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[Music]
[Applause]
thanks everyone for being
here um I'd like to begin with uh a
personal anecdote that um feels
important uh for me to explain why I'm
even here today so on November 9th uh
2016 two things
happened um the first one was that I
turned 31 and the second was that Donald
Trump was elected president of the
United
States so that felt like quite a strange
birthday present from the
universe and if you're wondering how it
made me feel
then in the words of the Donald sad
actually even more than sad I felt
shocked I felt uh angered
and just very puzzled that ex xenophobic
climate denier had just become the head
of the most powerful Nation on this
planet so this felt like a wakeup call
for me it made me wonder what I was
doing with my life which was not really
focused on matters of politics or
Society or social
change and it made me wonder what I
could do to try and make things maybe a
little less
bad so um I went back to uh my readings
and studies that I had done in the past
on matters of um well sustainable
development as it was called at the time
and uh uh I was reminded how we are all
part of this Mega machine which is
objectifying all of the Living World uh
including human beings uh to produce
stuff and to enrich a small minority of
people uh I was also reminded um of the
accelerating climate crisis of how our
economic systems are absolutely wedded
to exponential economic growth and that
this makes it very difficult to be
switching to very different ways of of
being together as U as a
society and um that we are in the midst
of the sixth Max exension of species too
not to mention widespread chemical
plastic pollution uh the rise of uh
authoritarian governments etc etc so
this is the kind of situation which uh
is often referred to uh uh under the
term uh the poly
crisis so I was wondering what I could
do about all of this and uh was also
reminded of those words by indigenous
activist and researcher Kyle white
saying
that uh what we are living in right now
can also can already be considered a
dystopia actually for uh the ancestors
of indigenous people today they would
consider our world pretty much a
dystopian
future so what could I do well I was
interested in the intersection of
learning and action and it felt to me
that perhaps what was needed was
something along the lines of better
informed people who would then take
action through better networks which
would connect their efforts uh in order
to enact social
change
and uh eventually this reflection grew
to uh Encompass those three main areas
so that of online networks the uh area
of social or informal learning and that
of radical Collective change so by uh uh
radical Collective change I mean uh
responses Collective responses which
would be relevant in our time of poly
crisis and by social informal learning I
mean how people learn from each other
and influence one another in all kinds
of social settings so I'm interested in
how we are learning from each other all
the time and how this may be connected
to social
change so uh eventually I went back to
University reluctantly to do a uh
transdisciplinary PhD research on those
questions um and uh my main research
question was how may online networks
then enable radical Collective change
through social social learning um my
partner and I created a a little website
uh which summarizes some of the the main
insights of this thesis and in which you
can also read the whole doctoral thesis
that was published earlier this month so
please uh feel free to go and check it
out and and leave your comments or get
in touch so what I'm going to be sharing
about today is some of the um uh the
insights that felt most interesting to
me during the course of those 5 years of
of
study um so first a little more about my
Approach so uh I consider myself uh an
aspiring activist scholar um my interest
is in challenging uh unjust social
structures um through the production of
knowledge and involvement in in various
social change efforts um and um my this
doesn't mean that when I get involved
with a a particular group or community
that I am going to be
uh praising everything they do because I
don't think that's necessarily helpful
rather in the words of David Graber uh
my interest is in uh trying to see
what's happening and then uh offering
those ideas back to the people who are
involved in those efforts uh not as
prescriptions but as contributions as
possibilities or as gifts so um yeah
even though some of those gifts may be
of a bit more critical nature it's
always in the interest of furthering the
cause defended by those uh those V
various groups um I'm also very
interested in uh in the approach of
action research uh which is uh a very
open-ended and flexible approach to
creating knowledge uh in which one keeps
going through cycles of action and
reflection and planning Etc which is
also participatory so this is something
really important uh all I'm going to be
sharing with you today is not just my
little insight but is actually has been
co-produced with dozens of people uh as
co- researchers involved in at different
uh levels of depth and it's also an
approach which encourages one to always
keep reflecting on one's assumptions and
uh where we're coming from etc
etc um so the two communities I'm going
to be talking about today are
prefigurative online communities so that
means that they are um people who
interact online um around a shared
purpose interest need and who seek to
embody in how they function those forms
