[P2P-F] Maps of the colonization of p2p ?

Mon Feb 4 16:12:32 CET 2013

Hello Dante,

I've been busy and haven’t had time to respond properly.
P2P communities can share similar features to monastic communities.
The importance of knowledge, access to it and its reproduction are
central to both.
If it was knowledge and intellectual stimulation that a person craved
it seems monasteries were to the place to be in the middle ages. The
study is also interesting in that it graphs incentives for why people
joined monastic communities. In terms of having something to offer
Monasteries must in some way compete with the outside world. In a
social environment like that of the middle ages they prospered as what
they offered, security, education and a certain quality of life where
not easy to come by. However today things are different. Society has
developed, we have police and military to provide security, we have
greater access to educational opportunities and quality of life has
greatly improved. So what is it the monasteries offer today? While I'm
not particularly knowledgeable on the topic I imagine since they too
have out-sourced much of their needs to today's industrial economy
they are no longer the multi-disciplinary centres of learning they
once were. They no longer compete in the same way and don't have the
same appeal. Interest in religious vocations is falling not only in
the west but in the east too.
So a large part of the historical success of monasteries can be
attributed to what they could offer in a practical sense to
communities. While we could say isn't it great that today monks and
nuns do not have to worry about all these things in the same way and
that they are free to focus more on their spiritual efforts.
The other side of the coin is that they can become more disconnected
from communities and if they must rely on dogma and doctrine alone for
their survival they will have a hard time in societies where people
are well educated and independently minded.
Networked technology also allows us to push and develop ideas and
technology in a much more efficient manner than ever before. It is a
shame that those who might otherwise be interested in pursuing the
spiritual life and the monastic lifestyle have to choose between
non-networked and networked spiritual communities that live in a
distributed manner.  I guess intentional communities are where a
middle ground can be explored.

I do think there is something lost as society becomes more secular. I
grew up Catholic but I no longer consider myself as such. However so
many family and community events revolve around the church. It brings
people together in a way. While I'm not a believer. I think it is
important for communities to do that to come together around shared
values and to reflect on the greater good. That can get lost.

I have other thoughts on all this but they will have to wait for
another time as I have to go.

