[wsfii-discuss] WSFII-Calendar & NewsBlog :-)

Fri Jan 6 09:41:42 UTC 2006

dear Julian, thankyou for this email. it flabbergasted me.

We spend a lot of time talking about who We are, how We are defined,
and what We believe in. We get caught up in discussion about Our
processes, how We make decisions and how We should act to effect them.   

if i had to pick one reason why i want the world to achieve 100%
literacy, it would be so that everyone could read "The Tyranny of
Structurelessness" at least once.
http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/structurelessness.htm

this is the point i am trying to make about "The Tyranny of We":
i think it is a key to cutting through the politics/semantics loop.

On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 01:44:13PM +0000, Julian Priest wrote:
> > "the coord group" that do not identify the self-appointed organisers. 
>  
> Yes that could do with clarification. I take the point that the mode
> of organisation of wsfii.london wasn't with a central commitee
> deciding things, but more a provision of a space and an open
> invitation to fill it.
> That said there was at least one international meeting before the
> event and in fact a fairly tight 'coord' group of people who did stuff
> to make it happen.

I sincerely did not intend any attack on the members of the organising 
group that met at the PrepCon and are working towards creating good 
grounds for many successful and interesting Wsfii's next year. 

I apologise for any unintended sense of critique. The word
"self-apppointed" usually carries negative connotations in English and
this is why Saul chose it, as a kind of self-deprecating joke.

Nor did i intend any attack on the sentiments expressed in the MOU.

Saul and Rufus and I chose to go with very relaxed organising stance
for the weekend of 1-2 October. It seemed to work out all right. 
I appreciate that when planning a much bigger event, which will
involve a lot more investment in travel, accomodation and time, in a
cultural context which is necessarily defined by the requirements of
people who are paying for all of that, you need a robust "image" of
what Wsfii is expressing in order to carry that off.

> Perhaps we should frame the coord group as made up of anyone who wants
> to put time into organising wsfii events, and who takes the time to be
> a member of the coord mailing list where adminsitrativa can be
> discussed - and that has an open membership based on activity?

i don't want Us to spend all Our time talking about it. 
for me, Wsfii is about the tao of organising by not trying too hard to
organise (this is what i learned from Saul) and about acting out a
sort of "political philosophy" by doing things that one enjoys doing,
and getting together to talk about it (this is what i learned from Rufus).

but Wsfii can be all things to all people, and every Wsfii instance
can be different, and i think that would great!

> "What rules the world is not exactly the fear of God but fear of
> Man. Hence this dread of being a single individual and this proneness
> to hide beneath one or other abstraction, hence the anonymity, hence
> the editorial 'we' etc." - Soren Kierkegaard 'The Present Age'

Kierkegaard seems to have been very alone, and very depressed.
I don't feel alone or depressed, and i don't think i need to be.

> http://www.usna.edu/LangStudy/spanish_subjunctive.html
e-prime maps to only using estar, but not ser, i think.

long live Wsfii, and everything it stands for to everybody!

-jo

( i meant to spend much longer on this mail, but i really didn't want
to leave anyone here thinking i was criticising the actions or the
stance of Wsfii organisers - but simply the power of the semantics. )