[Imc-lwg-general] conflict resolution within imc-uk confession&apologies

[Richard Malter]

I'll use that quote in the future. Thanks Felix.

Quoting Felix Gill <felix@newsvalues.com>:

Or as Karl Marx would say 'there is only the here and now in
politics and
that is where you start from'

-----Original Message-----
From: imc-london-wg-general-admin@lists.indymedia.org
[mailto:imc-london-wg-general-admin@lists.indymedia.org]On Behalf
Of
Richard Malter
Sent: 26 May 2002 21:39
To: zcat@ametrika.com
Cc: imc-uk-process@lists.indymedia.org;
imc-london-wg-general@lists.indymedia.org
Subject: Re: [Imc-lwg-general] conflict resolution within imc-uk
confession&apologies


Hello Andrew,

Thank you very much for writing your mail, and for the explanation;
please
know
that i'm very grateful.

I don't think it is the best thing i can do to reply specifically
'point for
point' to things you have written, for the reason that i feel that
this
might
somehow reflect back a different color onto your straightforward
mail, which
i
want not to do.

So I wrote a few thoughts, that i would be happy if you would read
and know
what i think generally, just to explain myself if i can a little.
Thanks.

--

I think that Indymedia has _enormous_ potential.

If Indymedia is to continue to develop into its (growing) potential
then
amongst other things, it must _really_ incorporate diversity.

This is what i wrote in an earlier mail:

Not everything within the London collective's
umbrella of preferred way of working,
collaboration: is/will be communication back and forth -
* between various basic underlying ways of working *.
This is obvious becuase it is also the basis of actual real, real
world,
real life collaboration between diversity of life on the planet.
Everyone will just have to get used to this, whether sooner or
later,
until it becomes commonplace.

One group works this way, another groups works a different way, no
judgement
involved, but the 'middle ground' where real collaboration takes
place is in
the _space between_ the *different ways of working*.

For the easiest example i can think of, there are a lot of people
in
Indymedia
that describe themselves as 'anarchists', or come from certain
backgrounds
of
other similar 'activist' activity, like London Reclaim the Streets
for
example.
They usually get on, from their points of view, tolerably well
together.
But,
to continue the example, real diversity does not mean diversity
between
different groups of anarchists who work similarly, it means
diversity
between
different groups _altogether_. That's what i meant in the sentence
above
with
the **s.

This is the key key point i think that it would be very helpul if
understood.
Otherwise people talk about diversity, and then as soon as
something
different
comes along to them they are defensive like crazy and resist. The
point is
in
our circumstances, no one attacked. LWG never attacked anyone.

I talked a few times about 'systems' approach. In systems approach
to
describing and thinking about things, which goes a good way to
describing
the
complexity of interacting systems, like the solar system, the
organization
of
Indymedia UK, the way the human body works and regulates itself,
etc, there
are
no dividing lines; what you do affects me and what i do affects
you; so
there
is no question of a 'them and us' viewpoint on anything. We are in
a system
together.

The 'rich' and 'poor' are part of the same system. Maybe it was
fear
throughout
the whole human system that led to materialism which partly led to
capitalism
that led to 'rich' and 'poor', for example. The writer, D H
Lawrence, a very
politically-minded man who grew up in the mining towns, said that
"there is
no
[outside] system, that the system is within us".

I think its also very important to understand that Marx and all the
other
political philosophers took from the most advanced knowledge
[information],
science, analytical methods, philosophies available to them at the
time. If
they were alive today they would do the same again, but today they
would
take
from the more advanced data available today about planet earth and
its
populations. The problem is, and has/does happen many times today
and in
history, is that people take 'the word' and not the spirit [you
might say
the
underlying process of discovery], and so change the studies and
theories
that
political philosophers made into stale dogma that doesn't 'catch'
the world
anymore anywhere very well. So you get Marxist, Leninists,
Anarchists, and
lots
of other 'ists'. All these ideologies lead people to want certain
similar
fixed
results in all processes. For example, anarchists often look
towards a set
of
concentric circles in organization - the 'spokescouncil' model,
even if
their
reality is obviously and massively not like a neat set of
concentric
circles.
When i wrote in a mail recently "lets try a triangle" i was only
half
joking.

