Quoth the Raven

I know.  I’ve been neglecting this blog.

I’ve been focusing on other things, some useful (doing work here at the Ganas community and work on the Point A project for example) and some sort of useful (reading even more about chemistry and biology) and some not so useful (reading webcomics like Girl Genius, Skin Horse, and the awesome Kimchi Cuddles).  I've also been keeping my other blog (Lagoon Commune) going but I’m about to put that on hiatus for a while (or perhaps indefinitely) both because of low readership and because I want to focus on other things--like writing for this blog.

Meanwhile, my name has been mutating.  While I’m still officially MoonRaven, I’ve been going more and more simply by Raven.  It sounds a little less outrageous--at least to my ears.  (A friend informed me today that Raven still sounds weird.)

All in all, life is good.  I’m happy (I think of that as a decision), I’m enjoying life here, and I’m doing the work I want to be doing.  What more could I ask for?

Quote of the Day: "To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else." - Emily Dickinson

Statified, Nesting, and Hierarchy

Oops. I thought I’d done that review of Donella Meadow’s book Thinking in Systems that I promised long, long ago but I can’t find it looking through this blog.  Unfortunately, this won’t be that review.

Thinking in Systems is a pretty good book.  I reread it regularly and I still hope to review it, but one thing that bothered me about the book was Donella Meadow’s use of the word ‘hierarchy’ to describe what I think of as nested systems.  Here’s an example:

“The world, or at least the parts of it humans think they understand, is organized in subsystems aggregated into larger subsystems, aggregated into still larger subsystems.  … This arrangement of systems and subsystems is called a hierarchy.”

She goes on to say: “Corporate systems, military systems, ecological systems, economic systems, living organisms, are arranged in hierarchies.”

I have just been rereading parts of Fritjof Capra’s The Turning Point (which I reviewed almost seven years ago in a post called Capra 1:The Turning Point, 8/23/08).  I wasn’t that impressed with much of it (I think it was more of a turning point for Capra’s thinking and work than anything out in the world) but I really liked his take on the use of the word hierarchy to describe what happens in systems.  I’m going to quote liberally from his book:

“The multileveled structure of living organisms, like any other biological structure, is a visible manifestation of the underlying processes of self-organization.  At each level there is a dynamic balance ... between systems levels.  Systems theorists sometimes call this pattern of organization hierarchical, but that word may be rather misleading for the stratified order observed in nature.  The word ‘hierarchy’* referred originally to the government of the Church.  Like all human hierarchies, this ruling body was organized into a number of ranks according to levels of power, each rank being subordinate to the one at the level above it.  In the past the stratified order of nature has often been misinterpreted to justify authoritarian social and political structures.

“To avoid confusion we may reserve the term ‘hierarchy’ for those fairly rigid systems of domination and control which orders are transmitted from the top down.  The traditional system for these structures has been the pyramid.  By contrast, most living systems exhibit multileveled patterns of organization characterized by many intricate and nonlinear pathways along which signals of information and transaction propagate between all levels, ascending as well as descending.  That is why I have turned the pyramid around and transformed it into a tree, a more appropriate symbol for the ecological nature of stratification in living systems.  As a real tree takes its nourishment through both its roots and its leaves, so the power in a systems tree flows in both directions, with neither end dominating the other and all levels interacting in interdependent harmony to support the functioning of the whole.

“The most important aspect of the stratified order in nature is not the transfer of control but rather the organization of complexity.”

(The asterisk (*) in the fifth line of this quote refers to the following note: “From the Greek hieros (‘sacred’) and arkhia (‘rule’).”)

I totally agree with Capra’s take on systems and hierarchy except I would use the term nesting (like Russian dolls) rather than stratified to describe systems within systems within systems.  The hierarchies of corporations and the military are completely different from the way that living organisms and ecological systems are organized.  There is no one at the top of a living system that gives commands.  Rather you have decentralized systems enfolded within decentralized systems and things are worked out by emergence.  (See my last post.)