of social relations and decision-making
culture and Human Experience that they
consider ultimately beneficial for the
whole of society so to put it simply
it's like being the change that you want
to see in the world right so uh this
those are the kind of communities that
I've been U working with and researching
with um so the first one I'm going to be
talking about is called Fair Coop and
the second won uh the Deep adaptation
Forum uh I also want to mention that uh
I many of my insights that I'm going to
be talking about today came from um my
involvement in uh fields of discussion
around decolonial theory and practice um
notably the diversity and decolonizing
circle which I was part of for a time in
the in the Deep adaptation forum and uh
with gesturing towards the colonial
Futures Collective which is arts and
research uh Collective of activists and
researchers and artists and Educators
from the global North and Global South
uh I'm not part of this Collective but
much of uh what it has been doing has
been very uh useful to me very
insightful um so to put it uh in a
nutshell what I'm going to be um talking
about today is a theory um which I'm
just beginning to outline uh of how
radical radical change may be created in
prefigurative
communities so um this theory is uh
articulated in two parts I think that
the first set of broad conditions has to
do with the presence of um a social
ecosystem which favors trust and
belonging conflict transformation
critical discernment and distributed
leadership so that's what I call a
community of care and critical
discernment and the second scent set of
of conditions which is more underground
is a melium of change focused
initiatives that are trying to compost
four denials of mity coloniality so this
may sound a bit complex I'm going to uh
to try and go through those uh those
different parts uh one by one and
hopefully it will become a bit
clearer um so I'm going to first talk
about the forest the four trees that we
saw um at the top here and uh I'm going
to illustrate this part uh by talking
about this first Community called Fair
Coop um it was mostly active from 2014
to 2019 and was started in the region of
Catalonia in Spain uh by uh radical
mostly Anarchist leaning activists um
around someone called enri Duran whom
some of you may know and then spread
around different places in Europe and uh
around the
world um so fair corp's aim was mostly
around uh creating new economic uh and
social structures so that was um how
their objective was to create an
alternative economic field which would
be post capitalist and which would be um
enabling people to slowly um extract
themselves from the exploitative
capitalist systems that we know know and
to start living very different
Lifestyles based on solidarity mutual
help Etc uh all of this centered around
uh an ecological cryptocurrency called
faircoin so as I was really interested
in in all this field of alternative
currencies at the time I really wanted
to to get deeply into uh into this
community to understand what was going
on um so for for those few years fairco
Fair Coop was quite successful at
uniting
hundreds of people around various
projects so we have here Freedom Corp uh
which is um something oops um that
enables people to um uh launch their own
business and to uh to be um sending out
invoices without relying on uh on Banks
and and
States um we have uh the bank of the
commons a really interesting project
also which is like an alternative banks
for an alternative bank for
activists um an online Marketplace uh
called uh use faircoin all of this using
this cryptocurrency of faircoin as the
kind of lifeblood uh and being connected
with uh dozens of local groups of
activists around different
countries so uh this was uh really
impressive to me uh and really inspiring
uh as uh a collection of tools
and uh alternative structures enabling
people to do interesting
things however when I started my
research within the community I found
that it was deeply fractured by
conflict and uh actually in a state of
Crisis so I asked people there to work
with me to figure out what had happened
and what could we learn from uh those
problems in order to maybe do better in
in the
future um so this will enable us to go
through those four trees one by
one
first I think that uh a community of
care and critical discernment needs to
Foster trust and
belonging and uh this has to happen
through an ethics of care and uh
centering
relationships um in order to uh help
people to deeply trust one another and
collaborate better with one another but
also to better live with the uncertainty
and the state of uh increasing ambiguity
and volatility that is uh a
characteristic of our world nowadays and
it's becoming all the more important
with a growing social ecological crisis
and intensifying state repression also
and authoritarianism we have to learn
how to trust one another and find a
state of belonging with the the groups
Affinity groups that we are part of
um so in fairp I found that there was
actually much more attention to
developing software and tools rather
than centering care and and
relationships and so when conflict
erupted the fabric of the community was
actually quite
weak second condition uh is around
conflict I believe that uh conflict
transformation in any Community is
something that is absolutely crucial
because conflict will happen and so how
can we better normalize it and make it
something that is okay to be in conflict
with other people and this requires