And if you are not moving forward then you are moving backwards
becuase to
world does move on all the time, things change. All the political
'stances'
like non-hierarchical, anarchism etc, are all 'them and us'
dualisms, and
that
don't say anything actual about the world at all. They are really
very
limitedly helpful descriptions. And they actually chain people to
the ideas
that they don't like! Becuase you have to set the idea in your mind
first in
order to conceptually negate it. For example, you take the word
'hierarchical'
that you dont like, put a big X through it (as if you were crossing
it out),
and then think that is has gone away! But it hasn't, it just has a
big X
through it, but it still exists in your mind and still influences
everything
you do as before you put an X through it. Maybe even more. Only
when you
create
something different, new, and positive, do you start to take up
room in your
mind with something different to the thing you don't like. You then
stop
having
an 'anti' mind-set, and become the creator of something better. The
French
philosopher, Henri Bergson, analysed this trick of the mind that
people very
often get caught up in, in his book Creative Evolution.

So we set up London working group (LWG) with its charter in order
to work
completely differently, based on what we had observed with our own
eyes, and
also from the best thinking we could come up with - and drawing
from all
sorts
of sources: everything from scientific/ecological 'systems'
approach,
political
thinkiers, to Eastern philosophy, computer programmers' functional
methods,
friends' experiences in groups in Australia, and many more sources.
And we
patched it all together.

We did this to see if we could improve, to our minds, on what we
had
experienced, what we had observed and come up with explanations
for.  By the
way, i read recently an essay in a book by a scientist who did a
lot of work
to
popularize science, Stephen Jay Gould [maybe you read him too], who
passed
away
yesterday, where he explains from examples that 'Nature' does not
'design'
new
functional limbs or organs etc from purpose-built parts, but makes
use of
and
patches together the already existing parts available, and combines
them in
new
and ingenious ways to come up with what is needed for a new
particular task.

In LWG we used this method, which is a purely organic method. That
also
means
that we did not base what we did on any ideology - political or
otherwise,
we
based everything only on function. If it works, and works best from
all the
alternatives we can find, then lets use it! Ideologies cripple the
world in
many ways. They can be helpful, but they are very dangerous.

The only overall aim we kept in mind is how to make Indymedia, in
the UK and
globally, as powerful as possible, to fulfill its growing
potential. And to
do
this we believe we understand that it is very important not to set
a future
idealistic goal (ie an ideology) which leads to [the danger of]
ignoring
what
is going on and how we do things right here right now in the
present - which
is
a big mistake that people make a lot; but that we do work on both
what and
how
we do things right here right now as most important. When you look
to the
future you miss the present.

And it's probably expected that there will be lots of
misunderstandings and
inertia to change, when people have preconceived ideas, beliefs,
experiences;
as you say people think they or the things they value are being
attacked
when
they don't understand why. That's one reason the world is full of
wars and
armies. A close friend of mine says that power [negative sense] =
fear of
change. I think it's true.

I replied a mail to Marion a while ago where i wrote that the
"general
pattern
of reception of innovation on this planet amongst homo sapiens
is/has been:
rejection and massive defence of old(er), gradual contested
acceptance,
general
acceptance as commonplace."
Basically this is what has happened in our situation in the UK.

This is what i believe too, which sort of sums me up in this
respect:

"I must create a system
 Or be enslav'd to another man's
 I do not reason and compare.
 My business is to create!"     said William Blake.

"Hell is paved with good intentions, not bad ones"   said George
Bernard
Shaw.

"One shot. One life."  from a poem for Zen archers.

Hope i explained myself some way,

If you got this far then thanks for reading

Richard
---
lwg (of imc uk)
---
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