In my recently published paper that I linked to yesterday, I attribute the fall of Kerista primarily to their adoption of value of purity. I want to clarify a few points that I perhaps did not fully explain in the paper.
Every community is a complicated mix of personalities, institutions, customs, habits, and is embedded in a complex social and physical environment. Kerista was no exception. The most glaringly obvious feature of Kerista was that by the 1980s, Jud, the founder of the commune, had become a significant destructive force. Every few months, Jud would confront a target, usually a man from the Purple Submarine BFIC (to which he and I both belonged), and just hammer them until he left, or everyone was exhausted from the confrontation. It's clear that Jud was, by nature, kind of a dick. All right, a pretty big dick. If Jud hadn't been a big dick, the commune would definitely have lasted longer.
On the other hand, most leaders are dicks. A leader, by definition, is someone who is able to get followers to do what they wouldn't have done had they not been following that leader, i.e. to do what they naturally wouldn't have done. Everyone likes to think that followers and leaders alike are motivated by the mutual interest in the success of the organization. In this view, the leader just serves as kind of a "focus" for that mutual interest. People are not so much obeying the leader as obeying their own self-interest, which is furthered by the interest of the organization. (I.e. if the company does well, we all get paid and have nice stuff.) The leader just makes mutually beneficial behavior possible, and suppresses only internal cheating and free riding, which undermine mutual benefit. (See my perseveration on the drisoner's dilemma.)
But I have spent enough time as a follower and manager to know that the most effective leaders are those who go beyond this model, who can effectively use negative incentives (e.g. the desire to not get yelled at) to get more performance from even those among their followers who are acting on their own accord for the mutual benefit of the organization. An effective manager will find ways to get a good employees to work more and more intensely than they would were they motivated only by the expectation of mutual benefit. This feature of leadership is what makes it enormously difficult to be a leader. It's not enough to just yell at your employees or followers all the time; relying almost exclusively on negative incentives is worse than never using negative incentives at all. Followers can't just fear the leader; they have to respect and admire them too. And not only is there a fine line between too much and too little negative incentive, there's a dialectical relationship between the leader and the followers: they both affect each other, and how incentives play out in the organization.
This "crack the whip" leadership is deeply problematic at the analytical level. On the one hand, the leader's use of negative incentives is morally indefensible: it consists of getting followers to do things that really do not sufficiently benefit the followers, at least not materially. On the other hand, because motivation by negative reinforcement is possible, it happens, and organizations and institutions with effective leaders. i.e. those who can effectively use negative incentives, will out-compete those with less effective leaders. Regardless of any moral qualms about negative incentives, we would have to make deep changes in human psychology to eliminate them, and attempting to make deep changes in personal and social psychology, however morally justified those changes might be, usually results in catastrophe.
In one sense, Kerista fell because of the entrepreneur's dilemma. The entrepreneur's dilemma is well known to anyone who has worked in a lot of small businesses that intend to grow into large businesses (and has probably been discussed at length in the academic and popular literature): the leadership qualities that make an effective leader of a small business are very different from those that make an effective leader of a large business. To grow from a small business to a large business requires either a leader who can encompass both leadership styles, a leader who can relinquish control when the business becomes large enough, or an environment that facilitates ousting the small business leader. If none of those things happen, the small business will inevitably collapse when it gets too large. (Some businesses just stay small; however, if the leader wants it to grow large, he or she will keep trying to grow it, and become frustrated and irrational when it fails to grow, which will cause its collapse.)
Jud was manifestly effective at building a 20-30 person commune and keeping it together for about 20 years. When the commune became large enough and sufficiently economically successful, the qualities that made Jud an effective leader at the small scale made him a counter-productive leader at the larger level. Since Jud had considerable legitimacy as a leader, the culture of the commune could not easily replace his leadership. There's also the economic issue: the commune started really disbanding, I think, just when the computer business started to decline. People will tolerate a lot when they're working hard and making money; take away that economic success, and they get more critical of their social environment.
