Cosmos Café [7/2] - The Next Steps for the Cosmos

Recorded 2 July 2019

https://cosmos.earth/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/20190702CosmosCafe-NextStepsforCosmos-mp3cut.net_.mp3


What should the Cosmos co-op be when it grows up?
“What do we want Cosmos to be in 5 years?”
What would a 20-year, 50-year, 100-year plan for the Cosmos Co-op look like? What would a 20-year, 50-year, 100- year plan for the planet look like? Do these two plans match?

These questions proposed in the previous discussion, Cosmos Café [6/25/19] - The Next Ten Billion Years, request a worthy revisitation. Many sensed bits are out there, bright stars ripe for picking, waiting for a guiding hand to place them in the osier cage and carry them forward from the Cosmic Womb. What would you like to have happen? What do we want to have happen? What wants to happen? This Café will be a chance for anyone to express their deepest desires. Please use this thread to express the next steps for the Cosmos, let us know what you’d like to see. We invite and welcome your feedback. The universe depends upon your input!

Reading / Watching / Listening

Browse the forum; get an image of what the Cosmos has been for you, for others. What stands out as the brightest star? What are our blindspots? Are we accessible? How can we best realize and utilize an online forum? An online co-op? What is working? What isn’t working? What would you like more of? What would you like less of? What are our best practices? Who or what are we?

(more) Seed Questions

  • What should the Cosmos co-op be when it grows up?
  • “What do we want Cosmos to be in 5 years?”
  • What would a 20-year, 50-year, 100-year plan for the Cosmos Co-op look like? What would a 20-year, 50-year, 100- year plan for the planet look like? Do these two plans match?
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Thanks, Doug. I plan to be there.

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I will be unable to attend this Cafe due to circumstances at work, possibly joining in during the last half hour. I will pass the hosting off to Marco (or to anyone that may wish to introduce the topic or proceed with a clean start). Below are my rambly two cents worth of thoughts on the next steps for the Cosmos Co-op as presented from my perspective.


Speaking of host, I would like to think that, as a whole, we here in the Cosmos collectively play host to the “strange strangers” that show up through the door. The inklings, ideas, and individuals (including ourselves) who show up invited or not are uncanny; once we think we can define what these inkings/ideas are or what these individuals are or who we are, the stranger they/we become. We host all kinds of strangers that can flip from known to unknown and back again. I like to carry the thought that, collectively, we are approaching or veering towards better discernment (grace?) towards which intuitions, ideas we will allow in the door while at the same time be open to any individual, to be a good friend by greeting new individuals and their new ideas while being a great friend by inquiring about these inklings and tendencies, seeing if these ideas converge with the vision we are trying to concretize here and holding these up against the bigger (and smaller) picture . . . will these hold up in the larger ecology? Will these respect the smaller ecologies?

I would like for this thread and the conversation to include the imaginings of others. I don’t want to put anyone on the spot or seem demanding of your time or response, but I would love to hear what others have in mind, especially those that cannot or prefer not to “physically” attend the Cafe sessions. @Ariadne has a wisdom making itself present in her written voice. I feel more connected to my place on Earth when I read one of her posts, one of her poems. Are we limiting what she can offer simply because she opts out of the recorded sessions? What could we achieve together that would see her unspoken yet lived experience come to life in the Cosmos? I love Marco’s reading of her words. I hesitate to speak of Maia as our motherly, earthly figure and wish to allow her to become at her own pace. But I do see an Earthly diaspora when I think of her name. What would benefit Maia? How can we support her and the many others quietly, powerfully forming the Cosmic steps of our travels? More readings of her poetry? A shared local event? Can you get a sense for what I am feeling?

