Just a few words on what I perceive the New Civilization Network being about.
I have always stated that NCN as a whole has no agenda. I occasionally
catch some flak for that, or run into various kinds of opinions on what NCN
should be doing, what we all ought to agree on, what kinds of issues are
the most important, and so forth.
There are lots of important things that could or should be done. NCN can
hopefully encompass a number of those. However, NCN's role will more be in
providing a space or some fertile ground for these than it will be in
officially championing them.
It is like the distinction between a whole civilization and specific groups
or communities or causes. A civilization, per definition, needs to have
room for all sorts of people and ideas, and needs to remain a general space
where diversity is allowed and supported. A specific group or community, on
the other hand, is likely to be much more focused and to have agendas and
rules and goals and plans. Many communities can exist within a civilization
and they can co-exist without having to agree with each other, and without
having to have any overall agenda enforced upon them by the civilization.
It is maybe a quite new idea, to have an overall umbrella network that in
itself is neutral and open to a multitude of modes of expression and
activity. Most organizations, national states or international
organizations in the old civilization have agendas and try to push the
biases of their leaders onto their members. This is different.
A network is different from an organization. A network has independent
parts and no hierarchy or central command. As such it is maybe a bit
counter-productive that we talk about you people being "members" of NCN,
and that a bunch of web pages and mailing lists and other services are
being concentrated mostly in one place.
I hope that we will develop more of a distributed nature, where more
facilities servicing NCN are spread over more different places and more
people so that we can move further away from any semblance of centralized
authority.
I regard my own role, and that of Joachim who runs the newciv.org server,
and of other people who take on NCN functions, as simply being there to
service the network, without having any authority over it as such. You
could say that we are Network Generators, trying to help the network work
better, expanding it, facilitating it, etc., without having any particular
agenda on what the members of the network will be doing.
I hope to see more people or groups being Network Generators. Possibly what
is needed is a set of tools that anybody could freely use for starting and
maintaining on-line communities or whole networks.
I continously give a lot of thought to what it takes for productive groups
to develop over the Internet. Lately I've seen very promising examples of
how it can work very well if the group is relatively small and private, if
it starts off with an intense vision to come together around, if it has an
assortment of common spaces to interact in, such as a mailing list, a chat
room, a web page, all just for the group's internal use, and if its members
are willing to go through whatever emotional and intellectual process is
needed along the way. Thus an actual community can form. That is not as
likely if a space only has a very general purpose, is open to anybody, and
people come and go often. Good connections and illuminating conversation
can happen in such spaces, but a strong team or group probably doesn't
form.
So, I just want to state that one of the things I'd like to accomplish in
service to NCN is to create more spaces, or facilities for creating common
spaces, in which effective teams or communities might form.
All of this is somewhat aside to all the specific projects and activities
that you are engaged in or will develop. Many of you might not really be
interested in the general principles of groups or networks, but might have
much more tangible or pressing or exciting things you want to pursue.
Great, well, that is really what NCN is here for: to help you find people
to work with, supportive resources, likeminded people to hang out with, or
simply to keep you in touch with what others are doing to make the world a
better place.
If you have any suggestions on facilities that might be helpful, groups or
spaces you would like to see formed, or connections you are looking for,
please let me know, or bring it up on the ncndiscuss-l list. Or, of course,
simply do something about it.
- Flemming
o o
/ \------------------ Flemming A. Funch ------------------/ \
/ * \ World Transformation/New Civilization/Whole Systems / * \
/ * * \ ffunch@newciv.org / * * \
o-------o----------- http://www.worldtrans.org/ ----------o-------o
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Dec 07 2000 - 23:22:11 PST