There are also other factors. Anecdotal evidence suggests that most people in the commune did not actually like polyfidelity, and did not like communal living. This dislike is difficult for me to understand because I really did like those aspects of Kerista. I don't think I'm particularly special; I think, perhaps, that there are many people like me, who would find communal polyfidelity itself rewarding and satisfying. But all of the people in Kerista (myself included) ended up in economically individualistic monogamous relationships even after Jud was ousted. No organization, culture, or institution can last long if it is at odds with the fundamental desires of its members. Without Jud more or less making people practice communal polyfidelity, the conflict between the members' desire for economic individualism and preferential dyadic relationships doomed the ideal of communal polyfidelity, and the commune justly disbanded.
All of these factors definitely contributed to the fall of Kerista. They may even be more important factors than the one I focused on in my paper: the toxic value of purity. However, I think my analysis of this value in the commune is important, for a number of reasons I'll discuss later.
Showing posts with label Kerista. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kerista. Show all posts
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Saturday, September 14, 2013
And to no more settle for less than purity
I have been published!
"And to no more settle for less than purity: Reflections on the Kerista Commune." Praxis, 1.1: 58-73.
Check out the whole issue, where you'll read many good articles by my fellow students.
"And to no more settle for less than purity: Reflections on the Kerista Commune." Praxis, 1.1: 58-73.
Check out the whole issue, where you'll read many good articles by my fellow students.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Purity and skepticism
PZ Myers usually gets it 100% right. Every now and again, though, I have to nitpick. His latest essay, Should skeptic organizations be atheist organizations? is 99% correct, but he's vague and imprecise about what I consider to be an important point. Myers notes that Christian astronomer and skeptic Pamela Gay is
I suspect that Myers is aiming at the idea that skeptics should give each other (and everyone else) a certain degree of social permission to be wrong. No one is always right, of course, and many honest and sincere skeptics have beliefs that are not just controversial or mistaken, but positively delusional: I myself once believed that it was a matter of settled truth that capitalist representative democracy was The One True Way. On the other hand, Myers correctly insists that skepticism entails that all beliefs, including religion, be subject to scrutiny, criticism and, more importantly, mockery and praise as appropriate.
Myers, however, is not very clear about what he's praising and what he's mocking. He says, for example, that it's "not a problem" that Gay is "not a skeptic in all things," because "there is no such thing as a 'pure' skeptic who applies critical thinking to every single aspect of their lives." But what precisely is "not a problem"? Is it not a problem that Gay holds what many skeptics consider a delusional belief? Or is it not a problem that Gay refuses to apply skeptical thinking to her religious beliefs? I would agree that the first shouldn't be a problem: we should all be free to hold and argue incorrect beliefs, because we should be convinced that an idea is incorrect only after open and honest argument.
But Myers' language forces the second interpretation. Everyone refuses to apply skepticism to something, therefore Gay's own refusal to apply skepticism specifically to her religious beliefs is not a problem. But if her refusal is not a problem, then why should that refusal deserve mockery?
I'm reminded of my time in the Kerista commune. The commune had a fanatical devotion to "purity", which the leader used to manipulate the members. A common tactic was to label advocates of the losing side of a debate as "impure" because they did not hold the adopted position innately; had they held the correct position innately, they never would have argued against it. Once labeled as impure, you had to submit to public humiliation or leave the commune. Of course, one was therefore very careful to always advocate the winning side of a debate (i.e. the side the leader was on). Insistence on purity of specific ideas actually destroyed consistency of method.
Skeptics should insist on purity of method: we should apply skepticism and critical thought to all of our ideas, without exception. We should not consider it impure to have or advocate an incorrect or even delusional idea, but we should consider it impure to continue to affirm the belief once it has decisively been demonstrated false.
It's also important to understand what skepticism is and is not. Skepticism is not a method for generating ideas, it's a method for filtering out bad ideas. A pure skeptic is not and cannot be, therefore, someone who holds all and only those beliefs generated by the skeptical method.
Furthermore, even as a filter for bad ideas, skeptical criticism is expensive in thought and time. Similarly, a pure skeptic cannot be someone who has subjected each and every one of her beliefs to full scientific scrutiny; there isn't enough computing power and time in the universe to do so. Good enough is usually good enough, and just that some belief has not yet been obviously contradicted by the facts is usually good enough.
