[OSList] The Tyranny of Structurelessness

[Harold Shinsato via OSList]

Hi Michael,

This is an inquiry that I enjoy and which I keep spinning around. It seems
crystal clear to me that the topic of tyranny has value and sheds light.
And it's also paradoxically true that the right/wrong victim/perpetrator
narrative disempowers and lays blame. It relieves responsibility.

Holding these two contradictory truths at the same time let's me wonder how
I contribute to tyrannical power structures (flows), and how I can learn
from them, or help them flow into something else.

The Tyranny of Structurelessness essay was introduced to me at the Agile
2012 conference in Texas by an agilista cognoscenti, who also half jokingly
called Agile a "liberation theology". It popped up for me again by a young
attendee at WOSONOS 2013 in Florida, before the difficult and disorienting
process of choosing the location for 2014 in Serbia, who advocated a formal
consensus process created by the Food Not Bombs activist, C.T. Butler.

I love OST for how it tends to plant and nurture responsibility in
communities and organizations, and at the same time, the beauty of Open
Space Technology seems to be mostly hidden under a basket.

I don't see a closing to the inquiry questions you raise any time soon. The
questions are likely more permanent than any experiments we try. But the
questions have led me to explore authority in "The Power of TED", Group
Relations, Dr. Christopher Avery's work on Responsibility, C.T. Butler and
formal consensus, and Sociocracy. But, no final answers - if there could be
such a thing.

Harold

On Oct 8, 2015 3:23 PM, "Michael Herman via OSList" <
oslist at lists.openspacetech.org> wrote:
>
> i love this bit about bucky the verb, harold.
>
> what i don't understand about this tyranny business is that it sounds
like somebody, the system or some people are doing some other people wrong.
 alternatively, that somehow -- naturally or maybe just unconsciously or
unintentionally -- winners and losers, ins and outs, are being created.  i
can't tell if the suggestion is that this is a malicious thing to be
defeated, a natural thing to observe, or some kind of problem to be solved.

>
> leaving aside those instances when people do truly horrible things to
others, how does this tyranny story square with the core open space story
that each of us is ultimately responsible for our own experience, we all
have two feet or some equivalent and need to use them for ourselves?
>
> how does this essay inform your practice of opening space?  or
participating on the list?  if everything in the essay is true, what should
the next wosonos invitation process look like?  can we put this in practice
terms?   what is one to do in the presence of tyrannizing
structurelessness?  what has anyone done in the past, in those instances
you've seen, that made some positive difference?
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Michael Herman
> Michael Herman Associates
> http://MichaelHerman.com
> http://OpenSpaceWorld.org
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