containers for conflict to be addressed
and to be transformed so it requires
processes and agreements for people to
actually feel safe to go through steps
to understand one another better and to
then develop uh maybe an even stronger
sense of trust and uh Stronger bonds of
of uh of community and
comradeship now this again was not
present in Fair cor there was uh there
was a lack of conflict management
processes and so when conflict uh
appeared then uh it was really difficult
to work
with I also think that critical
discernment in a community is vital to
hear a dissident voices and to keep
reflecting on what are we doing this for
and how are we uh going about fulfilling
our mission and purpose and uh are we
still on the right
track and to favor discussions that are
critical on those different uh on those
different aspects on the personal and
Collective level uh feels just extremely
uh important for for this uh this
ongoing reflection to happen um and
again in faop there was little space for
critical voices um which f felt uh many
of the the people who were critical of
the Govern the governance for example of
the community felt silenced and then
conflict just blew out of
proportions and finally U leadership I
think is also uh an aspect which is
often neglected in particularly
horizontal aspiring communities uh
leadership is often equated uh with top-
down hierarchies and business suits and
what have you and I also uh uh felt this
way for a while but um there is a way
for leadership to be distributed to be
emergent uh to be uh for conditions to
be created so that anyone with an
inspiring idea and uh who feels
enthusiasm for a project can actually
feel capable of stepping up and doing
something cool with other people who
will join this
person uh and this also requires
recognizing the skill and experience of
what I call Key enablers so people who
are in the community and who have uh a
lot to offer for the benefit of the
collective
learning uh in Fair corop leadership was
very much concentrated within uh a few
people from what I understood and there
were also accountability issues so that
the leaders who did not consider
themselves leaders but who were
considered leaders by other people uh
were actually yeah not really held to
account for when they were doing
things
so in in summary for fair corop um I
have been really impressed with all the
energy and enthusiasm and skill and all
the powerful tools that have been
created within this community with the
funding and enthusiasm that they managed
to raise however uh it seems that there
was too much focus on Tech engineering
and a little too little on relational
glue holding people together so that
when an obstacle uh or crisis emerges in
the community people can can still be
together and work it
out now I'm going to uh focus a bit more
on the second set of um conditions that
we saw in the the earlier image so the
underground thing and I'm going to do
this through uh the example of a second
Community the Deep adaptation Forum
which was started in
2019 um so contrary to Fair the Deep
adaptation Forum was less focused on
creating alternative social and um
economic structures and much more on uh
fostering cultural change deep cultural
change um which is uh usually phrased in
the network as enabling and embodying
loving responses to the observation or
anticipation of the collapse of modern
industrial societies so in the Deep
adaptation Forum participants consider
that uh industrial societies modern
industrial societies um are going to
collapse either this is likely or it's
inevitable or it's already started and
so the idea is well how can we deal with
the situation and create cultural change
which is uh on the level of this state
of Crisis that we're in and this is both
on the individual and Collective and
even societal
skills
um so uh the Deep adaptation forum is uh
a Loosely connected bunch of uh
self-organized groups um and Platforms
in various languages um
mostly in English at the moment but
there's also a very big Hungarian group
and then French group um and um it is uh
held together or enabled through a
scaffolding of self-organization so
groups have some processes that they can
easily apply in order to uh to start
their own
thing in the Deep adaptation Forum I
found that two of the Trees of uh
generative communities were also lacking
but that two seem to be quite well in
place but I'm now going to speak a bit
more about this underground part so the
melium of change to compost denials of
modernity uh first I don't know if
everyone is um fluent with the term
modernity coloniality uh a very simple
and simplistic way of putting it uh is
that everything that uh we enjoy as
modern human beings all our Comforts and
uh
privileges have a dark side side of
exploitation and extraction so for
example a person enjoying the use of of
a laptop well comes
with um a child slave laborer in the
Congo to give a very uh kind of uh
caricature example in in Cobalt Minds so
this is how sociologists have been
forging this term modernity coloniality
as a single word because the bright side
is really really hard to uh distinguish
from the darker
side um so the um gesturing towards the
colonial Futures Collective consider
that deep cultural change can only
happen once four denials of modernity
coloniality are addressed and I'm going
to give you an overview of those those
four denials which are like toxic
elements in our cultural soil which are
preventing the social change from really
happening so it's like obstacles to the