But it's possible and desirable to be completely committed to the the skeptical filter. When someone has applied the filter and critically examined some idea, and that idea has been found wanting, it is the ethical obligation of every skeptic to at the very least profess agnosticism about the idea pending the examination of further evidence. And there is a point when an idea has been found so decisively incorrect that even holding agnosticism becomes perverse.
Indeed it is precisely the free adoption of the ethical obligation to always follow the skeptical filter that defines a skeptic.
In much the same sense, you break the law unintentionally or accidentally and still call yourself law-abiding. You might be skating on thin ice, but you could even break the law intentionally (perhaps in a moment of weakness, or as an act of civil disobedience) and still call yourself law-abiding. But you absolutely could not call yourself law-abiding and stand up in court and say, "this law should not apply to me." Even if you comply with ten thousand laws, to explicitly argue that even one law — a law you recognize as valid and that you admit to breaking — should not apply to you would make a mockery of the label "law-abiding".
not a skeptic in all things, though: she's also a Christian. This is not a problem, because there is no such thing as a 'pure' skeptic who applies critical thinking to every single aspect of their lives, so of course she can be a member in good standing of the skeptical community — but let's not pretend that she's applying skeptical values consistently. Again, this is not a problem for her, shouldn't be a problem for us, but it does become a huge problem when people start demanding special exemptions from criticism for religious thought.Myers mentions again his discomfort with purity, wanting a middle ground between "demand[ing] perfect purity from all skeptics, or shut[ing] up about the foolishness of religious belief."
I suspect that Myers is aiming at the idea that skeptics should give each other (and everyone else) a certain degree of social permission to be wrong. No one is always right, of course, and many honest and sincere skeptics have beliefs that are not just controversial or mistaken, but positively delusional: I myself once believed that it was a matter of settled truth that capitalist representative democracy was The One True Way. On the other hand, Myers correctly insists that skepticism entails that all beliefs, including religion, be subject to scrutiny, criticism and, more importantly, mockery and praise as appropriate.
Myers, however, is not very clear about what he's praising and what he's mocking. He says, for example, that it's "not a problem" that Gay is "not a skeptic in all things," because "there is no such thing as a 'pure' skeptic who applies critical thinking to every single aspect of their lives." But what precisely is "not a problem"? Is it not a problem that Gay holds what many skeptics consider a delusional belief? Or is it not a problem that Gay refuses to apply skeptical thinking to her religious beliefs? I would agree that the first shouldn't be a problem: we should all be free to hold and argue incorrect beliefs, because we should be convinced that an idea is incorrect only after open and honest argument.
But Myers' language forces the second interpretation. Everyone refuses to apply skepticism to something, therefore Gay's own refusal to apply skepticism specifically to her religious beliefs is not a problem. But if her refusal is not a problem, then why should that refusal deserve mockery?
I'm reminded of my time in the Kerista commune. The commune had a fanatical devotion to "purity", which the leader used to manipulate the members. A common tactic was to label advocates of the losing side of a debate as "impure" because they did not hold the adopted position innately; had they held the correct position innately, they never would have argued against it. Once labeled as impure, you had to submit to public humiliation or leave the commune. Of course, one was therefore very careful to always advocate the winning side of a debate (i.e. the side the leader was on). Insistence on purity of specific ideas actually destroyed consistency of method.
Skeptics should insist on purity of method: we should apply skepticism and critical thought to all of our ideas, without exception. We should not consider it impure to have or advocate an incorrect or even delusional idea, but we should consider it impure to continue to affirm the belief once it has decisively been demonstrated false.
It's also important to understand what skepticism is and is not. Skepticism is not a method for generating ideas, it's a method for filtering out bad ideas. A pure skeptic is not and cannot be, therefore, someone who holds all and only those beliefs generated by the skeptical method.
Furthermore, even as a filter for bad ideas, skeptical criticism is expensive in thought and time. Similarly, a pure skeptic cannot be someone who has subjected each and every one of her beliefs to full scientific scrutiny; there isn't enough computing power and time in the universe to do so. Good enough is usually good enough, and just that some belief has not yet been obviously contradicted by the facts is usually good enough.