I understand what Donella Meadows is saying about the need for system to work within systems, but I agree with Fritjof Capra that we need a different word rather than ‘ hierarchy’ to name this process.

Quote of the Day:  “Hierarchies evolve from the lowest level up--from the pieces to the whole, from cell to organ to organism, from individual to team… Life started with single cell bacteria,  not with elephants. The original purpose of a hierarchy is always to help its originating subsystems do their jobs better.  This is something, unfortunately, that both the higher and lower levels of a greatly articulated hierarchy easily can forget.  Therefore, many systems are not meeting our goals because of malfunctioning hierarchies.”  - Donella Meadows

(Add:  I would say the beginning of this as ‘Nested systems emerge from the lowest level up….’)

Emergence

Emergence by Steven Johnson is a wonderful, frustrating book.  

It starts off talking about slime molds, which are sort of the mascot of the self-organizing systems world.  These are tiny single celled creatures that, when threatened, coalesce into a multicellular organism.  For years scientists searched for the ‘pacemaker’ cells that started the process.  It turns out there are no pacemakers.  Slime molds have a completely decentralized method of coalescing.  

I’ve referenced Steven Johnson before--way back in a post on Clustering and Coping (8/13/08).  Even then I mentioned he had a book called Emergence.  I just hadn’t read it until recently.  I picked it up in the bookstore that I’m now working in when I visited it in November.  I’ve now read it twice.

One of the things it reminds me of is Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom’s book, The Starfish and the Spider, which I’ve talked about in two early posts: Catalysts and Network Weavers (8/31/08) and Decentralization (12/9/08).  The big difference is that Brafman and Beckstrom’s book focuses on the phenomenon of decentralization, where Johnson focuses on emergence which is a decentralized process.  In some ways this is the most important process in self-organization.  And, in many ways, it’s unpredictable.

What’s wonderful about Emergence is how clearly Johnson spells out what’s involved in the process.  What’s frustrating is that he seems seduced by its uses in corporate culture, cybernetics and the internet, and particularly entertainment systems.  However he does cover (briefly) cell systems and immune systems, and spends more time with cities as organisms (which I find very interesting) before he gets caught in the morass of the world wide web and online games.

However, just when I was about to give up on the book, he steers into emergence and decentralization in politics and gives the WTO Seattle protests of 1999 as an example.  (Of course, this type of organizing was going on long before this--I see it dating back to feminist and anarchist organizing in the 1970s.  For more about what was happening back then, see my post Social Movements in the Seventies, 3/30/09.)  I wish he spent more time on this.

This is a good book to read in conjunction with other systems books and books on decentralization.  By itself, it’s only a small (but significant piece) but it’s incredibly useful in understanding the whole.  I’ll end with the warning at the end of the book: “...it is both the promise and the peril of swarm logic that the higher level behavior is almost impossible to predict in advance.  You never really know what lies at the other end of a phase transition until you press play and find out.  That is the lesson of Gerald Edelman’s recipe for simulating a flesh-and-blood organism: you set up a system of various pattern-recognition devices and feedback loops, connecting the virtual organism to a simulated environment.  And then you see what happens.”

That’s emergence.

Quote of the Day:  “This emphasis on rules might seem like the antithesis of the open-ended, organic systems… but nothing could be further from the truth.  Emergent systems... are rule governed systems: their capacity for learning and growth and experimentation derives from their adherence to low-level rules…  If any of these systems… suddenly started following their own rules, or doing away with rules altogether, the system would stop working: there’d be no global intelligence, just a teeming anarchy of isolated agents, a swarm of without logic.  Emergent behaviors… are all about living within the boundaries defined by rules, but also using that space to create something greater than the sum of its parts.” - Steven Johnson

Community as a Living Organism

At one of the visitor’s nights here, a young man was asking for details on how Ganas functioned.  He was curious about whether it could be replicated.

