StableBase

MeatballWiki | RecentChanges | Random Page | Indices | Categories

Copied from SunirShah's diary, 10:50pm, March 1, 2004; please totally rewrite it...

: Thinking about a new pattern called StableBase, where a healthy community fabric quickly assesses problems, diagnosis their causes, and determines solutions that will alleviate those problems, rather than letting problems get out of hand. Not always successfully forming solutions, but always progressively. Letting problems grow out of control where animosity rises will only cause problems to fold in on themselves to the point where they become mutually reinforcing. A new substructure of society will form based on the tensions between peoples and their collective society (-ies), for instance a powerful criminal military, OrganizedCrime? (a pattern I've wanted to write for awhile), segregation, Hate, and so on. Rather, if you maintain a StableBase of peace, order, and good governance (POGG), and you don't create roadblocks for the society to maintain POGG, then it's like iterative improvement, and problems remain compartmentalized, separated, divided, and therefore conquerable. Moreover, people will be free to be good, which is something almost everyone genetically wants to be, but without a secure environment, they cannot. Thus, the 99% of good people in a stable country will quickly a) notice, and b) defend against the 1% of bad people if they aren't distracted by the insecurity--and noise--of an unstable country.

: That is, if you have fewer problems, you can swallow more complex, progressive solutions. But if you already have a lot of problems, you cannot even possibly get everyone to agree to a solution. Trust is lost, the gulf of a SeparationOfPositions? has been created, profiteering and other stakes have been driven into the negative emotional territory. The complaints about the problems of democracy become more prominent, and the benefits of democracy become less possible. Slowly, your society may even move towards a totalitarianism, as it may ride to power the Hatred from some majority towards the rest of the minorities.

: But a StableBase gives you breathing room, and the security to take a risk in crossing the floor to talk to your opponent. We may be different backgrounds, but we're all people. Trouble is, this is hard work, but it is a hell of a lot easier if you already have a StableBase. Once you have created a violent SeparationOfPositions?, you are in serious trouble. So much so, it's worth doing all that you (on all sides) can to maintain the stability.

: In Ireland I was told a story about how kids are taught Catholics vs. Protestants, and how they are told it's based on some vague philosophical issues, like Protestants don't believe in Confession, and therefore we must fight. But as you grow older, you realize it's more about just protecting yourself and your interests so you may go about and live your own life as you choose. Rich Ulster Anglo-Saxxonites vs. a Catholic Irish majority, both communities having values and belief systems and filial relations and long term dreams and plans that differ from one another, and both needing the other's resources to make their own dreams come true. So, maybe negotiation of one resource for the other would be the reasonable course, but once blood spills... you lose your StableBase. And then you get parties who have invested in the negative terrain, like the IRA and the Ulster Loyalists, who want to perpetuate the conflict to maintain their own interests and power.

: I mean, we could repeat and rinse ad nauseum; Israel & Palestine, Pakistan & India, e.g. ...

: Just like after WWII, American industries didn't want to spend all that money just to convert all those factories back to the far less profitable xenophobic, pre-military usages. Instead, they had an profitable interest in maintaining a strong military, and thus a need to justify it. At least that is the complaint that has been lobbed against the Military-Industrial Complex for quite some time. But for countries who could go tabula rasa, like Germany and Japan, they could build back to a StableBase, and then prosper.

: Or a country like Canada that stays vigilantly in the middle of the road as much as possible so we don't get too far away from a StableBase that we lose our peaceful, affluent, free society. Because that would suck.

Cool idea Sunir. Here is the language I use in helping people start working together in MeatSpace. I think it is important to begin by BuildingRelationships?. From there you can use DirectAndHonest? communication styles. One way I can think about is to start identifying problems, i.e. WikiSpam (currently the ErnstGruber type, but I remember something when I first got here called BlackIce? or something), ForestFire, etc... - Best, MarkDilley

StableBase

Discussion