But it's possible and desirable to be completely committed to the the skeptical filter. When someone has applied the filter and critically examined some idea, and that idea has been found wanting, it is the ethical obligation of every skeptic to at the very least profess agnosticism about the idea pending the examination of further evidence. And there is a point when an idea has been found so decisively incorrect that even holding agnosticism becomes perverse.
Indeed it is precisely the free adoption of the ethical obligation to always follow the skeptical filter that defines a skeptic.
In much the same sense, you break the law unintentionally or accidentally and still call yourself law-abiding. You might be skating on thin ice, but you could even break the law intentionally (perhaps in a moment of weakness, or as an act of civil disobedience) and still call yourself law-abiding. But you absolutely could not call yourself law-abiding and stand up in court and say, "this law should not apply to me." Even if you comply with ten thousand laws, to explicitly argue that even one law — a law you recognize as valid and that you admit to breaking — should not apply to you would make a mockery of the label "law-abiding".
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Intentional Communities
Rev. Reed Braden and Splendid Elles are reporting a community meltdown at the Richard Dawkins forum chat room [my brain knew that but failed to communicate with my fingers]. There seem to be many similarities to the multiple meltdowns at the Internet Infidels Discussion Board community.
I have a little bit of personal experience with meltdowns in intentional communities. I was a member of the Kerista Commune in the 1980s, and I watched it melt down in the early 90's. I was an administrator at the Internet Infidels Discussion Board (as SingleDad, still considered insane by some of the few who still remember me), part of my own community meltdown, and I followed the contretemps closely when EverlastingGodStopper was banned.
An intentional community is just some socially interacting group of people where membership in the group is directly by virtue of some explicit social intention, both on the part of the founders as well as the participants. It's a community a member explicitly chooses because of the social qualities of the community itself... and it's one where the community chooses members based on their compatibility with the existing social qualities.
Intentional communities stand in contrast to (more-or-less) open communities, such as geographical communities like cities, where social intention is not a criterion (or a very weak criterion) for community membership. When I moved to my fair city, for example, nobody asked me about my political, religious, or social views. Unlike an intentional community, such beliefs are irrelevant to my status as a member of the this specific geographical community. (Of course, legal requirements apply, but they apply to all geographical communities.)
Intentional communities stand in contrast also to workplace communities. While a workplace does have selection criteria, those criteria are typically much looser in a social sense, while being much tighter in an economic sense.
Part of the problem is that while they're not precisely new, people don't have a lot of experience coexisting in intentional communities. The members of the community tend to apply thinking appropriate to geographical communities, while those who founded and are administering the community tend to apply thinking appropriate to workplace communities. The latter is especially seen in intentional communities on the internet, where someone needs to pay the server bills, and someone usually owns a trademark on the name of the community, an important asset.
All the community meltdowns I've seen have started with those who administer the community (usually by virtue of ownership of assets, but sometimes (as in Kerista) by the founder's authority) start exercising their authority to maintain the intention of the community. The members — even and sometimes especially those members who are in fact aligned with the community's intentions — resist this exercise of authority in the same terms they would resist an authority in an open community.
Neither side typically addresses the actual situation: the community is neither a workplace nor an open community. Since everyone is pretty much ignoring important truths, and since it's much harder to reconcile fantasy than truth, the controversy spins out of control. The community dissolves, or a chunk of people leave with bad feelings. Those who remain seem always diminished, guarded and less trusting.
The truth is that an intentional community must maintain some sort of intention. An intentional community cannot afford and does not benefit from the absolute freedom of speech that applies to and benefits open communities. There are many open communities on the internet. If anyone wants to belong to a community with true freedom of speech, there are any number of venues for that purpose, notably unmoderated usenet newsgroups.
Once the notion of absolute freedom of speech is abandoned within an intentional community, the question becomes not whether to restrict speech, but how, to what degree, and most importantly on whose authority.