For those that will be in the Zoom meet-up . . . I am wondering if there is anything left unsaid, some vision that may wish to be heard . . . even just a simple idea about something you would like to have happen but may not seem achievable or realistic. @achronon may have hidden in the depths that what we really need is the Mahood Decimal System (Dewey almost got it right . . .); if we could glean the videos and forum posts for all book titles referenced and place this in some online library format, then the Cosmos would feel more like home. @johnnydavis54 once had the idea of something similar to StoryCorps, recording sessions with fellow cosmonauts, family members and loved ones in order to retain stories and memories about those no longer living in the flesh. @Michael_Stumpf: I don’t mind putting you on the spot . . . what is your vision? You and we have “flourished” from your participation here . . . what’s next? Where are we going?

I came onto this site and in my first or second Cafe meetup, I voiced that I desire to be the old man on the porch, looking at the great family and kin living and loving as they go about in days of play. That was my first image formed with Johnny’s Clean Start. And it still holds true. I still wish to see all of you at play, I love to witness the greatness that forms here. Never has such a feat been achieved with an online forum, though we are much more than a forum.

Perhaps Marco will be present to attest his own thoughts on this exploration, and I do not wish to neglect the great service he has provided here. Yet he humbly wants to hear what you want to have happen. Most of the concrete jungle that you see here began with (mostly) his vision…Metapsychosis; Readers and Writers Underground; Cosmos Coop; Infinite Conversations website and podcast…and what a feat! Yet again, Marco has little desire to be at the center of the Cosmos, or controlling the helm. The Cosmos is breaking open its head and light is pouring out in all directions

When I ask what is missing or what do you want to have happen,. We are working on making the potentials and sensed bits a reality, yet sometimes your vision may not be heard because it has yet to be articulated or has been shelved, waiting for the ripe time. My favorite personal example that I see as a missing piece is an observation that intergenerational experience is missing from our schools/education; interactions online; our religions. More locally: intergenerational activity is not occurring on this site. One of my visions is that we can open up the ecological conversations online, share a reading group with children, teens, middle-aged adults and elders; bring what we learn into the world and also bring the world to our learning. It needs to go both ways. I think this is my ultimate interpretation of what @Geoffreyjen_Edwards says at the end of the Bateson calls (to put into practice what we learned from Bateson). For this to happen we need to lead by example, keep this place a safe place to try new things, fail and try again. To confront world issues and confront each other. (This is where playing good host is crucial). Currently, there is little space for something like this to happen, here or anywhere online. But my participation here is frequently glancing at this reminder of the various potentials for inter-generational sharing.

I think it would be useful to have specifics. Something like: I really wish I could just start my own reading group or I would like to start a podcast of my own and invite the guests that I wish to speak to about what Im interested in or I would love to hear about . . . Or I would love to be able to arrange local events through this forum and use the forum to share a discussion. Someone like @AndrewField81 might wish to continue the conversation of his arranged reading groups or record the live sessions and post them publically or privately on the forum. Or I want to write my own book but want to have it published as I see fit and not cater to Google requirements or whathaveyou…

Thanks for reading this far . . . looking forward to watching this one!

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What a great post. I am going to cogitate on this - I am still pretty new, and want to hear from others. That said, it is very clear that, currently (I see this was somewhat different in the past), the people who seem to participate the most, at least in terms of visible comments and videos (who knows what goes on in the background), are male (with the exception of @care_save and occasionally @Ariadne, whose poem I also loved). I"m sure this has been commented on before; if not, here you go! I would love to see an equal presence by the women/females in the Cosmos. That’s my two cents for now.

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I am Willing to spend time on the Spot,it will Be a walking to the Spot,From the Spot & in al-ways With the Spot in the Service of Feeling Home in A Spot .

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I’m with you on this!

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Your awareness of subtle things is very moving to me. I love how you include/invite so many of us here to contribute our (sometimes very odd) proclivities and apparent limitations! I am going to go listen to the conference now and then be back with more…
Thank you.

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Expressing my profound gratitude for the grandfatherly wisdom and leadership gently proffered by @Douggins I want to see us play and weaving our insights, interpersonally, intersectionally, intergenerationally. :pray:

@AndrewField81 I share your desire to explore how our platform and services can better serve women, and I would add, can better serve people and communities of color, indigenous communities, queer folk, and more young folk.

