I try to practice mental amputation of the Karrot team from my world for 3 years now, so you’re a lucky one / mentally very skilled that you say it that lightly.
Living systems are interdependant with their context. There are no isolated systems. However, many people in Western cultures have been conditioned to think individualistically, as if we were separate from our context and could ignore our impact on the world around us.
From Many Voices, One Song, chapter 1.1 The values under sociocracy. I definitely lack that conditioning.
I still find it really difficult to go through many of SoFA resources. The theory is very distant from what I experienced.
In the makerspace which got instigated around my short Karrot times, which I hope to be a friendly space for all types of human beings, including mine, I made a modification to sociocracy-like consent-based decision making we’re using (or more going to use, once I learn to trust people again, and allow them in):
Decision making:
We strive to make decisions that are good or good enough (acceptable) for everyone who may be affected by them.
In the Association, our intention is to make decisions by consent (accepting proposals that are good enough for every member; no objections) with two modifications:
- (a) some power is given back to the group over the individuals: the group can suspend a member’s right to object (it gives sabotage-resistance to the group governance, internal or external). That member (or a few members) can exit into a split of the group.
- (b) some power is taken away from the group and given to an individual: there are cadence-based, all-members-entrusted-by-election roles of Members Defendant and Group Protector. GP requests and justifies the expulsion, although any member can do it too. MD decides about expelling a member (or not!), instead of entire group doing it, and gives back the right to object.
Excluding someone from a group of equals, when the connection was not strong enough, as a personal conflicts resolution strategy (Karrot, §4.1b) or because of underperformance (sociocracy, eXtinction Rebellion), also known as ostracisation or mobbing, is inhuman and causes institutional betrayal trauma that has no closure. This is where zombies come from. We don’t do that.
An Annex to the Statute which adds Group Protector and Members Defendant roles can be found here (in Polish).
I was told that I hurt myself by keeping trying - but what alternative do I have? Accept that I don’t belong? what does it mean in practice? How to internalise that?