Bauwens on P2P Spirituality

[Balder]

If we can have p2p economics, why not p2p spirituality?

Michel Bauwens 28 July 2014

No more gurus: the emergence of peer production opens the way to a commons of spiritual knowledge from which all humanity can draw.

Self-organizing fish shoal. Credit: http://cognition.ups-tlse.fr. All rights reserved.

Is it possible to peer produce spiritual experience and insight, just as knowledge, software and code for computers are peer produced by communities of self-organizing individuals? If so, does this matter?

My answer is yes. Spirituality consists of socially-constructed worldviews that may no longer be appropriate to the time and space in which we live. In this context, newly emerging spiritual viewpoints and practices can be seen as necessary ‘upgrades of consciousness’ that can help us deal with new social and cultural complexities. The implications are profound.

Spirituality and religion always bear the hallmark of the social structures in which they were born and become embedded. Emerging religions often represent a partial transformation of these social structures because they represent new forms of consciousness, but they can never become hegemonic if they are not rooted in, and accepted by, the mainstream social logic.

For example, it’s not difficult to see that the Catholic Church and Buddhist Sangha have strong feudal elements in their organisational structures and ideas; or that Protestant churches are strongly linked to emerging capitalist and/or democratic forms; or that what has been called “New Age spirituality” is often geared towards a marketplace of commodified spiritual experiences that are available for sale. There is little doubt that the Catholic Church and the Buddhist Sangha would not have grown as they did had they not accepted the Roman political order and slavery respectively.

Therefore, it’s logical to expect that the emergence of peer production as a new model of value creation and distribution should also lead to new forms of spiritual organization and experience....

[Continued here.]

[Edward theurj Berge]

I have yet to read that book or hear the discussion. Do you have links to both?

Update: I found this page at IL. The dialogue is free to premium members but a non-member can purchase it for $1-10, their choice. One can also download the book for free now, then later pay what they feel they got out of it. I like this change in pay policy.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Listening to the 5-minute preview, Kennilingam said integral orgs need two fundamental characteristics: the CEO must be integral and the Board must 'get it.' Laloux clarified that those 2 conditions could lead to an integral org but it needs a lot of work and experimentation. It requires the structures, practices and culture in the org to make it integral. That was as far as the preview went so didn't get any details.

So far though it doesn't sound very p2p or Commons-oriented, since it's still the same top-down 'leaders' that are the enlightened ones who must direct everyone else. Plus I still question this because the kennilingus definition of what constitutes an 'integral' level is problematic, the first sentence being but one example.

Have you read the book and heard the complete first interview Ambo? Does it sound at all like what I wrote in my Rifkin review?

[Ambo Suno]

Hi t - yes, in that short bit that you listened to, you got a some of the basic ideas. There is a lot more over the whole interview to this that comes through as descriptions of actual businesses and agencies are fleshed out with particulars. It made the integrations much more real for me, as the many aspects of businesses found there ways to be relatively whole. I found the details of how a business could work in a new way quite surprising, and as I said hope eliciting in me.

I won't try to completely digest these p2p principles and theory and then match up these two models of understanding with comparison and contrast. I will say that the integral businesses that were analyzed displayed less heirarchical structure and top heaviness than conventional businesses. Employees apparently like their jobs and feel gratified in many ways including personal growth. Decision-making was much more egalitarian and to a surprising extent based on employees' organically emerging interests. Decisions, initiatives, and some policies could be set by workers when there was sufficient peer-peer consensus. For example a lathe operator could become involved in invention, marketing, sales, distribution, and even personnel and payment decisions if he was pulled in those direction, within some parameters. An open flow of peer to peer communication was a necessary and facilitated feature of this, vertically and horizontally, though there is less of a sense of the vertical. Problems were solved, shadows addressed. One of the principles is of a company aligning with evolutionary purpose. This and a few others strongly obviate bottom-line obsessions. It was pointed out that none the less these businesses were often more profitable than competitor's conventional 'efficiencies'.

These business are relatively rare around the world. I think if you listened to the entire interview, if you can not react too strongly to Ken's somewhat typical way of interviewing and inserting integral theory, you might be moved as well with the 3D actual work worlds as distinct from mainly theory. Or if you read the book. Personally, I still often like Ken's interviews and I think this is one of his better ones. Laloux seems to be a solid individual backed by solid research and so he conveys for me some serious street cred.  Yeah, I 'm guessing you would find Laloux's work refreshing. ambo

theurj said:

Listening to the 5-minute preview, Kennilingam said integral orgs need two fundamental characteristics: the CEO must be integral and the Board must 'get it.' Laloux clarified that those 2 conditions could lead to an integral org but it needs a lot of work and experimentation. It requires the structures, practices and culture in the org to make it integral. That was as far as the preview went so didn't get any details.

So far though it doesn't sound very p2p or Commons-oriented, since it's still the same top-down 'leaders' that are the enlightened ones who must direct everyone else. Plus I still question this because the kennilingus definition of what constitutes an 'integral' level is problematic, the first sentence being but one example.

Have you read the book and heard the complete first interview Ambo? Does it sound at all like what I wrote in my Rifkin review?