change that we need the first is the
denial of unsustainability so the denial
of the limits of the planet um and that
we are living inside and being part of a
finite Earth metabolism which cannot
sustain exponential growth and
consumption and extraction and
exploitation and expropriation
indefinitely this is something that
cannot happen and yet most of us in our
societies are looking away from this
there's the denial of systemic
historical and ongoing violence and
complicity in harm uh which is connected
to the image I I showed just uh a bit
earlier so the fact that we are enjoying
um everything in our societies because
of exploitation because of ongoing
violence and so we are complicit in this
state of violence and
exploitation the denial of entanglement
which is uh the fact that we are all
connected as part of this living planet
metabolism and we cannot distinguish we
cannot separate an individual from
another and Humanity from nature and um
a race from another race we are all we
are all part of the same thing the same
uh the same living body that is
biointelligence
and finally there's the denial of the
magnitude and complexity of the problems
that we need to face together so we we
tend to look for quick fixes uh a new
technology to solve climate change
another one to solve plastic pollution
whatever and instead we don't really dig
deep enough to see that it's much more
complicated than
that so how are those four denials uh
addressed in the Deep adaptation
Forum um first of all the denial of
unsustainability and of the magnitude of
the issues were sort of baked into
the the framing of the network when it
started because of this framing of
collapsing Society uh due to the
unsustainability of our modern and
Colonial societies so those two denials
are sort of part of the the discourse or
the the conversations going on
everywhere in the
network the denal of entanglement is a
bit less U closely considered some
groups do try to um have process C es in
which they recognize uh for example how
um ideas and emotions may circulate from
one person to another how we are
connected with the wider uh forces of
Life uh and the planet and the universe
and what have you but it's still
something which is only for certain
groups and likewise for systemic
Injustice uh it has more recently become
uh more Central as part of the disc SCE
of the network but uh for many years it
was um an area of conversation which was
mostly carried by one group The
diversity and decolonizing circle which
um I mentioned
earlier so um this leads us to this um
uh idea of the
melium what do I mean by that well my
sense is that for those four extremely
complex and deep set of sets of issues
to be addressed one person or one group
obviously cannot be enough what is
needed is interconnected projects and
networks and communities focused on
social learning that will work on those
toxic elements in the ground just like
fungi are vital to compost uh organic
matter uh in the soil so it's about
creating those uh those connections of
uh information and resources and
participation and involvement so that uh
the this deep change can can possibly
happen in the Deep adaptation Forum uh I
found that there were some small cells
you might say of potential change that
was starting to emerge thanks to the
online tools that people were using on
some of those aspects but I also found
that these cells were not really closely
connected enough so for example you
might have a person involved in the
diversity and decolonizing circle really
focused on systemic Injustice but not
really focused say on well entanglement
and the interconnectedness of everything
um so um uh just like faop I don't think
that the Deep adaptation Forum have uh
had enough potential to create radical
Collective
change so to wrap up um my uh little
outline of a theory which I've just been
sharing with you today uh can be
summarized as such so in the right
conditions uh social conditions of
mutual care and conflict transformation
distributed leadership and critical
discernment a community can help really
useful initiatives to emerge and then
these initiatives when confronting the
denials of modernity and collaborating
and networking very closely can help
deep personal and Collective changes to
happen so for people to undergo
transformative changes in their lives
personally and collectively
so um ICT uh information and
communication tools can be really useful
for people from all around the world to
be part of groups in which they can have
this kind of social learning ongoing and
to connect people and ideas but we
shouldn't forget obviously that tools
can also be obstacles to the learning
and to social change so um we can think
of the example of cobalt mining for
example for computer
um uh but also e Chambers how we tend to
try to uh stay within our little um
comfortable bubbles of Truth and
conversation and not really hear what
other people are saying or just
demonizing them on social media when
they see seem to be saying something
that doesn't really fit with our
worldview uh polarization around certain
issues um etc etc so um or even the idea
that technology itself is the solution
to everything so that's also something
that we shouldn't fall into I think uh
secondly inner behavioral change changes
have to also be to spread and to become
embodied into new social political
economic structures it shouldn't be
enough to just be content with our
little groups of uh conversations and
then just let Uh current governments