Best

Kevin

On 1 February 2013 07:16, Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thank you for this interesting thread ! :)
> ( on the economy of monasticism )
>
> Could some of us see ourselves in some ways as monastics of a digital /
> "post print" age ( albeit distributed / spread out ? )
>
> and, if so, still in a stage of formation ?  with a convergence of
> interdependent viable self sustaining production infrastructures still to
> develop ?
>
> Does the approach ( memes ? ) some of us use on this list differ from the
> communes cited and compared with the monastic communities in that book ?
>
> How do monastic or intentional community modes of production , governance
> and property relate or differ to p2p approaches ?  Are such monastic orders
> "blue" ( authoritarian ), and are intentional communities they are compared
> to ( from the 60 ies, and after ? ) "green" memes ? ( egalitarian ? )
>
>
> If this emerges as yellow, turquoise and beyond, what would it look like ?
>
> How have ( if they have ) old monasteries adapted to changes in memes ?
>
> What is the level of interconnected critical diversity required to enable
> viable self sustaining p2p production / governance / property systems ?
>
> What would the relation of a p2p viable system be to space / distance ?
>
> Is there anywhere on earth where a diversity of systems, such as documented
> on p2pfoundation , appropedia, etc  already converge as to mutually self
> sustain ?
>
> What would its cost be, in terms of infrastructure development ? ( if/when
> acquiring production infrastructure on the capitalist monetized markets )
> And what transition dependencies does it have in relation to current (
> industrial era ? ) infrastructures ?
>
> Based on physical distance factors , what have been past conditions of a
> certain form of emergence, and how would it compare with today ?
>
> What would the maps look like, if some aspects of p2p meme development would
> be considered as colonizing monastics ?
> Monastics of a certain meme ? Where are such memes most represented and
> interconnected ?
>
> Is there a need for a critical mass combined with a critical diversity
> within a specific geographical area and along certain levels of
> interconnectedness within such potential systems ?
>
> What would its current main development centres be ? Berlin and San
> Francisco ?  or simply... the internet... and any place with high internet
> connectivity and creative / information based economies ?
>
> And if so, what do we potentially see emerging from a combination of
> internet and spatial face to face dynamics ?   Did our interactions on the
> internet lead to any of us converging and living together ? ( open source
> ecology project maybe ? )
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 2:54 PM, Kevin F <kev.flanagan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Anna,
>>
>> Monastics also provided services to the communities of which they are
>> a part. In the past the monasteries were great repositories of
>> knowledge. They were not limited to scriptural works alone. In the pre
>> print era scribes also produced copies of philosophical, technical and
>> historical works. They provided opportunities for people to educate
>> themselves and in turn those same people became stewards of that
>> knowledge which was of general benefit to communities that grew up
>> around the monasteries.
>> Now as you say it is true that as celibate institutions they fail to
>> reproduce themselves. However it can also be said that the knowledge
>> of which the monasteries were caretakers contributed to the
>> sustainability and in turn the re-productivity of the lay communities
>> and that seeing monasteries as socially valuable in this way was one
>> reason people from those communities chose to join.
>> Of course this is not the only motivation to join. For some it was to
>> pursue the spiritual life, for others it was to escape poverty, while
>> others joined because of social or family pressure.
>> One of the big rules was that monks and nuns should not own property.
>> If monks or nuns were to have families things become more complicated
>> as humans tend to look out for the welfare of their own before that of
>> the community as a whole. One of the arguments for celibacy in the
>> church is that it acts as an anti corruption measure. When Priests,
>> Abbots and Nuns have families it is easy for mini dynasties to emerge
>> as quite quickly it is the son of the Abbot who inherits his fathers
>> prestigious and influential role. This situation is avoided when they
>> are required to be celibate.
>> The other advantage of a celibate community is that its members have
>> more time to focus on intellectual work. When this is applied to
>> technical problems, inventive and innovative solutions can be shared,
>> improving the health and sustainability of the broader lay community.
>> All of these dynamics change as societies become better off. Today we
>> no longer depend on monasteries to preserve and reproduce important
>> texts. Nor do we depend on them for education or health. None of this
>> was true 500 years ago. As the quality of life improves for people
>> across the globe the appeal of monastic life is waning. Everywhere
>> fewer and fewer young people are taking vocations. The tables have
>> turned in a way. While at one time communities depended on monasteries
>>  today most monasteries depend heavily on charity. What they have to
>> offer society more generally has come into question and their futures
>> are indeed uncertain.
>> I do not wish to romanticise the historical role of monasteries, I
>> just want to point out that their social function has changed over
>> time. While I agree that today these institutions have become in some
>> sense parasitic my point is that it was not always so.
>> What I gained from reading this paper was more from the analysis of
>> incentives and motivations both of which can be applied to analysis of
>> intentional communities. Also worth considering is the power of shared
>> values that may be not be so strong in more secular arrangements.
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Kevin
>>
>>
>> On 30 January 2013 19:22, Anna Harris <anna at shsh.co.uk> wrote:
>> > The element left out of this analysis is the fact that monasteries are
>> > single sex establishments which do not have to cope with child rearing.
>> > They
>> > are therefor parasitic in the sense that they live off the produce of
>> > the
>> > society at large which provides them with the personnel while leaving
>> > them
>> > free to indulge in their 'spiritual capital'.
>> >
>> > There is no doubt in my mind that child rearing is the most difficult
>> > and
>> > undervalued profession, since it is performed in the main voluntarily by
>> > untrained people out of love, and therefore does not appear to require
>> > any
>> > specific investment. Consequently it can be ignored as in the above
>> > discussion as though living in a secular socialist commune could be
>> > compared
>> > to living in a monastery.
>> >
>> > I am not decrying the need for a spiritual element in helping to sustain
>> > indivuals and groups. Indeed I think it is essential to bring meaning in
>> > the
>> > present situation of imminent 'collapse of civilisation', but it needs
>> > to be
>> > able to be interwoven into our everyday lives, not hived off into
>> > separate
>> > cloisters which may be beneficial for the inmates but do not really
>> > contribute to the sustenance of the rest of us.
>> >
>> > Anna
>> >
>> > On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 7:05 AM, Kevin F <kev.flanagan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Hello,
>> >>
>> >> I've been reading 'The Economics of Monasticism by Nathan Smith' over
>> >> the past week. He makes some interesting points in comparing the
>> >> sustainability of intentional communities with that of Christian
>> >> monasteries. Citing a study by Rost et al (2008) that
>> >> "An average longevity of 463 years makes monasteries more durable not
>> >> only than firms, but even than most states." and further suggesting
>> >> possibilities as to what makes them so successful.
>> >>
>> >> I will add it to the wiki when I get a chance over the coming days.
>> >>
>> >> The Economics of Monasticism - Nathan Smith
>> >>
>> >> "Since their emergence in ancient times, Christian monasteries have
>> >> proven to be among the most durable of all human institutions, and in
>> >> the medieval centuries made enormous contributions to the emergence of
>> >> Western civilization. They are organized internally on socialist
>> >> lines: monks own no property and owe total obedience to the abbot,
>> >> making the monastery a miniature ‘centrally planned economy.’ A
>> >> puzzling contrast exists between the longevity of monasteries and the
>> >> transience of secular socialist communes. This paper presents a
>> >> theoretical model which shows why voluntary socialist communes might
>> >> be viable despite ‘shirking’ problems, yet fail due to turnover, and
>> >> how worship, which induces people with high ‘spiritual capital’ to
>> >> self-select into the monastery and then grows that spiritual capital
>> >> through ‘learning-by-doing,’ can solve the turnover problem and make a
>> >> worship-based socialist commune—a monastery—stable. Monasticism, like
>> >> the market, is a form of ‘spontaneous order,’ but unlike the market,
>> >> it does not depend on third-party enforcement (e.g., by a state) to
>> >> function: this explains why monasticism (unlike capitalism) was able
>> >> to thrive in the anarchic Dark Ages. Monasteries, in principle and
>> >> largely in practice, are a form of society based on consent of the
>> >> governed, unlike liberal states which preach but do not practice
>> >> consensual governance, and it is interesting to juxtapose the real,
>> >> live ‘social contracts’ of the monasteries with the notional social
>> >> contracts of liberal political theory."
>> >>
>> >> http://www.thearda.com/workingpapers/monasticism.asp
>> >>
>> >> --
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