Hey!
Are you using sociocracy in a political party? Are you interested in discussing how to inject more deep democracy/participatory and compassionate ways of organizing into how our towns/states or even countries are run?
Reference list of resources (living document, will be edited when you add yours!):
Hello! I’m Marc Mixon, and I am one of the Coordinators of the Washington State People’s Party in the US. Our movement used elements from SCM in it’s setup, which led many of us to seek out horizontal structure methods as we began organizing new, inclusive state political parties.
Expanding the representation beyond just those who associate together to accomplish the work to include the physical communities where we reside, and the essential communities we are a part of as a result of our immutable traits and interests is our goal and challenge.
Yes, that’s a tough one, @marc.mixon ! Thank you for describing that so well.
That’s the puzzle I’ve been struggling with for a while myself, and I found some peace in the Listening at Scale process from Taiwan in combination with a sociocratic core of “those who associate”.
Hi I am Roberto Bonino,
i am part of Volt Switzerland. We are the Swiss chapter of Volteuropa, a pan-European, progressive party. In Switzerland we are exploring Sociocracy as our internal operating system.
Looking forward to exploring this topic here. Thanks, Ted, for this initiative!
Jim Lee here. Also with the People’s Party of Washington State.
One of our major challenges is how in engage our General Members, as opposed to Working Members who are all volunteers. We will give them the opportunity to participate in developing our Platform and in advisory votes, Wisdom Councils, focus groups and other forms of participatory democracy. However, it will be interesting to see how actively and often people choose to engage. Will we need to create incentives?
I’d love to see/hear more on the General members. In my judgment, people always want to have a say but it’s really hard to include non-working members. They often don’t have enough context to give input on operations/things that are going on. And sociocracy as a system clearly rewards those who are actively involved, making it a tricky fit for those who want wide input from the “uninvolved”.
Hence my excitement when I came across listening at scale and connecting it with sociocracy.
What are the “perks” of being a general member @jleecitizen
Hi everyone
My name is Kåre. I am a part of the danish party The Alternative, where I have been trying to introduce sociocratic elements.
I am also - maybe at this point a bit more enthusiastically - a small part of the Game B community and the Metamoderna community. Both international groups centering on the political metamodernist approach to politics, where the focus is to change the game of politics altogether, rather than merely creating a better political party.
The central focus of Game B is to explore the design of a viral governance tool, that is able to outcompete the existing montesqieuan political system in a network-based way, that doesn’t need central governance to work. This is the main reason why Game B is exploring sociocracy. But there is not a widespread experience with sociocracy in the community at this point.
The Metamoderna community works a bit more broadly with the aim of outcompeting capitalism on its own terms. So the tools used are not only what we normally refer to as politics (parlamentary assemblies, public debate, protest marches and the like), but just as much business as a tool for progress. Quite in line with Graham Boyd’s focus on cooperatives.
Both communities originate in political philosophy and have their central - and extremely exciting - philosophers’ work as their building blocks. The argument for their approaches is that no political party or media today understands society and the escalating speed of development. To the modern or postmodern eye, the world is chaotic, dominated by alt-right trolls, woke hypocrites and hasty political processes that only look towards the new election. We therefore cannot change anything by winning elections, winning the game that is politics. We need to change the game altogether - it is the only way.
I highly, warmly and enthusiastically recommend:
Hanzi Freinacht - The Listening Society and Nordic Ideology
Lene Rachel Andersen - Metamodernity: Meaning and Hope in a Complex World
Articles from a.o. Daniel Schmachtenberger, Jordan Hall and Jim Rutt here:
gameblibrary dot com
gameb dot wiki
civilizationemerging dot com/articles
metamoderna dot org
Moderator: I cannot insert links. Why? And can you change the settings?
I absolutely loved reading what you wrote, @kare.wangel
Question, Metamoderna seems to be very much centered around Hanzi Freinacht. That’s a bit weird, at first glance. Like it says “Donate to Hanzi”, not “Donate to Metamoderna”. I wish they read Who Decides Who Decides to start “collectivizing” things early…
The idea behind Hanzi Freinacht is the creation of a persona that can act as a philosophical superstar. The name is hence a pseudonym for a two-person collaboration - but it could potentially involve a larger cooperation.
