CFAR recently hosted a “Speaking for the Dead” event, where a bunch of current and former staff got together to try to name as much as we could of what had happened at CFAR, especially anything that there seemed to have been (conscious or unconscious) optimization to keep invisible.
CFAR is not dead, but we took the name anyhow from Orson Scott Card’s novel by the same name, which has quotes like:
“...and when their loved ones died, a believer would arise beside the grave to be the Speaker for the Dead, and say what the dead one would have said, but with full candor, hiding no faults and pretending no virtues.”
“A strange thing happened then. The Speaker agreed with her that she had made a mistake that night, and she knew when he said the words that it was true, that his judgment was correct. And yet she felt strangely healed, as if simply saying her mistake were enough to purge some of the pain of it. For the first time, then, she caught a glimpse of what the power of speaking might be. It wasn’t a matter of confession, penance, and absolution, like the priests offered. It was something else entirely. Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person. That she had made a mistake, and the mistake had changed her, and now she would not make the mistake again because she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate.”
“… there were many who decided that their life was worthwhile enough, despite their errors, that when they died a Speaker should tell the truth for them.”
CFAR’s “speaking for the dead” event seemed really good to me. Healing, opening up space for creativity. I hope the former members of Leverage are able to do something similar. I really like and appreciate Zoe sharing all these details, and I hope folks can meet her details with other details, all the details, whatever they turn out to have been.
I don’t know what context permits that kind of conversation, but I hope all of us on the outside help create whatever kind of context it is that allows truth to be shared and heard.
I felt strong negative emotions reading the above comment.
I think that the description of CFAR’s recent speaking-for-the-dead leaves readers feeling positive and optimistic and warm-fuzzy about the event, and about its striving for something like whole truth.
I do believe Anna’s report that it was healing and spacious for those who were there, and I share Anna’s hope that something similarly good can happen re: a Leverage conversation.
But I think I see the description of the event as trying to say something like “here’s an example of the sort of good thing that is possible.”
And I wanted anyone updating on that particular example to know that I was invited to the event, and declined the invitation, explaining that I genuinely could not cause myself to believe that I was actually welcome, or that it would be safe for me to be there.
This is a fact about me, not about the event. But it seems relevant, and I believe it changes the impression left by the above comment to be more accurate in a way that feels important.
(I was not the only staff alumnus absent, to be clear.)
I ordinarily would not have left this comment at all, because it feels dangerously … out of control, or something, in that I do not know what the-act-of-having-written-it will do. I do not understand and have no idea how to navigate the social currents here, and am not going to try. I will probably not contribute anything further to this thread unless directly asked by someone like Anna or a moderator.
What caused me to speak up anyway, despite feeling scared and in-over-my-head, was the bit in Anna’s other comment, where she said that she hopes people will not “refrain from sharing true relevant facts, out of fear that others will take them in a politicized way, or will use them as an excuse for false judgments.”
EDIT: for context, I worked at CFAR from October of 2015 to October of 2018, and was its curriculum director and head-of-workshops for two of those three years.
The former curriculum director and head-of-workshops for the Center For Applied Rationality would not be welcome or safe at a CFAR event?
What the **** is going on?
It sounds to me like mission failure, but I suppose it could also just be eccentric people not knowing how to get along (which isn’t so much different?) 😕
It’s not just people not knowing how to get along.
I am trying to navigate between Scylla and Charybdis, here; trying to adhere to normal social norms of live-and-let-live and employers and employees not badmouthing each other without serious justification and so forth. Trying to be honest and candid without starting social wars.
But it’s not just people not knowing how to get along. It’s something much closer to the gestalt of this comment, although please note that I directly replied to that comment with a lot of disagreements on the level of fact.
I had to read this a few times before I pieced it together, so I wanted to make sure to clarify this publicly.
You are NOT saying this public forum is the place for that. Correct?
You are proposing that it might be nice, if someone else pulled this together?
Perhaps as something like a carefully-moderated facebook group, or an event.
