How to tell the origin story of sociocracy?

Sociocracy Discussion
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In response to THIS conversation about the origin story and the related illustration: yup, that’s a lot of white people. As far as addressing the aesthetics alone, this image could easily be reimagined without the use of photos.

The most directly I’ve seen this broached is in the Communities Magazine article in “The Shadow Side of Cooperation” issue (which covers many topics, such as Founder’s Syndrome :stuck_out_tongue: ), and has a particular article titled “Culture Change or Same Old Society? Consensus, Sociocracy, and
White Supremacy Culture”

Folks who would like to read it can download the issue to find the article it here on the FIC site or here via google drive

In response to THIS conversation about the origin story and the related illustration: yup, that’s a lot of white people. As far as addressing the aesthetics alone, this image could easily be reimagined without the use of photos.

It seems like then there’s just a question of: which SoFA circle is now responsible for the content of the About SoFA page? When this was written, it was put together by SoFA’s founders (as Ted mentioned, some 7 years ago…) It’s certainly due for some revision, and much has changed, Ted and Jerry aren’t doing everything now and many things are being handed off… but to whom?
Perhaps General Circle or Content Circle?
Ideas @TedRau @jerry.koch-gonzalez ?

Or perhaps another circle or individual is up for doing a new draft of the image and submitting it?

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Hi there
Was just made aware of this thread. Very exciting conversation in many ways!

Just want to say something about Tobias’ and my explorations into the Nordic Thing-governance, which is also circle based, consent based and domain based. The introduction of democracy in the mid 1800s was heavily criticized for being a lesser governance method, despite it aspiring to be more inclusive (while excluding everyone but selfsustaining older men).
Thing-governance is similar in many ways to the Haudenosaunee’s Longhouse-governance. And I imagine that similar governance-traits can be found in other cultures. Would so much love to see an anthropological/historical research on this subject.

Another point is one that Aristotle puts forth in The Republic, where he criticizes the Athenian democracy for several things and argues for a kind of natural governance - a proto-governance - that resembles both Thing-governance and Longhouse-governance in multiple ways.
A central point is that the primary need for governance, historically, arises when families (or tribes) gather and/or settle. Before that, all matters are resolved within the family. You could say that the family has domain over every matter pertaining to the family alone (which can be brutal, sure), and that they resolve these things without much formalization, but that the commons between the families necessitate formalized governance.
Thereby you gather a circle of representatives from families in a circle, each with their own domain. And since every family is self-governed, they cannot be overruled but will have to consent to every decision.

Of course the direct influence of the Haudenosaunee’s governance on both Quaker governance and the American constitution, would be great to mention as a direct inspiration for sociocracy. And I find Longhouse-governance to be an extremely beautiful inspiration.
But I don’t think there are many unique traits to Longhouse-governance (please correct me if I am wrong), but instead a tight connection to the organic, natural, sensical and logical governance that perpetuates everything in nature, and can be found throughout the world. :slight_smile:

Btw, Tobias and I made this presentation on both subjects in 2020:

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David Graeber would be a good place to start in terms of an anthropological take on this issue. His Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams is great in this regard. Also, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

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I agree that the image should be changed or removed and would love to know whose domain of responsibility that would be so that I could make this request directly.

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Uh, anarchist theory. Exciting!
Am just finishing reading In Defense of Anarchism by Robert Paul Wolf. A very nicely put argument.

I am, though, not in favor of stamping ideas as ideological per se, since the practice of framing ideologies creates an us-them situation, where anyone not signing up for the entire ideology is suddenly not an ally in its parts. As is the case with the very similar ideologies of anarchism and libertarianism.

That said, I have always been drawn towards anarchism most of all. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Content Circle just clarified that the domain of the content on the /sofa/ page (which has this image) is held by SoFA’s General Circle operational leader, currently @TedRau !

In the meeting I offered this proposal because it includes information like Partnerships, our Mission and Vision, etc. (and didn’t really think it made sense for website circle to be responsible for such important content, but also didn’t think it needed a whole circle to discuss it). You can see the decision here.

So, assuming the history of Sociocracy/SoFA wants to stay on this page, Ted’s the person to talk with! :slight_smile:

I would offer that if anyone wants to draft up another version, that would likely be pretty well appreciated!
Perhaps even a helping circle could meet (not sure if @TedRau would want to join?) and work on it and offer a proposed revision. Since the domain is delegated to Ted, it would just need to be signed off there and website circle would make the update.

I would also offer that this is a great topic for an article all unto itself!
Anyone can offer an article to submssions@sociocracyforall.org and it’s likely to be published by Web Content Production Circle.
Also, @hope.wilder is doing an english language writer’s workshop where folks might find support for that.

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@alex.rodriguez @eric.tolson @kare.wangel @cj.oreilly @Andrew.Grant @stephanie.nestlerode @shala.massey

What I’d love to do is this: let’s workshop a replacement.

I am putting a canvas into this google drawing. What do you think is worth showing so people can situate sociocracy into history and context? Note: it has good history so you don’t have to worry about changing it because we can always go back.

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I don’t see any content in the drawing, aside from logos on the left.
Do you want us to build something from scratch, Ted?

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Sure. I was starting and then gave up :slight_smile:

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RE: writer’s workshops, we are hoping to start the next one in September.

Great topic for discussion! Shala is currently writing an article about circles and the roots in indigenous traditions, as well as how circles manifest in other practices like restorative justice. She’s doing a lot of research, I’ll be interested to see what she comes up with!