Earlier a few people were talking about the differences between Twin Oaks and Ganas.  After the visitor made the remark about replicating Ganas, I pointed out that one of the similarities between Twin Oaks and Ganas is that each is a unique community, in many ways different from just about any other community out there--and, naturally, different from each other.  And that was because each of them had changed significantly to be what they are.  Neither is what they were planned to be, each is what they grew to be.

People have mentioned in meetings that I’ve been in that Ganas was not even intended as a community.  It started as a group of people who were experimenting with a process (‘Feedback Learning’) and began living together in order to do this together.  It was only when a visitor remarked that they were an intentional community that Ganas took on this identity.

Twin Oaks was started as an attempt to replicate the fictional community described in BF Skinner’s novel Walden Two.  While a sharp eyed student of psychology could probably spot a few behavioral components to Twin Oaks even now, I doubt that Skinner would want to claim it if he was alive and few Twin Oakers think of themselves as behaviorist.  It’s more what you’d get if you took the behavioral paradise and turned it over to the care of a bunch of new age hippies and then let it mellow for nearly fifty years.

Both Mildred Gordon and Kat Kinkade (the more famous founders of Ganas and Twin Oaks, respectively) left the communities that they helped start, were often critical of what they became, and literally returned to their communities to die.  (Kat Kinkade was buried at TO.  Mildred Gordon died this past January and there was a memorial held for her in Manhattan in February.)

The point is that the communities didn’t turn out the way the founders thought they would.  Each community (and I think this is true of many other communities--Sandhill, Acorn, Dancing Rabbit, East Wind, The Farm, etc, etc) evolved and grew in its own fashion, in ways that the founders didn’t anticipate or even want.  And I think that this is what healthy communities do.  They develop a life of their own.

This is why mature communities aren’t replicable.  They have grown to be what they are.  No one would design a community like Twin Oaks or Ganas, just as they weren’t designed to be what they are.  They grew into it.  They evolved.

And this is important to remember.  Communities have life cycles, the way that people do and even the way that ant colonies do.  As a community matures, it changes.  It’s got to change.  If a community doesn’t change, it dies.

Quote of the Day:  “...life ... repairs, maintains, re-creates, and outdoes itself.” - Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan

Food Chain!

One of the many cool things that they do at Ganas is to organize a chain of people to get stuff up from the truck on the street that they use to get food to the pantry (or other places) in the houses way above.  (Since Ganas is on a hillside, you need to go up a long flight of stairs to get from the street to the houses.)  It’s sort of like one of those old fashioned bucket brigades.

Someone yells, “Food chain!” at dinner and anyone who feels strong and abled bodied goes out and helps.  Groceries are passed from one person to the next on their way to the pantry.  

I was watching the behavior of the chain with a systems theorist’s eye.  It was amusing seeing the people bunch up on one end and then on the other.  The whole thing reminded me of a slinky stretching back and forth in waves.

Fortunately, most folks are in a good mood while doing it and it really does make what could be a difficult task fairly easy and fun.  As a result, the whole thing works very well.  And then it’s done before you know it--and folks go back to dinner.  And all the food is now up the hill and in the pantry.

It’s pretty amazing what you can accomplish with a little co-operation.

Quote of the Day: “Obedience may have its uses, but it is no substitute for willing, uncoerced co-operation.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

The New New Yorker

Well, I’ve settled down.  In New York City, of all places.

I was talking with my brother on the phone and he was wishing me the best with my new community life at Ganas in Staten Island.

“Just promise me one thing,” he said.  “You won’t start rooting for the Yankees.”  (I think he was kidding.  I think. It wasn’t hard to promise though--I can’t imagine rooting for a team that wears pinstripes.)

I’m having trouble believing that I’m now a permanent resident of the Big Apple--the city that never sleeps, the largest city in North America.  It wasn’t where I planned to be and a big part of me is still wondering what I’m doing here.

