversation’s.

One person’s “rationally held, well thought out and worked out position”, is another’s “idiotic, ideologically driven, dogma”. One person’s “no BS honesty”, is another’s “weaponised Land Grab”. Who decides what’s okay and what isn’t?

I’m less concerned about the morality of rightness and wrongness in this regard. Am more interested in the felt sense of metaphorical land being up for grabs and people grabbing it, rather than doing good stuff like sharing it, or trying to grow the land available, so others might get to grab some too. We might have a host of well thought out reasons for why grabbing land is justified in a given setting. This justification though can be a form of side-step, simply enacted to attempt to avoid (unsuccessfully) having to deal with the stifling effect on other people (and as such ourselves) when we do the grabbing. If they don’t flourish, you don’t get to see or benefit from their gifts: however philosophically and morally justified you are, you can’t ignore this fact.

We can imagine how it might feel to be peasants, victim to the land enclosures of early capitalism, forced into the city to work in a factory, or how it might feel to be indigenous to an area and victim to a colonial power stealing land of some form or other from us, or owning a property and having a neighbour build a fence inside the legal bounds of our property and using their contacts in the local planning department and courts to prevent us from doing anything about it. How it would negatively impact our ability to stay creative, loving and open, not only with those who’ve done the grabbing, but also with everyone else. Versions (however watered down and altered for specific context) of that stifling will happen when metaphorical land grabs take place across the Liminal Web too.

I’m trying to appeal to all of us here. To recognise that we’ll probably need everyone to give their best gifts. If we’re metaphorically stealing their space, because we’re too insecure ourselves, it harms all of us. If they’re metaphorically stealing our space, because they’re too insecure themselves, it harms all of us. How do we secure our own boundaries and support others in securing theirs?

Are we already captured by Dogma?

Invariably yes. Someone’s grabbed the land. As touched on earlier, are they going to help others get their own? Are they going to make space for others? I’d argue that before any further land be reliquished to anyone, their willingness to reliquish and grow land to help others aught to be assessed. The one’s who share the land are the ones who should be given the land. If you’re a land grabber, beware! As outlined in LG3, I’m a land grabber too and so I should beware! Call me on it!

Diplomacy.

Personally, I think we should be nice to people. As already mentioned, those “becoming a victim of a land grab” emotions mentioned earlier don’t help anyone. Not only are there ways and means of telling our truth (and we should tell our truth, this is also being nice) that are less likely to feel like a land-grab for those hearing our truth, but we’ve probably heard of non violent communication and we’re generally a bright and verbose lot, so why would we want to trigger someone into not being able to give their best gifts by being sloppy with our explications? Equally, why would we NOT want to be able to give our own best gifts by letting others grab our land? Why would we allow them to trigger us so? All sides can and should work on improving their resiliency and “good faith” signalling, if not because being nice and giving our best gifts is a good in and of itself, then because the whole scene will simply function more effectively if people don’t feel threatened by each other.

Achievement

What does it mean to achieve something?

Here are some of the factors:

In the academy, achievement comes from having other people cite our work. In business it comes from earning £. In the world of teenagers and social media, perhaps followers and likes are the thing? For those chasing enlightenment, perhaps it’s hours of daily meditation, or attendances at burning man festivals, or whatever? What all of these have in common, and what is required for us to feel a sense of achievement, is some form of calculable metric, which our attention systems can track. Once we know what we’re looking out for, we need to be able to attach it to ourselves in some way or another and once that happens, we’re allowed the resultant feel-goods. The reason we get to have the feel goods though, is because people who are useful get laid, are trusted with decision making, receive love and a right to live inside the group, rather than being cast out, which for our ancestors in our distant past, could be the difference between life and death.

All of us are capable of achieving things.

The Pareto distribution, tied to globalised communications though, is brutal. It pumps a minority, of a minority, of a minority of achievements into the majority of homes, leaving all the other achievements (and so often they are achievements, they just haven’t been recognised as such because of all the land grabbers out there) and their owners, out in the cold. How do we minimise the impact of globalised communication pareto hell?

We allow each other to shine, in small groups. We invent our own systems collectively and bask in the light of each others achievements, we help ourselves and each other to give our and their best gifts.

Thought experiment: imagine we could come up with some sort of unit of achievement (for the Libertarians out there, I’m sorry but money isn’t it: crony-capitalism, money creation, liars, thieves, cheats etc. all distort money into something that isn’t the thing I’m after envisioning for this thought experiment), a conceptual placeholder which genuinely captures “achievement”. So here is my unreasonable, irrational and naively idiotic proposal (perhaps see it as a vector to think in the direction of, rather than being fixed tightly to the proposal, I’m not fixed to anything I say, so you sure as hell shouldn’t be either!) regarding what we aught to do with this achievement-blob-thing, anyway here goes:

If you’re claiming more than the Dunbar number’s worth of this achievement-placeholder (more than 150 customers, followers on social media, telling groups of larger than 150 about your achievement etc.), you’re actually being a greedy land grabbing b*stard and you should lose access to whatever this conceptual achievement thingy is. After you’ve reached your Dunbar level of achievement, you should begin to pay attention to silently and secretly support others in finding and growing their achievements to about the Dunbar number too.

This requires humility. It requires being a Demi-God and not a Titan. It means not finding ways to scale your thing, but mainly you’ll be spending your time supporting others to scale their things. You acknowledge that every one of your achievements isn’t actually yours, but your parents gave you your life and genes, your society gave you your culture, your God (or random chance, or something else which isn’t exclusively you: either way the point still stands) gave you the universe and the laws governing it etc. All you did was pay attention to your corner of all that. As alluded to in LG2, it’s only because of all the things the others didn’t do, that you got to do your stuff. Every unit of achievement you claim for yourself, you’re missing out on basking in the achievements of others. More than the Dunbar numbers worth of achievement is an unreasonable amount to place on the shoulders of a single person. It warps their sense of self, encourages narcissism and fails to accurately reflect reality. It produces and rewards d*ck heads. Our culture is awash with them and we revel in it and it’s one of the reasons we’re so screwed.

In the world of $0.000437 dollars per Spotify stream you will not make a living doing this, but by being nice and helping others (as opposed to making vast sums of money by hiding in the nooks and crannies of late stage capitalism, as so many of the rich end up doing today), you’ll actually be achieving something. There’ll have to be some attention paid to survival in the capitalist world we live in and we could do to support each other financially, either with investment education, life coaching, business coaching, learning how to acquire land and grow our own food on it and whatever else is needed, but if we crowd-source that support, along with the whole being co-creative and Liminal Web ish things we do, I think we could do it.

Get in touch if you want to discuss anything I’ve been talking about and thanks for providing me with the opportunity to land-grab for myself!

Ben

xx