[OSList] The Tyranny of Structurelessness

Pernilla Luttropp via OSList oslist at lists.openspacetech.org
Tue Oct 13 12:07:21 PDT 2015


Hi!
I just want to add another perspective on ³structures². It¹s about the
structures of oppression that is so hard to be aware of, especially if you
are looking from the angle of a privileged position. I think Marylin Frey, a
philosophy professor and feminist, describes it very well in this quote:

³Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage,
you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before you is
determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire, up and
down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not just fly
around the wire any time it wanted to go somewhere. Furthermore, even if,
one day at a time, you myopically inspected each wire, you still could not
see why a bird would have trouble going past the wires to get anywhere.
There is no physical property of any one wire, nothing that the closest
scrutiny could discover, that will reveal how a bird could be inhibited or
harmed by it except in the most accidental way. It is only when you step
back, stop looking at the wires one by one, microscopically, and take a
macroscopic view of the whole cage, that you can see why the bird does not
go anywhere; and then you will see it in a moment. It will require no great
subtlety of mental powers. It is perfectly obvious that the bird is
surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which
would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relations to
each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon.²
from Politics Of Reality ­ Essays In Feminist Theory (1983)

/Pernilla


Den 2015-10-10 14:44, skrev "Harold Shinsato via OSList"
<oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>:

> 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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