Listening to the recording (I was unable to attend live due to travel/family stuff)…

@16:00-17:15 I love Michael’s beautiful commentary on the need of extending our aesthetics and ethics, our minds and senses, into these new dimensions of our existences, even “heavy machinery” of a platform like Cosmos. Let us grow into our utmost potentials…

Strategy is something I am growing my awareness in and practice of, @achronon, and I have a sense for a kind of “fractal strategy” that would serve Cosmos here, where we begin embodying our ultimate vision in our immediate/local vision… at least “infusing” “flecks” of the ultimate praxis with today’s praxis. What I see that looking like is immediately, at least as it concerns “Cosmos’” “leadership’s” “main activities” (apologies for all these quotation marks… there is so much necessarily in flux and morphing!) would be that we focus on taking various appealing choices and “next level” steps in areas of:

  • Communication(s)
  • Relationships (intimacy and cooperative capacity growth amongst ourselves, our member community and our audiences)
  • Storytelling About Cosmos

This could take shape as simply as asking ourselves questions like:
“How could we use what we have, right now, to better amplify our members’ authentic desires?”
“Who needs to be at this table that isn’t?”
“What would we want our community to know that they don’t know yet?”
“How are we showing up? What are our standards, values and ethics in action?”

Probably autonomous and integrated Cosmopods made up of random sets of “members” here are the best method for starting these self-held wonderings!

I do feel that the business and technological structures will emerge once our resource flows are more vibrant, smooth/consistent, interconnected and robust. I also believe that Cosmos’/our true “proof of concept”–which might allow more substantial resources to flow to our organization and business development–emerges from the integrity of our community bonds, the quality of our relationships and richness of our delight and edification from our interactions in Cosmos spaces, with Cosmos resident people.

This is my new and latest clarity about strategy: do what we’re good at and do them in earnest until the outcomes are achingly beautiful, and making communication and relationship central, shelving any other concerns but our community development. This clarity emerged from creative and reflective time and process on my part. Which only supports my accompanying emergent notion, that certain modes of being together–like reflecting, collective visioning, collaborative illustrating and writing, etc.–are paramount to who we become. So it doesn’t serve, truly, for a couple of us in isolation to try to just “cram” and do a bunch of tasks and make things structured or normed, for the sake of doing so. Out of some worried compulsion. I’m more interested in what @johnnydavis54 describes as “catching the groove.” It is kind of about how we steep ourselves in these discourses, and how doing so causes us to develop (perhaps like a mutant) new or stronger limbs of our being (including rapport/dream/trance state practice), and let us and the whole system change as our awarenesses and intentions grow.

@34:30 I appreciate Johnny’s comment about “having grown up, I want a beautiful death.” Perhaps the most beautiful and evocative evidence I could possibly imagine for our community to demonstrate its own resilience and integrity, is to embody graceful, luscious composting of beloved projects, groups, hopes and dreams, breaking them down, decaying them and redistributing their resources back to the network in raw form.

I also love the emphasis on “letting us be weird” and ambiguous, and not forcing clarity, as an overall community or cultural standard. And that if we sponsor one another for our desires and talents, all will be well, if not formally structured. (And I’ll take “well” anyday!! IMO formal structure often obscures the quality of relationship underpinning collective movements/momentum.)

Regarding the practical concerns, Cosmos is yet at a small enough scale that I believe @madrush and @Douggins and I could do a better job of explaining and delineating all that it takes to put on the capacities that we have now (and what it will take to add more capacities based on community requests), and could make it more accessible to those who want to support, to do so. I’d love for us to just be able to see our gaps, in human or financial or other resources, and see what we’re up to, and what we’re planning to be up to… The “clarity” that I’d hope for in the next period is simply transparency, and encouraging a sense of community (personal and collective) responsibility for our gaps and for supporting “what’s good” here. These feel like elegant and accessible changes that would allow Cosmos as a whole to feel more supported and supportive, all the way around.

