How hair relates to the commons, rules vs. customs, corruptio optimi pessimum est
Date
Oct 27, 2021
🔗 Initiative
🔗 Working Documents
Workstream
- Topic + context: A sorta part 2 of talking through the ideas of Ivan Illich applied to web3.
- Question(s) of the week: Related to the topic of institutions.. is it even possible to create institutions that help who they claim to serve? Are good intentions a good base to fund or support an existing institution? How can we think differently around the idea of helping others without creating dependencies/needs for services, a savior complex? How can rules become a form of idolatry?
- Event date, time, and location:
- AddEvent Cal Invite
- Group Note HackMD Link:
Relevant article/insight to share:
- Hair and the History of the City (1986, 2 pgs): somehow* relating hair to the city and the loss of the commons in the sense of hair being on the outside and inside of our bodies and the fine lines of private/public space vs. the fuzzy boundaries of a commons.
- A Secular Age Chapter 20: (2007) which mentions Illich's thesis on modernity being the corruption of Christianity in it's institutionalization (summary)
- On Ivan Illich and His Friends: (2002) from John McKnight, one of Illich's collaborators
- Neighborhood Necessities (2013, 6 pgs): on a neighborhood's assets vs. institutional help
Previous chat: https://www.notion.so/gitcoin/EVENT-Institution-Monopoly-Dependency-in-Web3-88fd5e735e604c719490341e88a20703#cc1f88ef2f084c0c93d2e285260d157e (new one: https://www.notion.so/Institution-Monopoly-Dependency-in-Web3-2de1078acd954da9990f10f12013130a)
Recording:
Library Notes:
- Thinking about where the "skin" exists — reflecting whatever's inside us, interacting with the outside; representational
- as with what we as individuals do with our hair, what we put on our skin
- "Skin" in the context of web3 — UX
- Thinking about skin as a barrier between inside and outside; tokens, are they the barrier?
- using skin as a signal for values
- our clothes, our skin, or even a house. door divides us from other people. with hair or other notions of hair that division is more fuzzy and i'm sharing my life with other people.
- kinds of questions you ask impact the types of outcomes you get
- the way spaces are created, codes of conduct has implications
- ways to create healthy skin (space)? the idea of the commons (essentially a shared space, experience)
- Scott - what parts of crypto do we feel (NFTs, hyperfinancialisation) can affect or is Illich friendly?
- make system where public skin of your money (still yours), people who are not so fixed about yourr skin vs not yours
- Pan - staking - have stake in the system (skin in the game)
- when you stake or contribute ≠ its not yours anymore. polkadot, its still your funds
- alisha - very conscious decision to donate or just seeing it as part of your skin. money you give is yours in a way, its just a public skin of your money.
- shift in mindset about how we give, like tithing. allocate to things you want auutomatically
- individuals that want to help people, we outsource our ability to help people into this hospital. if you're not feeling well we just send you to hospital
- institutionalising hospitality, help (i.e. the church)
- the issue with institutionalisation being the proneness towards corruption (the pitfalls of centralisation)
- having to completely reimagine the system, because current approach to public goods funding is based off/integrated with a currently broken system that is handed down
- how did we get to the idea of helping people, in the West with the early historical legacy of the Church and christianity values of helping your neighbour (folks that are not in your tribe)
- good intentions but context (i.e. not simply exporting western values and culture, but understanding the local needs — in the context of early christian missionaries)
chomsky and anarchy, how not to be enslaved by the system you're in and have complete freedom
Scott - tendency to replicate old systems need to be careful on that
Illich - christianity, government , hospital is just people trying to do the same thing
hard to separate help from colonialism
create flowing systems of mutual support and take care of each other in a meaningful way
eunice - being conscious is one thing. countries experienced colonialism. one important element to consider is participation from people in disadvantaged positions. hearing them. empowering people to be able to voice out. (the idea of "participatory social development")
more value locked > more power in DAOs. pretty easy to get back into the whole format of a big group of powerful people making sense
metrics to see if DAOs are replicating old power systems or doing something new
people drawn to crypto for money, how to keep them in the space properly for longer.
crypto as a vehicle for societal transformation
help everyone? get people to help each other? had to say no because no bandwidth to help which was hard. overextended
- helping people in the digital world is different from what's done in the physical world (e.g. extending help to your actual neighbours, limited to village)
Sid; web3, wild west. not like a garden. web2 centralised silos. wouldn't treat it like a garden. cultivate. web3 brings shared groups because we're on the same ledger. everyone gets affected if anyone messes up on Ethereum. shared stories. Take care of together. Same garden. Economy and Ecology. same root word.