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Thanks @hope.wilder , and @shala.massey , I am looking forward to learning what you are finding.
@kare.wangel I gave it a start now in the google drawing, pulling from the concepts more than people.
Yet, of course that’s also bogus to a large extent.
There’s never one origin. For example, nonviolence is a principle in pacifism which was strong in Quakers so it has been around and one of the core foundations of earliest sociocracy. Yet, NVC as a technique is fairly new, from the 70ies. Just as one tiny example because I happen to know the story, Jerry was part of the group that published Marshall Rosenberg’s book when it first came out. He also later learned about socicoracy from the zen peacemakers and started teaching it. When did nonviolence and NVC enter sociocracy?
Really, we have to discuss the level reductionism we’re comfortable with. As soon as one draws the concentric circle just a tiny bit wider than people who actually identified with sociocracy/Sociocratic Circle method as in the originally discussed image, it’s impossible to draw anything even remotely accurate.
Maybe we can draw something of value anyways - take it away, everyone! As I said, no worries in making changes, all versions are kept safely by google :laughing:

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I like it so far. I added some stuff on the right-most side.

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Hey! If you’re interested in anarchism, join the discussion in this thread! Sociocracy and Anarchism (Eric Tolson) - #8 by eric.tolson

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After watching Sophie’s talk and reading the discussions, I have an impulse to ask a question.

What if we draw a line between organizations and society?

It’s like drawing a line between organization and family. Yes, we always make decisions in all three systems (family, organization, and society). And they do influence each other a lot and may share the essential values. But my belief at this point is that they are fundamentally different systems with suitable governance tool for each system.

As far as I understand, sociocracy or sociocratic circle method is a governance tool designed and developed for organizations. I can feel that sociocracy community has the aspiration to influence how the whole society operates. But on the very hands-on level, I feel the current state of sociocracy is meant for organizations. And sociocracy is probably one of the most, if not the most, inclusive organizational governance tools that are currently available in the market. In that sense, I feel it’s important that we explicitly acknowledge those people, especially Gerard Endenberg, who managed to create and deliver a concrete package that organizations can practically use. It would be a great loss to not acknowledge the hard effort of initially packaging the right components, testing them to see if they work, translating them to the specific organizational contexts, and modifying them to changing needs. This acknowledgement can be done, while also acknowledging the influences to those packages.

To me, Sophie’s talk and the following discussions feel like the unresolved structural issues at the societal level understandably jumping into the organizational level. And somehow this very important tension that affect all of us got mixed up with the organizational governance tool that is not designed and developed for directly solving societal issues. It’s a different story when we ask the question,

To what kind of organizations does SoFA want to offer the tool?

Then we could say we want to work with organizations that directly tackle structural societal issues. Yet, sociocracy as a tool doesn’t seem to belong only to those organizations that are explicit about social change.

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Since the image lies within ‘about SoFA’ page,

How about modifying the original image so that it contains the origin and lineage of SoFA?

People are curious about how founders, Jerry and Ted, started SoFA, how they came to meet sociocracy, and why they decided to spread sociocracy. And I assume human connection lineage would probably stop at Kees Boeke. By human connection lineage, I mean Ted learned from Jerry, Jerry from John Buck, John from Gerard Endenberg, Gerard from Kees Boeke and so on.

And for the ‘true’ origin story and development, maybe it could fall into the domain of ‘sociocracy historian’ when such a person becomes available in the future. And I doubt that such role needs to be within SoFA now. That task somehow feels too heavy for SoFA with its limited resources.

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Wow.
I love that.
I often feel similarly about money, by the way. Within the Prosocial principles (a set of principles that are known success factors for cooperatively minded organizations) , I count “Authority to self-govern” as “is free of outside interferences”. The more we’re able to self-govern without outside interference, the better we can do it. Yet, systemic oppression and the financial systems (along with the legal system) are huge interferences to our ability to self-govern. Not that they make things impossible, but they clearly make them harder. So, I agree with you that while we cannot ignore them because everything is connected everywhere, they are also “outside” to some extent. The more outside inequality of all kinds there is, the harder it will be to self-govern.
An easy example from a client last week was this: they are an organization as equals. Yet, outside of that, they are all tied into an extremely hierarchical system in Academia. And they told me, the power imbalance in that other world tends to make things hard on the inside because it’s hard to keep out.

Countries and families are different because they are not based on shared aims; you can’t opt in or opt out based on whether you like the shared aim. So they lack that element of self-determination and freedom that organizations have.

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That’s a very interesting thought. I’d worry to make it about people. Then again, there’s something very honest and specific about it. I like that.

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After reading your comment, I feel like you’ve expressed more clearly what I wanted to say. Thank you :slight_smile:

And I should check out what Prosocial is. I’ve heard you say it quite a few times.

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  • Prosocial and sociocracy
  • Prosocial: Using Evolutionary Science to Build Productive, Equitable, and Collaborative Groups
    Book by David Sloan Wilson, Paul W.B. Atkins, and Steven C. Hayes
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It seems like a good idea to draw a line like that. I believe that a governance system on a societal level could only actually be created by growing organically out of multiple experiments - quite like sociocracy has done it, albeit on a very different scale.

This is also the Game B approach (if you are familiar with the Game B community): To create a viral tool that is better in all ways at solving problems than the current political system, hence outcompeting parliamentary politics, not by winning elections but by rendering parliaments obsolete.

I feel that if this is the right approach to creating a solution, then this tool should be able to do everything that sociocracy does. But besides that, what should it also be able to do? What is sociocracy lacking? I.e.: What is the problem we are trying to solve?

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I really like the way the diagram is shaping up. Here’s a JPG capture after a few edits by me. I’m wondering how to include the Quaker concept of “answering to that of God in everyone”. What’s a good word for that? I inserted ‘mutuality’ as a placeholder but it doesn’t quite get it and I’m not sure that ‘decision making together’ covers it.

History_context of sociocracy
History_context of sociocracy1401×937 49.3 KB

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