@johnnydavis54 “The skill to enter into rapport.” Very interesting! I’d agree that this is something one must develop, the ability to quickly and fully slip into rapport or trance states, and harvest from those those states the holistic insights that tend to float there. Love it, and love the idea that Cosmos as a “milieu” could help us cultivate these dimensions of human beingness. Appreciate the “catching the rhythm” distinction against the “cracking the code” vibes. I really do conceive of Cosmos as a very living organic space… which requires strangeness, excess, LOTS of mistakes and failing (as Doug noted too), and innovation.

circa 1:07:00 @madrush I agree! Let’s invite in the people who are called to be here anyway, and engage them on some “surplus” they may hold of knowledge or experience to contribute to us (like the “systems administrator” example you give.)

Circa 1:18 @johnnydavis54 Speaking for myself, before I would jump to assuming that “the men” here have to change anything at all, I’d approach the inquiry proactively by asking women for their insights and inputs on how the community and platform can better include them and their interests/concerns. I appreciate your commitment to inclusivity and note that it’s usually not a personal behavior issue (although those of course may emerge and we should all strive to address oppressive behaviors that we may notice in one another), but a systemic ambient condition limiting participation. Beginning with a concern for evident gaps in inclusivity is a good place to start… Probably fertile grounds for a study group in our community? It sounds like many folks expressed shared concern about the low levels of participation (or low levels of sustained participation) of women and also a bewilderment about how to begin meaningfully addressing that concern or adapting.

The curious thing about discerning whether the space we are generating is accessible or not, is that it is not very effectively judged by the experiences of people with existing privileges–such experiences tend not to be a measuring stick that provides very much or useful information. Inviting and sponsoring people into deeper dialogue is one of the things we do best, yes? Why not extend that consciously to those who we notice may be underrepresented–such as, yes, @KPr2204, @Ariadne, @sororbrigid, not to mention international members, members of color, members of ethnic or cultural minorities, etc. Let’s model that here. Let’s find out what wants to happen, because I do not hold the idea that Cosmos isn’t meant for some people. All people have a creative aspect, all people deserve to self-actualize which includes giving and receiving their greatest creative fruits/fruitions in community. And so I don’t suppose Cosmos wouldn’t or couldn’t be a spacious enough frame for anyone, though I do surmise that in the immediate incubational term Cosmos will tend to attract intellectual, artistic and social activist types generally.

Let’s invite us, in the model @Douggins laid out in his comment above, to ask of one another: “What would you like to have happen?” What would you like to do with us, and with these spaces and tools? There’s simple ways we can treat everyone here in ways that will encourage them to grow, to play, and to stay. We can do this as an organization, through deliberate efforts, and we can, as individuals, take steps to ensure we’re all asking of one another “Hello, who are you? What are you seeking or doing here?” is a universal good start. Thanks @johnnydavis54 for your encouragement of the Clean Start in much of our spaces and discourses here, and for your reminders of the importance of mutual sponsorship across intergenerational lines too.

One last thought on this theme… wanting to do or to become something is an important stage in a creative process, but DOING it is always way more complex and messy. But it doesn’t become real until it becomes real, until theory transmutes into action and becomes praxis… until art becomes worked, an artwork, so that other sentient beings can interface with it… and only then, in real-ization, can one’s thoughts shape the world. One of my biggest desires is that this community distinguish itself in the world by its praxis, its capacity for well-doing.

@1:34 @patanswer , thank you for your thoughtful question. I sense this discussion on our values and strategies of inclusivity is part of the conversation about “what is the cost to continuing with things as they are now.”

