Consent
Going for consent, not (necessarily) consensus
In this post, I want to flesh out my intentions more about process.
I’m doing this because I am committed to honoring your humanity, intellect, and agency. I wanted to make that clear right as I don’t think we can get very far together if we don’t start from that foundation.
This is a no pressure place of welcome.
What this means is that, while I will be offering ideas, my intention is good faith and good will communication, not manipulation or coercion (if you see me falling into that trap, I would appreciate you tagging it for me so I can listen, learn, and adjust and better live into my intentions).
Being a no pressure place is critical for the ultimate goal of this work, which is cultivating trustworthy consent around reality and notions of commonsense (more on this below as well as discussed in the first post). If we end up seeing “eye to eye,” I want it to be because we’ve both done the work, engaged in the challenge, and never felt pressured, coerced, or incentivized to agree. From that no pressure place, the agreements will be far more trustworthy.
To that end, if we don’t agree, that’s great too! We don’t need to agree (more on this below)!
All we need to do is follow some basic rules, which, as the organizer of this space I take as my right to set. If you disagree with the rules I set, that’s totally fine! Please just do not engage here (you can stay as an audience member and just listen in, for sure, even if you don’t consent). I wish you all the best in your endeavors and I hope you find the right space for you! I describe these rules, called compassionate critique, in my third post (and also have a few supplemental posts as well, for anyone that wants to go into greater depth, such as where this approach came from or what I mean by the term “bubbles,” which is a key idea in compassionate critique).
While I am sure there are other ways to do this, these are the rules that I will be enforcing to enable us all to negotiate together. They are set to enable us to work in a trustworthy way together.
With that, let’s now turn to a brief summary of what you might get out this and the critical importance of consent here.
What might you get out of this?
As mentioned in episode 1, my hope is that this project contribute to helping us work through our crisis era to find some common civic, spiritual, and natural foundations (see episode 1).
While that’s my hope, I can’t promise that’s going to happen. Indeed, there are many other possibilities of what you might get out of this.
For example, engaging here might make you uncomfortable. It might challenge some long held beliefs. Another option is that you might start to feel crazy too (like I often do), nothing more.
Another possibility…. After you read this, you might think I’m just a stupid fool…not crazy, just an idiot wasting your time. Since I don’t know where you are coming from, I can’t predict if you will find any value here. I hope you will, but that hope could very well be delusional.
Back to this being a no pressure place, if you ever feel like you need to “tap out”, go for it.
I fully respect your agency to do what you think is right for you.
How will this negotiation take place?
Still here? Great!
Let’s now go into greater depth on how we are going to negotiate reality together.
First, let me state what I mean when I commit to act in good faith and with good will.
By good faith, I am committed to act, to the best of my ability, to see, feel, experience, and describe reality as it is, not merely as I might hope or fear it was, is, or might become.
By good will, I am committed to act, to the best of my ability, in ways that minimize suffering and contribute towards mutual flourishing.
Second, my focus is on getting to a place where we can consent to commonsense. Critically, this does not mean that we will necessarily reach consensus. Consent involves defining the “zone of tolerance” of beliefs. With this, we do not need to fully agree, that would be consensus. Instead, consensual reality allows for the gray area where we might not fully agree, but none of us feel drawn to reject/veto an idea either.
With this, I’m hoping we can find areas where consent on common sense beliefs can be found, while never forcing consent and, instead, honoring the agency, wisdom, and experiences of each of us.
To give you a flavor, here are some ideas that are commonsense in communities I am part of that I do not consent to.
I do not consent to the commonsense strategy of assuming linear causality as the default (which is common in many scientific circles I am a part of, see my lineage here).
I do not consent to the commonsense strategy of allowing people to create concepts like “externalities” and “waste” (which is common in Capitalist societies).
I also do not consent to the commonsense notion that reason and logic is the highest distinction for being human (which is a common implicit belief in academia today).
While I do not consent to these common sense beliefs, I do have counter proposals that I will offer that can re-situate without rejecting these ideas. Each of these ideas has its place. The key is to know when, where, and for whom, they are appropriate (and, by extension, when, where, and for whom, they are not appropriate).
As preview, each of these ideas can be situated and understood within proposed commonsense ideas, summarized as aphorisms: 1) life breathes; 2) context molds; and 3) beings adapt.
More on those in the future, if you consent to go on this journey with me (the focus of this post).
I’m engaging in this project to work with others interested and committed to good faith and good will discussions to figure out how we find some commonsense together and, from that, start to heal and contribute to the flourishing of people, place, and planet that honors life, love, and light.
Third, my basic plan is to create both aphorism episodes and negotiation episodes, along with host group chats and otherwise. Listen to Episode 1 for more details.
Over time, I hope that this process will produce some wisdom that can then be distilled into a future book(s?) that can be published and shared widely. I’m interested in a possible future book(s?) as a pathway to continue to expand the realm of those who can engage with and, ideally, consent to some trustworthy shared notions of reality and common sense that can help us to minimize suffering and support mutual flourishing. If I do end up writing books, my intention is to reference this Substack and acknowledge contributions from people like you, dear reader. I will let you know if/when this is happening, via substack, and keep you informed on if I intend to mention your name/contributions in such a future book (which, of course, you can always not consent to when that time comes).
Look forward to engaging with you on that, next time!