stay as they
are um so in pursuing social change my
sense is that we have to pay attention
to process and be humble in the words of
uh the gesturing towards the colonial
Futures Collective how can we move
together differently towards a future
that is undefined without arrogance
self-righteousness dogmatism and
perfectionism that's my my question for
you
today so um I'm really looking forward
to deepening uh this area of uh
Explorations uh with other people
uh with other collectives so if you have
um an interest in in collaborating uh in
discussing those ideas further um please
get in touch uh there's my email there
as well as the the address of the
website on which you can find much more
about all of this and I've tried to
create summaries which are maybe a bit
more accessible to non-academics um yeah
because I know that reading a thesis is
not exactly
something that everyone should have to
do ever in their lives or writing one
obviously thank you very
much thank you D for your interesting
presentation inspiring presentation I
might say so we have a bit of time for
Q&A and there's also the single agent so
everybody who uh is listening or
watching ing from the internet # 33 C3
soua is the hashtag for participating in
RCR madon um and I would also start with
the signal Angel if there is any
question from the
internet hi so there's a bit of feedback
which is a great
talk and uh the question would be um are
there strategies for minimizing the
chance of humans with undesired
characteristics power hungry trolling
narcissistic greedy and so on gaining
roles of influence in anarchistic
communities H
um there are strategies and I don't
think I I would um either be qualified
or have the time to to to say too much
uh there are books like the empowerment
manual uh written by veteran activist
starhulk that I would really recommend
that touches on on those issues uh my
sense is that if a if an um an anarchist
group can rely on a set of commonly
agreed uh principles of operation and um
like a um a baseline reference point for
certain kinds of behaviors so for
example how do we deal with someone who
is um being very destructive in their uh
in the way they speak or or act then um
this can already be extremely helpful
but it's it's really about this uh
self-empowerment I think to uh to
maintain an atmosphere that is helpful
to everyone for everyone to learn and to
to want to keep uh their relationships
going and their collaborations
going okay um reminder if you want to
ask questions here on side line up at
the microphones for here in the hall and
next question is from microphone 2 yes
uh thank you uh interesting talk um I
was wondering you took uh some existing
pre-existing communities uh and were
looking at you know break points and so
on in these communities do you have any
suggestions uh to like what what can you
do to if you want to start the community
what kind of preconditions would would
have to be met and so on specifically
thinking about how in the fery wor
there's a lot of discussion about just a
bunch of service with this community
building uh if you have an instance how
can you
make it more like a a community thank
you thanks for the question
well my sense is that uh Community
weaving is an art and network weaving is
also another word that is used and
um um
my number one response would
be uh to really nurture relationships
between people make it fun make it in uh
something that is uh energizing for
people to connect and to want to be in
relationship and to collaborate together
so this goes through uh not only finding
projects that are uh federating people
but also uh for people to have occasions
to reveal more about themselves about
their passions about their fears about
their their dreams and and for for all
of this to come out because I think we
are in we live in a culture that is very
action focused we want to get things
done we want to be busy all the time and
this can be really helpful for
interesting projects to uh to emerge and
develop but we sacrifice a lot of the
essential dimensions of being a human in
the process and I think this is perhaps
one of the things that happened with
with a corop um so um I would just
encourage anyone wanting to to start a
community to start small and uh with
people who are really interested in a in
a um a similar range of of topics and
then to really look for ways of
encouraging deep so deep connections
between them so that they they really
have this sense of trust and um and
interest in one another and then this
can slowly build as the culture
solidifies more people will be attracted
to this uh group of people and maybe uh
something quite big can actually begin
like
this okay is there another question from
the internet because they're not here go
ahead um the question is um is it even
possible to establish a sense of
belonging for beings that are by default
so inherently different you perhaps can
find some common ground but a total
sense of belonging how would you even
try to attempt this and and even if you
succeed how you keep um the
continuity well um I I wouldn't know
what a total sense of belonging would
mean um my sense is that every single
person has uh a sense of belonging to a
lot of different groups so if I think of
myself for example I I feel a sense of
belonging to my family to my groups of
friends to the people I work with but
it's just it's um it's different each
time there's different nuances and and
textures um so um I wouldn't say that we
have to aim for people to become um