I also think the “what’s next” should and must come from our community interests. We can deliberately practice being OK with letting things emerge, like the collective “dream production” to reiterate @Michael_Stumpf.

circa @1:40 When you said the word “event” it lead to an insight that may link to the “catching the rhythm” idea… that we treat anything we want to do as a kind of event, that is inherently an experimentation. It is not a project, or a milestone, it’s simply the initiative towards an event. “In the event of” us accomplishing some of our aspirations, too. :wink:

To your concern about groups growing too large, I think the natural “right size” of a discourse group is around 5-12 people. With flexibility of course. I don’t presume every participant in Cosmos would or should be aware of everyone or everything else going on… so long as we have strong ethics, good culture and good moderation standards, I believe our speech will continue to thrive, but it will diversify too, because it’s thriving. We will diversify into multiple niches and modes that may not be able to split their attention and listen to all of one another, and that’s just fine. Communities and subgroups and identity layers of many kinds can form and dissolve at will on mutual interest in my future “dream” Cosmos. And also, cross-fertilizations across culture or subgroup lines would be a kind of norm here, and would be sponsored into existence… oftentimes by the overture of a titillating dialogue at the intersection of mutual concerns.

circa @1:53 @madrush love the makerspace analogy, and we can use that to organize how we approach the packaging of “tools.” I especially like the intersection of the metaphor “makerspace” with “social (or solidarity) co-op.” Let’s keep defining ourselves by how we collaborate to co-create our opportunities. @Geoffreyjen_Edwards thank you for your offer to sponsor (through hosting) a group podcast conversation! I love this idea and look forward to it coming to fruition.

On the whole (all participants): thanks for offering your stories, concerns, encouragements, questions, answers, responses, and consciousnesses… Thanks especially for your intentionality. I am a beneficiary, and I believe our whole community is, however indirectly, too. I look forward to more together!

Finally: there was no video link, so I listened to the audio only. I quite like the audio only. It puts me in a different state of consciousness than the video chats. I endorse the experimentation with audio only productions. Thanks again.

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Thank you. Heartfully/mindfully agree with every word you’ve written here, Care-save.
More later, after I listen to the conference, too!

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Just going to respond to a single question here, since there are at least dozen issues that deserve response, and that’s too much to take on in one go.
The question regarding low involvement of women.
I agree 100% with Caroline that the thing to do is to ask women directly to answer that question ourselves.

Johnny mentioned “quotas”, and what women may or may not think/feel/do. I don’t agree that “quotas” are the issue. Not a numbers issue. But what additional energies/ways of focusing women could/would contribute to Cafe discussions, are missing from the brew, so to speak?

So ask us directly and a whole range of responses will appear, I predict. Some very like Caroline’s and some completely surprising reasons.

Wondering now about who will do this asking and how?

Thanks to you all for raising the question.

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I like where this is going!

Yes…direct and straight to the source! Thank you to @AndrewField81 for bringing up this important yet often sidelined issue and for sparking the current discussion.

My question, likely a friendly request in poor disguise: will you play the role of guest “curator” for the next Café topic? This requires no direct participation in the Zoom call, nor much actual curating. Rather it allows you to directly contribute to the direction the conversation. It also gives you, as a highly respected Cosmic soul presence, the opportunity to lead us into your energies, to surprise us. You could select a reading or we could discuss your poetry or try something experimental…the possibilities are only limited to (y)our limitations. If you are interested you can email me and I can assist with the set-up.

I am sure others are going to take you up on your “ask me anything” offer…looking forward to this!