I was involved several years back with someone who grew up in Brooklyn and I listened to her stories which to me seemed a mixture of the exotic and the familiar all at once.  Familiar because so much literature, so many movies, so many TV shows reference New York geography.  Now many of those places are part of my life.

I’ve been traveling all over the city. A few weeks ago we were doing stuff in Long Island City (sometimes abbreviated LIC--and LIC is part of Queens).  Then a couple of weeks ago, I met with a woman in East Harlem that wanted to buy property in the South Bronx.  Last week I met with another woman over in Bushwick, which I now know is part of Brooklyn.  After that I visited a food co-op in the East Village in Manhattan.  And this week I’m planning to visit a co-op house in Bed Stuy, which is also part of Brooklyn.

Daily I walk up the hill here  on Staten Island and look down on St George/Tompkinsville and across the Upper New York Bay over to Brooklyn.  The night sky of Virginia has been replaced with the lovely lights of Staten Island, Brooklyn, and once in a while, Manhattan.

And I get to take the marvelous Staten Island Ferry, passing the Statue of Liberty and with views of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Governors Island, Jersey City, Bayonne, and Staten Island.  The few times I’ve taken it at night is when I’ve gotten to see the the lights of all of these place reflected in the dark waters.

I’ve learned or figured out all sorts of strange things.  There are five boroughs here--most people know that--but only one of them, the Bronx, is part of the mainland.  Manhattan is an island, Brooklyn and Queens are part of an island, and, of course, Staten Island is an island.

One morning we were talking about a part of the Bronx even many folks here hadn’t heard of: Spuyten Duyvil, the place where the Hudson River meets the Harlem River.  Someone said it meant “Spitting Devil” in Dutch. (Wikipedia says, “Spouting Devil” or “Spewing Devil”.)  It’s strange things like that that make living in New York so interesting.

And now, one of the things I’m doing is that I’m busy figuring out how to establish a New York City residency.  It turns out I live here.  I really do.  Go figure.

Quote of the Day: “Other places may give you a sweet and soothing sense of level; but in New York there is always the feeling of ‘Something's going to happen.’ It isn't peace. But, you know, you do get used to peace, and so quickly. And you never get used to New York.” - Dorothy Parker

Becoming MoonRaven, Sleeping Submarine Style, and Other Tales from the Communes

I’ve been living down in Virginia since the beginning of this year, mostly at Twin Oaks and Acorn.  (And taking side trips with the Point A crew up to Baltimore and New York.)  As of the end of this month, I will be moving into the Ganas Community on Staten Island.  But I’ll miss living at the Virginia communes.  They are, in many ways, the flagships of the income sharing communities movement in the US.  Here are some stories and reflections from my nearly three months here.

As many readers may have guessed, my real name isn’t MoonRaven (or Moon--first name--Raven--last name, as I’m listed on gmail).  I used the name, beginning over ten years ago, because I wanted to remain anonymous on the internet.  It’s the name Paxus at Twin Oaks first knew me as, because I would comment on his blog using it.  When I finally met him in person, I told him my real name and he said he preferred to think of me as MoonRaven because it was more poetic.  

When I moved down to the Virginia communities in January to help him with his Point A project, Pax asked if I’d go by that name.  My real first name is quite common and people at the communes often take new, exotic names--partly to avoid confusion with other people who have the same mundane names.

So I agreed to go by MoonRaven down here and that’s what people know me as at Twin Oaks and Acorn these days. I’m even considering keeping it when I move to Ganas in a few weeks.  Ironically the name I’m using on this blog and elsewhere on the internet to cloak my identity, has now become the name I’m using day to day--I’m getting getting used to people saying “Hey MoonRaven”.  In a way, now I’ve become MoonRaven and left the name I was born with behind.

