Week One+entry

          This week has been quite a ride for me.  I arrived with my daughter via train on Monday, met Arthur at the train station and was taken to the beautiful farm house where we were set up with a room.  The other participants and support team were cooking dinner in the kitchen and playing ping pong in the rec room.  My daughter jumped right in playing ping pong and I felt immediately at home.  In the evening we sat down, introduced ourselves, and shared our personal intentions for the program.  I could tell this was a great group of people and exactly where I need to be.

          On Tuesday we went to the space at Solaqua and jumped right in cleaning up.  Unfortunately, I was not happy with the immediate transition to work, as I still needed clarity about the purpose and trajectory of the program and my place in it.  I also wanted to establish some kind of meta-stucture to how we were going to operate in this space and was confused by the lack of it in the beginning.  I have had a lot of experiences in groups where a lack of structure continues as a culture of anti-authoritarianism combines with strong personalities who take de-facto leadership and resist structures that would provide a more even distribution of power.  This is a common recurring pattern in the progressive movement and is being recognized more and more as something that we really need to address as a culture.  I, being very passionate and sensitive to this subject, took the immediate lack of structure quite personally and was unfortunately unable to communicate it well.  Communication about this issue is, ironically, the main objective of why I have come here. 

          Knowing that I need to figure this out I had conversations with several people about it over the next few days.  Some of these conversations were lively and fun, and some were frustrating and difficult.  Eric Bear helped me come to a deep realization about my own difficulty recognizing and communicating my own needs.  I also had a wonderful discussion with the other Eric about social organisms.  I am still not sure how my world view about groups of people, which I view as functioning in separate capacities as individuals, tribes, and organizations at either explicitly and implicitly differentiated times fits with his view of social organisms which encompass all of these functions.  I have always found it easier to separate tribal social groups from purpose driven organizations as a means of implicitly communicating intentions for when you are with these groups.  I would like to figure out a way to inter-weave tribal groups with purposes, like an eco-village that needs to operate in a business capacity to sustain itself.  One of my main intentions over the next few weeks is to think about and research this topic and present my findings to the group.