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21
Because those who see the world as a
commons see others as peers in play, they create heterarchies–structures of collaboration, pluralism, distributed intelligence, and constantly evolving patterns of relation. While hierarchies structure themselves to suppress surprise, heterarchies structure themselves to bring surprise.
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21
Because those who see the world as a
commons see others as peers in play, they create heterarchies–structures of collaboration, pluralism, distributed intelligence, and constantly evolving patterns of relation. While hierarchies structure themselves to suppress surprise, heterarchies structure themselves to bring surprise.
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22
Heterarchies organize themselves through respect, not rank. Respect is not property that can be won; it is a relation that must be earned. As software developer Eric Raymond explains, “The thing about the Internet is you can’t coerce people over a T-1 line, so power relationships don’t work... The only game left to play is pure craftsmanship and reputation among peers. If you can offer people the chance to do good work and be seen doing good work by their peers, that’s a really powerful motivator.”
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23
While persons of rank suppress surprise
from others, persons of respect enable surprise from others.
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24
Rank is, therefore, a relationship of deference, while respect is a relationship of reciprocity. Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Men are respectable only as they respect.”
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25
The difference between seeking rank and seeking respect is the difference between seeking consolidation and seeking compatibility.
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26
Because it subverts other’s futures into one’s past, consolidation achieves the “easy unity of exclusion” (to paraphrase architect Robert Venturi). Whereas, compatibility achieves the “difficult unity of inclusion” by finding a new future in a shared past.
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27
While consolidation expands the size of
one’s body, compatibility expands the size of one’s network. One increases physical form. The other increases the range and magnitude of relationships.
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Only when a network expands can transformation–the birth of a new future–happen. Science journalist Mitchell Waldrop:
“In every case, groups of agents seeking mutual accommodation... transcend themselves, acquiring collective properties such as life, thought, and purpose that they might never have possessed individually.”
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The difference between consolidation and compatibility is also the difference between amassing power and giving strength. He who seeks consolidation makes others a resource in service to his past. He who seeks compatibility makes others a source for his future and his past a source for their future.
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Inevitably, those who amass power will battle with those who give strength to others. It is because those who give strength cultivate surprise from others–which is something that those who amass power cannot allow.
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31
Eventually, those who give strength will overcome those who amass power. The presence of power requires the presence of the powerless. Therefore, power is a finite pursuit. Genuine strength, however, does not require the presence of weakness. In fact, strength in one begets strength in another, just as the knowledge in you begets the knowledge in me. Giving strength is an infinite pursuit in which power cannot keep pace. Rosencrantz in Hamlet: “Many wearing rapiers are afraid of goosequills.”
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32
To maintain power, those who amass it need an audience. Audiences are people who observe without participating. Machiavelli: “Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them.”
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33
He who amasses power treats his audience as an opponent whom he must convince of both his power and their powerlessness. Don Corleone in The Godfather: “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
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34
This is the difference between monologue and dialogue. Monologues do not invite surprise from others. Dialogues do.
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35
Monologues seek to convince an audience of a defined worldview that the audience had no
part in creating.
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37
War has always begun with a monologue. Article I from the 1907 Hague Convention makes this explicit: “The Contracting Powers recognize that hostilities between themselves must not commence without previous and explicit warning, in the form either of a reasoned declaration of war or of an ultimatum with conditional declaration of war.”
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38
Life begins with dialogue. Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh: “In true dialogue, both sides are willing to change.”
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39
When those with power no longer have an audience, they no longer have power. Their hierarchies are no longer recognized because the powerless have abandoned their reverence for another’s past and resumed the practice of creating their own future. This is what began in Tunisia, spread to Egypt, and then swept across the Middle East in 2011.
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40
When people no longer recognize the enshrined past and choose to create a future, they have chosen to reject explanation and begin a story. Or as Ella Fitzgerald interpreted it: “It isn't where you came from, its where you're going that counts.”
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