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Sisters, as the late Diva sang, are doing it for themselves. I have always been surrounded by strong women who never needed me to ask them what they were thinking or feeling. They let me know right away and sometimes emphatically. Who among us is the agent of change? I imagine that is not easy to discern. Women and men can get together in different kinds of mixtures for a wide range of purposes and there are men groups and women groups and transgendered groups. There are rich and poor, too, so there are lots of ways to be different and there is plenty of common ground. As a gay man in hostile life threatening situations I have learned to be careful and sensitive to the threat of violence before it happens. I have been spit by on by a black woman who told me I was giving black people AIDS. Women can be as homophobic and as violent as men. A woman threw a bottle at me and my boyfriend from a window which barely missed my head. But it is often the non verbal that conveys the mixed message. Everyone can be hypocritical on occassion for a wide variety of reasons and pretend what happened didn’t happen. Self deception is wide spread among our species, and especially with those who have power. We are trained to sweep things under the rug. Having said all that I agree with Groucho Marx that I would never belong to a group that would have me as a member. And I have always relied upon the kindness of strangers. Luckily, I have found kindness distributed unevenly through out our human and non human social worlds. I sense that you are a very kind person, although I have never seen you or heard your voice. I totally respect that you may have your reasons for that and I also sense that your communications on line have been very direct as well as poetic. When I sensed that someone was behaving rudely to you ( and to me ), as happened here not too long ago, I actually made this known to the group dynamic. I felt that aggressive moves can come in surprising and unwelcome ways and when this is noticed we do our best to make this clear. Double and triple messages can be toxic. In a public space this is not easy as mixed messages can go under the radar of the group as banter. So, please Maia, let us know what support you need. However, let me also admit, I have never felt it was empowering to demand that other people have to do the change. The agent of change is never obvious in symbiotic relationships. Thanks!

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Once again, men and women and transgendered are not fully in charge in complex unstable systems with wide spread inequities. I may not have made myself clear. I regret, on many occasions, that you have not made more appearances. I have always enjoyed your contributions. I didnt assume you were staying away because you felt unwelcome. Each of us have obligations and other commitments and so balancing tasks with relationships is a challenge. Sometimes showing up authentically is a risk. I have sometimes felt that my authentic comments were not welcomed but I am open to believe that I may be wrong. Who can control their fate? Thanks for your detailed response and look forward to more dialogues as the zigs and zags are happening in the moment on the live calls. It looks very different from watching the videos or the podcasts as an observer. It is what happens in the in between that is where my attention more often goes. I am also curious about what others are giving their attention to. Do you want to be a critic or a participant or both? This is up to each of us to decide. I think we have unprecedented opportunities for making this happen. We also have divided duties. I don’t assume that I can ever articulate others oppression or that I am picking up on the same vibration as the other. Our ability to articulate the vibe varies from moment to moment, and much is never fully articulated. And I feel that the discourse is of a very high quality but vigilance is necessary. I don’t take this for granted. I have spent most of my life silenced by brute forces. I am hyper alert for very good reasons.

And when you have an objection, can you also let the positive intention behind the objection, be shared, too?

In the moment of a heated or complex situation this is not always easy to do. In retrospect we might be able to do that. It is messy for sure but I have great confidence in the quality of our shared attention.

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Differences

Having raised a Son(Jeffrey) & a Daughter( Kristi) & Married to their Mother( now Divorced) being raised in an ERA of bringing Raised Consciousness around these Issues of Identity-in it’s Pluralist Spectrum I find it interesting that to quote John"Who among us is the agent of change? I imagine that is not easy to discern" ;that my learning -maturity path has been one of I can be Empathic & yet not know for certain what is your experience & Asking goes both ways or we just stay stuck in Habitual ways of Sharing Attention needed to move into the Intimacy of this Life. I taught my Daughter to speak up for herself ( & sometimes I don’t like what she has to say, I stand by my commitment to teaching her That! we have Grown a lot). I Modeled to my Son Respect his Mother even if they disagree,here’s the reality his Mother had a hard time showing Respect for him being different (A Boy) than Her.Both Kids struggle with speaking up to their Mother( Not because she a Woman,but their Mother & she in my experience came from a Matriarchal Dynamic) .When it comes to questions of Inclusion two questions come up for me 1) Check Myself for any tendency of exclusion ?2) Do they want to be included?( is not my responsibility,yet it is of interest). The Proactive response is a two way “Wager”

Fractal%20-Body

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Margaret Mead said there was no such thing as a matriarchal or patriarchal culture. Each are felt in different admixtures from culture to culture. Much of this is in the background and never openly discussed or challenged. Boys and girls are raised by men and women, sometimes in great stress and without much support. Personally, I wish we could move beyond the parental/child dynamic in our group lives. Whenever possible I hope we can shed light upon these ancient and sometimes funny dilemmas. Thank God for drag queens!