Another truth is that an intentional community is a community, and the social quality of the community is the only quality on which the community can be judged. An intentional community does not have the external, objective constraint of profitability that constrains authority in a workplace community. Nobody is getting paid to be there, and nobody is there to make money. When the administrators, moderators and leaders of an intentional community start acting in ways appropriate to executives and managers in the workplace, they ignore that they are not in fact in a workplace.
This truth is a bitter pill for those who own assets important to the community. The name itself of the Internet Infidels Discussion Board or the Richard Dawkins chat room does half the job of making the community what it is. The name draws in new members, and these names are reasonably and fairly owned by their respective foundations.
But the name does only half the job. The members of the community do the other half. If they do not share authority to maintain the intentionality of the community, they will not be members of a community, they will be consumers of a service. If the owners of a trademarked name wish to provide a service for people to consume, that's their prerogative, but if they truly wish to form a community, they have to sacrifice a great deal of control.
To effectively manage an intentional community, we can borrow a page from the political science of democracy.
The founders and owners of an intentional community should establish a "constitution", a statement of the basic intentions and processes of the community. The constitution should specify most of these basic intentions in an objective way: It should be objectively determinable whether any member is or is not in compliance. The founders should enforce the objective provisions of the constitution directly, but they should leave any vague provisions to the membership.
The constitution should be difficult to change without the consent of both the owners and most of the members of the community.
The members should be responsible for day-to-day operation and the fine details of the community's standards, either directly by means of issue-by-issue votes, or indirectly by delegating authority by election.
Other than provisions in the constitution, the members must be in control of the membership, using a process specified in the constitution. The owners should be able to unilaterally expel a member only for objectively determinable violations of the constitution (or legal violations), and only after member-driven processes have failed.
In 2000, I became an administrator at the Internet Infidels Discussion board. I was chosen by the owners, and my job was to represent their interests. My first real crisis was Eternal, the greatest troll I've ever seen, before or since. To this day I'm not sure whether the guy (?) was sincere and completely stupid, brilliant and completely insincere, or just plain nuts. In any event, his posts were contributing very little of substance and generating enormous ill-will and bad feeling.
After discussing the issue among the owners and other administrators, we (mostly me) decided to ban him. This was our (mostly my) big mistake.
I think if I had put it to a vote, I could have gotten a majority (or perhaps even a super-majority) in favor of banning him. But because I exercised non-democratic authority, the move was seen as autocratic and indifferent to the feelings of the members.
I can't guarantee that as community will follow my advice; I offered it to IIDB and it was politely ignored. I can't guarantee that any community that does follow my advice will survive: Every time we solve one problem, two more spring up in its place. That's life. But I believe that a community run by its members will have fewer controversies, problems and outright blowouts than one run autocratically, however benign and enlightened that autocracy.
I have a little bit of personal experience with meltdowns in intentional communities. I was a member of the Kerista Commune in the 1980s, and I watched it melt down in the early 90's. I was an administrator at the Internet Infidels Discussion Board (as SingleDad, still considered insane by some of the few who still remember me), part of my own community meltdown, and I followed the contretemps closely when EverlastingGodStopper was banned.
An intentional community is just some socially interacting group of people where membership in the group is directly by virtue of some explicit social intention, both on the part of the founders as well as the participants. It's a community a member explicitly chooses because of the social qualities of the community itself... and it's one where the community chooses members based on their compatibility with the existing social qualities.
Intentional communities stand in contrast to (more-or-less) open communities, such as geographical communities like cities, where social intention is not a criterion (or a very weak criterion) for community membership. When I moved to my fair city, for example, nobody asked me about my political, religious, or social views. Unlike an intentional community, such beliefs are irrelevant to my status as a member of the this specific geographical community. (Of course, legal requirements apply, but they apply to all geographical communities.)
Intentional communities stand in contrast also to workplace communities. While a workplace does have selection criteria, those criteria are typically much looser in a social sense, while being much tighter in an economic sense.