blood brothers and sisters with everyone
that they work with forever or you know
I mean it's especially through the
internet that's kind of complicated but
uh at least to have uh a sense that
I really like hanging out with those
folks I like having those conversations
I like working with them I like uh you
know meeting them and um and trying to
create a better world with them that's
already something that uh will slowly
create a sense of belonging I think uh
particularly if we uh we understand how
the characteristics of those people that
we like and uh and enjoy interacting
with uh correspond to some of of our own
characteristics so be it dreams be it um
domains of uh of
competence um yeah all those things so
yeah just don't aim for total and
absolute belonging definitely not but uh
just try to build a little more
everywhere you are uh would be my my
answer okay microphone three
please yes uh yeah thank you for your
talk um I was curious uh and I was uh
wondering if you would like to share a
little bit more about the uh par process
the participatory action research and in
particular I was curious to learn a
little bit about how these you know four
trees and for subterranean clusters how
they kind of emerged in the course of
your uh working with your co-researchers
and uh yeah how that what that process
looked like a little bit more concretely
thank
you well um so first of all the the four
um denials of modernity underground are
not my work they are from the gesturing
towards the colonial Futures Collective
but um I just find it a really useful
metaphor to use so I integrated it
within uh my my reflection as for the
four trees um I would say that they
emerged from uh repeated
conversations um within um both the Deep
adaptation forum and the fair Coop
communities that um
um um led to many overlaps forming so
for example when a certain group was
saying well you know we really like to
work together and we've been doing all
those great things because of this
element that element that factor and
then another group said well yeah us too
we have this one and that one and so
there's um it led to uh creating a kind
of heat map I would say of uh really
interesting uh recurring patterns that
uh that seem to be uh to be use for um
then I would say that the the four trees
um is a formulation that uh I came up
with in the end in the process of
writing my thesis but yeah all of the
the work of identifying those patterns
was Collective and um involved dozens of
people through different um contexts
that were really focused on um examining
how we learn in our communities and our
groups so um yeah it was this
participatory process that uh in the end
I just crystallized in a in a few uh
suggestions okay we have time for one
more questions is that are you queuing
okay then microphone one
please all right uh thanks again for
your talk um it was a really nice um
presented so very comprehensible and um
my question is um you talk about
the actually even the the recommendation
from the first questions to um to focus
on bonding groups and to socialize um so
did you um get further into the details
of how they do it so do they use um
certain Concepts siding from sociocracy
or um even other Concepts to use for
collaboration and for um actual social
interaction
thanks
um I would say there are two uh maybe
broad um set of
um again recurring patterns in
developing relationships on the one hand
you have uh structures and processes and
so you mentioned sociocracy for example
so this is something that is used a lot
in the Deep adaptation forum and which
um is this methodology that really helps
people to uh to feel empowered when it's
well done and uh to distribute um yeah
distribute the sense of of collective
agency and decision- making so this is
extremely important as again a set of
agreements that people can fall back on
uh when uh to to feel reassured that
their voice will be heard um and uh you
have uh also different um yeah different
kinds of um
uh say group building uh processes you
know using a structured approach so that
everyone shares their dream for example
shares their fears shares where why they
are here you know and using those kind
of processes particularly early on in
the life of of a group can be extremely
helpful but then there's also a second
kind of uh big set of um of practices
which is
just uh impossible to even formalize
because it's the basics of um inter ING
with people so it's like finding time
you know like around the water cooler
you know in the metaphor of a workplace
but it's um even when you meet online
with people find some times where you're
just chatting where you're just uh
sharing a coffee sharing drinks and uh
joking around and getting this sense of
uh uh getting a bit below the surface of
the person and you know getting um more
familiar with their with with the the
real human uh behind the group
participant and um this cannot really be
taught it's just a matter of finding the
right Vibes that work with people to uh
uh to to rub off one another a bit more
um yeah but both are really important I
think so speaking about chatting where
will people be finding you here at
Congress can they get in touch with you
to continue the discussion well uh I
tend to hang out quite a bit around um
the um uh fth
uh stand so the bits and boa uh area
otherwise they can also just email me at
this email address and we'll find a way
to connect I think perfect this
concludes this session and a big round
of of Applause for
D
[Applause]
thanks
[Music]
la