When I came down to Virginia in January, Pax and I decided I’d stay at Twin Oaks for a while.  There was no visitor program until the end of the month and so I stayed in Aurora, the lovely visitors cabin that I stayed in during my two previous visitor periods.  However, ‘visitor’ has a particular meaning at TO.  It means you are part of the visitor program.  Since I wasn’t part of the program this time, I was a ‘guest’, which means a TO member hosts you, and I was welcome to stay at Aurora until the next visitor program started.  When it did, I moved over to Acorn, which does not have a visitors cabin.  

When I stayed at Acorn the first time, it was September and I stayed in a tent.  Last time I was here I got lucky and was able to stay in the new seed building.  This time I’ve been staying in a small building that Acorn has been using to house visitors, guests, and interns.  

I didn’t get my own room this time.  The building I’m staying in is one big room where someone has built a wall of bunks for people to sleep in.  I imagine it being the way that sailors sleep in bunks in a submarine.  There can be as many as five other folks sleeping around me--and one night I think we might have had six since there was also one person sleeping on a couch that someone moved into the place.  For a few nights recently, I was the only one sleeping in the building, but last night I think there were three other folks sleeping there besides me.

Both Twin Oaks and Acorn are farming communities and both communities grow food.  They also both have animals.  Twin Oaks has chickens and a herd of dairy cows.  Acorn has chickens, and goats, and pigs, and some rabbits, and a stray cow that wandered over and looks silly amidst the goats, and two dogs named Horus and Odin, and an indeterminate number of little cats (one of which regularly tries to sneak into the bunkhouse I’m sleeping in).

Aside from farming, Acorn’s one business and concern is the seed business.  Twin Oaks, on the other hand, is very diverse.  Besides hammocks and tofu (their main businesses) they also doing indexing for books (something that dates back to their early days) and sell ornamental flowers.   One of their more interesting sources of income comes from a nearby college that got a fancy arena that can have several different kinds of flooring, depending on the type of event they want to host.  They’ve hired a team from TO to change the flooring regularly.  

And besides tofu, Twin Oaks also makes tempeh, something I’ve participated in on occasion.  They steam soybeans and then sprinkle a culture on the beans.  Then someone (and I’ve done this) needs to spend several minutes working (nearly kneading) the mold spores into the beans (inoculating them).  The beans are then put in little bags which will be kept warm until the mycelium grow and the beans ferment.

At Acorn, mostly what I’ve done is pack seeds and pick seeds.  Packing seeds involves weighing out a measured amount and putting it in a packet which is then sealed.  I’m given instructions to do this for some number of packets ranging from six to four hundred.  It’s a fairly repetitive task.  When I’m done the seeds are put in the seed room.  Picking seeds involves looking at orders people have sent or called in and going into the seed room and walking around finding the seeds and rubber banding together all packets of seeds that make up an order.

Ironically, the work that I’ve been doing most often the last few days is washing dishes.  Like any community Acorn provides meals and people dirty dishes.  This week there have been a lot of people away and the usual dishwashers were gone--and no one signed up to do dishes.  I volunteered a few times.  Dishwashing is particularly daunting here because, unlike Twin Oaks or Ganas, it’s pretty much a solo task.  One meal can be eaten by twenty to forty people, plus cooking equipment and miscellaneous dishes and cups from people snacking.  

If no one does the dishes after a meal (which is what was happening), it means the dishes begin piling up in the dish room.  I was ending up cleaning a good twenty-four or more hours worth of people’s dishes on a couple of occasions.

And, of course, my main focus has been working on Point A projects with my comrades Paxus and Triple Threat Tony.  We’ve been having breakfast meetings where we lovingly grump at each other and divide up the tasks.  One of my latest task lists begins with my first task (sent by TTT): do “not do any more dish shifts”.

I will miss working face to face with these two folks.  I’ll continue working with them by email after I move to NYC, but it won’t be the same.  And I know I’ll need to come down here again, since I think of this place as the heart of a movement towards working cooperatively, collectively, together.

Quote of the Day:  “It amazes me how difficult it is for people to think in terms of collective phenomenon.” - Evelyn Fox Keller