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I agree John,I have worked with the parental/child dynamic in terms of Power-Authority Dynamic & create-heal the Agency within & ever growing even into Old Age,Agency growing a Sage Within from the wounds of Childhood,that’s my Aspiration at least.

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That is wonderful, Johnny. Thanks for sharing all you’ve added, too, in these comments. Just wanted to snag this line because it stood out to me. I am not a person–woman or otherwise–who trumpets my own point of view. I learned across a lifetime’s of experiences, some violent and some the cowed result of ambient violence, that twould be best if I were unobtrusive, if I were “in people’s backgrounds.” I am overcoming, as best as I suppose any being could in a given snapshot of a continuous effort, my aversion to confrontation, my willingness to take up space and be heard, etc.

Still to this day, I honestly prefer to be asked my thoughts. Something about the ritual of asking, it demonstrates I’ll have a ready audience, because as a relatively young female I cannot assume anyone is listening until they show me they are. Asking invites dignified discourse, which I believe all of us in this virtual “room” would get behind. Something about the inquiring & including effort upfront sets the stage, to me. Perhaps it feels like an archetypally feminine pattern… I do desire it. In fact, I envision any kind of ritual “Cosmopod” meetup group “template” to be heavy in the asking and listening, “what would you like to have happen?” “what wants to happen here?” “what is emerging?” “what do you need?” just like we are doing here! We are building community when we build mutual understanding across differences. I love the idea of stoking distributed Cosmpods in Cosmos as a kind of pattern or template, because I love how the sincere receiving–of one another’s genuine responses as sacred, earnest offerings on the altar of our beings–shapes us. I believe we shall each become spacious “enough” to hold all–even if we may not personally know or relate to “all” (members in this community/system), we’d nevertheless hold open and encouraging space to all: at furthest distance, in principle, and progressing inward, in intent or thought, in action, and in relationship. Eventually, in reality, if we’re lucky and dedicated. :slight_smile:

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This is such a potent, eloquent question. I appreciate the extension of the theme by @johnnydavis54 and @Michael_Stumpf about “who is the specific change agent?” Precisely because the authoritative “change agent” appears as all, some, one and none of us at once, is why I feel it’s so important within our abilities to put out there what we want to have happen.

When you ask “who will do this asking and how?”, I am aware of the fractal nature of things:

  • You (@Ariadne) are doing this asking right now! Furthermore, we have generated this potential from a collective interface of our minds and points of view. This meta asking is a preliminary or vestigial form of, and indicates, the asking.
    …Perhaps this is too light? Insufficient?

  • These forums, live video conversations, other features, and our emerging culture enable us to ask and receive input on deep topics with immense richness. Any of our greatest Cafes or other conversations hinge on fantastic questions. So, anyone could ask the question, to anyone else, using this platform.
    …I think it’s often the “could” that folks get hung up on. If you’re a participant who takes ownership over your experience and responsibility for our shared assets, then you might see the ease with which “could” becomes “does” or “will” through our efforts.

  • “Cosmos” as some kind of formal organizational entity or identity could ask the question to its users… but at this juncture, what constitutes “Cosmos”? Is “Cosmos” just those who have opted in to learn the ins and outs of our systems, and have signed up to “steward” them, in a sense? Well then, who is at the “Cosmos” table, authorized to make collective inquiry decisions, and who isn’t?
    …Perhaps this is too heavy-handed to presume Cosmos identity and authorities at this young stage?

Where we land seems to me to be a kind of Goldilocks zone–the one in the middle! :bear: :blonde_woman: :bed:

This is why I love @Douggins delicate modeling about how: when any or each of us takes initiative, and that initiative is sponsored into existence, anyone of us (as an expression of Cosmos’ “we”) can do anything here. Perhaps we need to work on how we allow others to indicate that they’re wanting to “sponsor” something into existence.