Part of the problem is that while they're not precisely new, people don't have a lot of experience coexisting in intentional communities. The members of the community tend to apply thinking appropriate to geographical communities, while those who founded and are administering the community tend to apply thinking appropriate to workplace communities. The latter is especially seen in intentional communities on the internet, where someone needs to pay the server bills, and someone usually owns a trademark on the name of the community, an important asset.
All the community meltdowns I've seen have started with those who administer the community (usually by virtue of ownership of assets, but sometimes (as in Kerista) by the founder's authority) start exercising their authority to maintain the intention of the community. The members — even and sometimes especially those members who are in fact aligned with the community's intentions — resist this exercise of authority in the same terms they would resist an authority in an open community.
Neither side typically addresses the actual situation: the community is neither a workplace nor an open community. Since everyone is pretty much ignoring important truths, and since it's much harder to reconcile fantasy than truth, the controversy spins out of control. The community dissolves, or a chunk of people leave with bad feelings. Those who remain seem always diminished, guarded and less trusting.
The truth is that an intentional community must maintain some sort of intention. An intentional community cannot afford and does not benefit from the absolute freedom of speech that applies to and benefits open communities. There are many open communities on the internet. If anyone wants to belong to a community with true freedom of speech, there are any number of venues for that purpose, notably unmoderated usenet newsgroups.
Once the notion of absolute freedom of speech is abandoned within an intentional community, the question becomes not whether to restrict speech, but how, to what degree, and most importantly on whose authority.
Another truth is that an intentional community is a community, and the social quality of the community is the only quality on which the community can be judged. An intentional community does not have the external, objective constraint of profitability that constrains authority in a workplace community. Nobody is getting paid to be there, and nobody is there to make money. When the administrators, moderators and leaders of an intentional community start acting in ways appropriate to executives and managers in the workplace, they ignore that they are not in fact in a workplace.
This truth is a bitter pill for those who own assets important to the community. The name itself of the Internet Infidels Discussion Board or the Richard Dawkins chat room does half the job of making the community what it is. The name draws in new members, and these names are reasonably and fairly owned by their respective foundations.
But the name does only half the job. The members of the community do the other half. If they do not share authority to maintain the intentionality of the community, they will not be members of a community, they will be consumers of a service. If the owners of a trademarked name wish to provide a service for people to consume, that's their prerogative, but if they truly wish to form a community, they have to sacrifice a great deal of control.
To effectively manage an intentional community, we can borrow a page from the political science of democracy.
The founders and owners of an intentional community should establish a "constitution", a statement of the basic intentions and processes of the community. The constitution should specify most of these basic intentions in an objective way: It should be objectively determinable whether any member is or is not in compliance. The founders should enforce the objective provisions of the constitution directly, but they should leave any vague provisions to the membership.
The constitution should be difficult to change without the consent of both the owners and most of the members of the community.
The members should be responsible for day-to-day operation and the fine details of the community's standards, either directly by means of issue-by-issue votes, or indirectly by delegating authority by election.
Other than provisions in the constitution, the members must be in control of the membership, using a process specified in the constitution. The owners should be able to unilaterally expel a member only for objectively determinable violations of the constitution (or legal violations), and only after member-driven processes have failed.
In 2000, I became an administrator at the Internet Infidels Discussion board. I was chosen by the owners, and my job was to represent their interests. My first real crisis was Eternal, the greatest troll I've ever seen, before or since. To this day I'm not sure whether the guy (?) was sincere and completely stupid, brilliant and completely insincere, or just plain nuts. In any event, his posts were contributing very little of substance and generating enormous ill-will and bad feeling.
After discussing the issue among the owners and other administrators, we (mostly me) decided to ban him. This was our (mostly my) big mistake.
I think if I had put it to a vote, I could have gotten a majority (or perhaps even a super-majority) in favor of banning him. But because I exercised non-democratic authority, the move was seen as autocratic and indifferent to the feelings of the members.
I can't guarantee that as community will follow my advice; I offered it to IIDB and it was politely ignored. I can't guarantee that any community that does follow my advice will survive: Every time we solve one problem, two more spring up in its place. That's life. But I believe that a community run by its members will have fewer controversies, problems and outright blowouts than one run autocratically, however benign and enlightened that autocracy.
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