But the point stays: Why is it about the authorship and not about creating a movement?
Maybe the idea is only to contribute with the authorship through Metamoderna and let the movement arise in other venues, like Game B. I will ask about that.
If that is the case, I think it is a good idea. One problem I often see, is that everyone want their own movement, NGO or party. And as we know, the real force for change lies not in the leader going boldly, bravely ahead, creating the path for the rest of us - though that is extremely important - but in the first followers daring to treat that leader as that, the bold and brave frontrunner, and not as everyone else always views leaders to begin with: as weirdos.
“The best way to create a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.”
Oh so interesting!
Reminders me VAGUELY about “SoFA Genius” which is a fictional character that we used jokingly at first. It’s a collective persona, in a way.
I guess Hanzi is a collective of 2.
I am weary of movements around people. They are extremely vulnerable because if one of the founders shows up as an *&$ the whole thing gets questioned.
So yes, I like your question. Could it be about the ideas and concepts, not the people? Which brings us back to that other discussion @Andrew.Grant brought up here.
I knew (and love) the follower thing. It actually inspired me in the early days of SoFA - telling other people’s stories instead of making it sound like a special thing. Putting out the message of “see, others are doing it!!”.
This has been a very generative thread, thank you, @kare.wangel
It’s really exciting to hear of political organizing parties using sociocracy within systems which are more conventional.
Thanks for sharing @marc.mixon@roberto.bonino@jleecitizen - as a moderator I increased all of your trust so you can share links on the forums - it would be great if you’re up for sharing links to your projects!
I recently heard of a Ranked Choice Voting initiative in a US state which is looking at sociocracy as their organizing structure. This is interesting to me because I see RCV as a great next step for the US, but falls way short in and of it self since it’s still just another form of majority rule.
Wow! Yes, I’m very interested in making politics work " For All ‘’ (not just for a handful of people), or at least for more people, even if this legally means forming a party. I’m actually interested in facilitating people to involve themselves in politics instead of just voting what “the others” propose. I am interested in forming a community where people consciously and deliberately decide together what decisions would work for them and then have the “number power” that could make their voice become heard in this dominant autocratic environment. What a practical use of sociocracy this would be!!! Why? Because one of my dreams is that people could influence the decisions that affect them, doing this in a nonviolent, consistent and sustainable manner. This would be a huge project I would like to be involved in. I would like to see in the public decision making “positions” more people who want to share the power, who really fell to use “power with” instead of “power over” then create a viable and sustainable alternative that will gradually be able to replace the current “autocratic political system”. I wonder how it would be possible. Through sociocracy, of course … We already have sociocracy. Who are the people who are willing to devote some of their energy and knowledge for such a work. I think the process of empowering people is the real humanitarian work we need. Of course, this is about enlarging the consciousness and amplifying the understanding through authentic sociocratic education and practice. Who else is in?
This may be of interest in relation to sociocracy in political parties.
On january 24th the European Integral Poitical Saloon will host its first event.
The European Integral Political Saloon is a format for inviting a transnational conversation about new, more holistic ways of doing politics, and for transforming our existing political systems towards a new paradigm/integral operating system.
How could we influence the social environment without creating and proposing a viable and sustainable alternative to the current dominant way of doing politics?
This is yet our right, or not?
I am interested in “new, more holistic ways of doing politics, and for transforming our existing political systems towards a new paradigm/integral operating system”.
Yes, for a new way of life we need another paradigm of governance and in order to be effective and efficient in this new holistic and social oriented paradigm we need to be able to involve ourselves in politics.
The true is that we all have to conform ourselves to the laws they already made. Let’s be present in politics and influence the laws that are being done for us.
Yes, this is the point. To survive we must be able to influence the legal environment around us, not just to make policies for the inside of an organization. Or not?
Of course, each person have the right to choose if politics is something they would like to be involved in or not.
I imagine a sociocracy way to make politics that could use collective intelligence and wisdom, in the service of a larger common good.