It’s emerging to me that the “executive team’s” role is just to empower others to take ownership of their desires and experiences, and that the “community’s” role is to open as many doors of desire as we can get to, sort, synthesize and amplify our most collectively resonant desires, and “digest” the results. I see the conceptual and functional lines between community and “leadership team” blurring in Cosmos in the near future… because we need to form and conceive of ourselves as a team, and as all playing for the same “team” so to speak :goal_net::soccer::foot: in order to take innovative steps.

So… all that chatter is a roundabout way of saying, “Why not let’s ask?” :smile:

Perhaps we could branch this theme into a spin-off conversation? Maybe there could be caucuses of women-identified folk and male-identified folk processing about the theme, in addition to an integrated conversation? (Just throwing out some ideas, seeing what sticks!) :smiley:

Also, I want to be sure I take a moment to clarify that I’m speaking more to our general approach in such scenarios–not that we absolutely must have This Conversation, Right Now. Indeed, how do we invite (or even incentivize) those who may be experiencing barriers to participation, to share what would enable their fuller participation, if their participation is already lower than might be willing to engage? A conundrum, that I believe would be ameliorated when every one of us recognizes the stakes, and the value/benefit to all of us to have authentically inclusive spaces. Even if we keep striving for it, through personal and collective choices, I sincerely like to believe that the striving “counts,” and impacts potential futures, and in that sense, might be “enough” even when it may not feel in the moment like “enough.”

I really trust us all to handle conversations that diverge, that delve far into the terrain of strangeness of the “other,” and even that involve emotional extremes. I have seen what y’all can do. :rocket: What WE can do. :stars: Why not let’s do.

How do we know what we want to do as a whole–or en masse?
How do we concretely sponsor into existence the conversations we want to have happen?
How do we coordinate communal or individual actions, on the basis of the shared desired potential and on the basis of the collective resources gathered for it?

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Thank you so much for this wisdom and warmth.
All of the words you chose to describe (an aspect of) yourself/your experience around asking/responding, I feel I could have written myself…including the parts concerning dangers and preferring the ritual of being asked, while even still being a strong and forthright woman/person…and so again and for this in particular, I thank you, Caroline…

I’ve re-written my next sentence about six or seven times, so clearly I’m not clear enough yet.

The ritual of asking, yes, impossible to describe and deeply essential…Strength doesn’t come only in one flavor, doesn’t look only one way…

Too much to say…

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Your questions are indeed all fractal, I feel the reverberations on every level as I read and recognize them as “our” question. The planetary questions. How do WE do…(fill in the blank) .

Many things are not easily expressed or described. What I’ve noticed is a literal entanglement phenonmenon in which certain connections/events cannot happen without the conditions being not only “ripe”, but catalyzed and then “channeled”. When I read your words, I find I am wanting to express something, then immediately so many seemingly competing expressions and qualifications and explainations insist on their equal importance…but I cannot find a way to give them all voice or keystrokes, and can’t (lacking that ritual of having been asked) just plow through to a single firm and certain response/thought/idea. It’s well a bit like corn popping , a well known defense mechanism we see in the natural world when thousands of microscopic seeds pop out in hopes of one or two surviving and thriving. Where the conditions encourage it, the new life-form emerges.
I feel I can’t and don’t want to just blurt out random thoughts, I want them to be part of a conscious conversation/creation, if at all possible. Thus the ritual of asking…
However, earlier and elsewhere on this forum you and I did converse and you mentioned cosmopods, one of which (not in place of anything) could be an audio-only small gathering around certain themes such as … I almost wrote “fraxis” !!! Okay, living and moving with fractal awareness, how to get out of a white-water whirlpool by doing the opposite of the instinct to resist the pull…or, to be more citified, how to turn INTO a slide on icy streets… So, yes, I’d like to try out a cosmopod which operates by sound in which alpha wave states might be encouraged by lying down, eyes closed, or eyes open lying down outside or? and listening to each other’s deepest intutions/thoughts around our fractal reality-go-rounds and how to cooperate while creating whatever seems to want to be created…

I do believe “the striving counts” …
More soon, I hope…
Gratitude gives birth to more …

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