Anti Toxic: Ethereum Will Go To The Moon Embracing Tolerance & Criticism
“The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him your friend” — Abraham Lincoln
Last week Afri Schoeden, the release manager for the Parity Ethereum client resigned from Ethereum after being mobbed with criticism for tweeting that Parity’s Polkadot already delivered what Ethereum 2 (codenamed Serenity) “ought to be”. In response, the Ethereum community released an open letter denouncing the “toxic behavior” that led up to Afri’s resignation.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Afri at Aracon about his work on the Parity Ethereum client and came away a lot more impressed than I expected. Also, more enthusiastic for Ethereum’s technical future. Afri was clearly wicked smart and an asset to the mission.
Sure, Afri isn’t perfect. But who is? We are all works in progress. I doubt Afri anticipated what kind of reaction his tweet would provoke. Maybe ten years from now he’ll be wiser, have better social skills and more emotional intelligence. That’s something I wish for myself too. In the meantime, he’s still a gift, and it’s better not to look a gifted horse too closely in the mouth.
Appreciate what you can, be accepting of the rest. That’s the key to satisfaction and success.
Is It Wise to Expect Wisdom from Smart People?
I suspect most unusually talented people go through an intense individualistic phase, fueled by a sense of separation from the world. Having a superpower can be isolating. And that can easily feed an ego with a strong need for validation, or a secret yearning for appreciation & respect in a world where very few people can understand how good these specialists are at what they do.
Our mistake is to expect talents to shine across the board. To be as wise as they are smart. Sadly, the universal genius is a myth. Being extremely good at understanding & developing decentralized systems requires the kind of commitment to specialization that probably comes at the expense of being pretty good, or even just plain mediocre at something else that’s hard and requires a lot of practice, such as being good with people.
How Can We Be Conservative in What We Do, Liberal in What We Accept from Others?
I propose that the best way to deal with people that we disagree with is not to criticize them and certainly not ostracize them but to show them appreciation. Be genuinely interested in them. Make them feel important. Talk in terms of their interests. We are socially robust when we are conservative in what we do, liberal in what we accept from others.
The robustness principle applies to social protocols as much as it does to computer networking protocols.
How Do We Promote Anti Toxic Purpose, Values & Guiding Principles?
Possibly one of the most important things we should all be doing is helping to shape the culture of the Ethereum community.
As a founder of several startups, I got a front-row seat at seeing dreams grow from nothing to something. Culture matters. Especially as things start scaling. Without explicitly shaping the culture we want, what we get by default is an implicit regression to the mean as the number of people involved grows and the personalities of the founders get increasingly diluted. This is something I am trying to be extra mindful of at TabooKey.
So how do we do that for Ethereum? I propose we start with why. Explain that we are on a mission to help free Davids from Goliath through the power of decentralization. Evangelize the core values we won’t give up even if it means a lower price for ETH. Teach the universal guiding principles that we want to promote as a basis for a skillful community.
The best way to do that is to lead by example. You don’t need a title or official role to do that. Just a commitment to start from yourself.
The second best way to do that is to promote and celebrate the kind of behaviors we want to see more of, and being compassionately accepting, or just tactfully ignoring, the kind of behaviors we want to see less of.
The third best way to do that is to be explicit in saying that the culture we want to encourage for Ethereum is a culture of science. The culture of progress, peer review and open criticism. Ethereum’s best critics should be celebrated and embraced, not condemned. We should also encourage a culture of tolerance, compassion, and generosity.
What we don’t want is an “us vs them” culture of tribalism. One that defines itself by those it excludes. This is hard. Tribalism feels good. So righteous. It is our default social instinct, but it does not inspire the best in us. It separates us from one another while preying on our worst prejudices. We need to be on guard. Tribal politics is the mind killer.
We have a great cause, but every great cause wants to be a cult, patrolled by Guardians of the Truth.
For Ethereum culture to maintain its sanity, we should inspire loyalty to our shared higher purpose, not get our egos tied up in any specific approach, implementation, or group of people or brand.
People will still be people, of course, they will still get tied up in their petty greeds and fears, in their sense of isolation, but the way to react to that is not to fuel the flames by playing that game but by doing the opposite.
Let’s substitute greed with appreciation. Replace fear with a sense of perspective. And inspire a sense of unity instead of separation.
When they go low, we should go high.
Does Embracing Leadership Conflict with Decentralization?
“With great power comes great responsibility”
My intuition is that it would be good to encourage everyone to promote the community’s values. That anyone capable of leadership should embrace the role of good leaders in promoting the culture we want to see more of.
Oh but “Ethereum having vocal leaders promotes centralization” some people will say. Let’s not listen to them! Decentralization is not a good in itself. It is a means to an end.
It just so happens that in a centralized system the power of leadership is amplified. Bad leaders can do a lot more evil and the kind of people usually attracted to power are often corrupted by it.
But opt-in social influence is different. It’s the difference between power that is taken and power that is given. There’s nothing bad with people being thoughtfully influenced by good leaders of their own choosing. Case in point, the Ethereum community has opted into being influenced by the leadership of the Ethereum Foundation. They trust the foundation to be well-intentioned, well educated and to faithfully represent the long term interests of Ethereum. The Ethereum Foundation should fully embrace its position of leadership to do all the good it can do including promoting their sense of higher purpose. If they don’t, who will?
Neither should anyone else that has the means and the inclination. This is what I was trying to say at the Berlin DGOV fishbowl, that we have a negative association with hierarchy and leadership because of BAD leadership not because leadership itself is BAD.
“Good leadership is amazing. Good leadership inspires, good leaders serve, good leaders specialize in the things they actually know something about”
The Ethereum community is so lucky to have leaders who are not loyal to their self-interest. Good leaders that are truly loyal to our mission are such a rare resource. Let’s make the most of our good fortune and encourage them to be all they can be.
As the community grows we’ll need their help maintaining the kind of welcoming anti-toxic culture that will not only keep people in our community, but also help with our recruiting efforts. It was my personal encounter with Ethereum’s culture of goodness at Giveth’s 1st Camp Decentral that drew this Ex Bitcoin Maximalist into the Ethereum community to begin with, and keeps inspiring me to try and inspire others to give back.
That’s my 2 cents. What do you think?