(I think this would require a good moderator, or it will generate more drama than it solves. It would have to be someone who does NOT have “Leverage PR firm vibes,” and needs a lot of early clarity about who will not be invited. Also? Work out early what your privacy policy is! And be clear about how much it intends to be reports-oriented or action-oriented, and do not change that status later. People sometimes make these mistakes, and it’s awful.)
Because on the off-chance that you didn’t mean that...
I did have some contact with the Leverage strangeness here. But despite that, I have remarkably few social ties that would keep me from “saying what I think about it.” I still feel seriously reluctant to get into it, on a public forum like this. I imagine that some others would have an even harder time.
That’s right; I am daydreaming of something very difficult being brought together somehow, in person or in writing (probably slightly less easily-visible-across-the-whole-internet writing, if in writing). I’d be interested in helping but don’t have the know-how on my own to pull it off. I agree with you there’re lots of ways to try this and make things worse; I expect it’s key to have very limited ambitions and to be clear about how very much one is not attempting/promising.
I hope folks can meet her details with other details, all the details, whatever they turn out to have been.
This is an agreeable target, and also, it seems like we have to keep open hypotheses under which many kinds of detail are systematically not shared. E.g., if someone spent some years self-flagellating for remembering details that would contradict a narrative, those details might have not fully crystallized into verbalizable memories. So more detail is better, of course, but assuming that the (“default”) asymptote of more detail will be sufficient for anything is fraught, not that anyone made that assumption.
CFAR recently hosted a “Speaking for the Dead” event, where a bunch of current and former staff got together to try to name as much as we could of what had happened at CFAR, especially anything that there seemed to have been (conscious or unconscious) optimization to keep invisible.
CFAR is not dead, but we took the name anyhow from Orson Scott Card’s novel by the same name, which has quotes like:
CFAR’s “speaking for the dead” event seemed really good to me. Healing, opening up space for creativity. I hope the former members of Leverage are able to do something similar. I really like and appreciate Zoe sharing all these details, and I hope folks can meet her details with other details, all the details, whatever they turn out to have been.
I don’t know what context permits that kind of conversation, but I hope all of us on the outside help create whatever kind of context it is that allows truth to be shared and heard.
I felt strong negative emotions reading the above comment.
I think that the description of CFAR’s recent speaking-for-the-dead leaves readers feeling positive and optimistic and warm-fuzzy about the event, and about its striving for something like whole truth.
I do believe Anna’s report that it was healing and spacious for those who were there, and I share Anna’s hope that something similarly good can happen re: a Leverage conversation.
But I think I see the description of the event as trying to say something like “here’s an example of the sort of good thing that is possible.”
And I wanted anyone updating on that particular example to know that I was invited to the event, and declined the invitation, explaining that I genuinely could not cause myself to believe that I was actually welcome, or that it would be safe for me to be there.
This is a fact about me, not about the event. But it seems relevant, and I believe it changes the impression left by the above comment to be more accurate in a way that feels important.
(I was not the only staff alumnus absent, to be clear.)
I ordinarily would not have left this comment at all, because it feels dangerously … out of control, or something, in that I do not know what the-act-of-having-written-it will do. I do not understand and have no idea how to navigate the social currents here, and am not going to try. I will probably not contribute anything further to this thread unless directly asked by someone like Anna or a moderator.
What caused me to speak up anyway, despite feeling scared and in-over-my-head, was the bit in Anna’s other comment, where she said that she hopes people will not “refrain from sharing true relevant facts, out of fear that others will take them in a politicized way, or will use them as an excuse for false judgments.”
EDIT: for context, I worked at CFAR from October of 2015 to October of 2018, and was its curriculum director and head-of-workshops for two of those three years.
The former curriculum director and head-of-workshops for the Center For Applied Rationality would not be welcome or safe at a CFAR event?
What the **** is going on?
It sounds to me like mission failure, but I suppose it could also just be eccentric people not knowing how to get along (which isn’t so much different?) 😕
It’s not just people not knowing how to get along.
I am trying to navigate between Scylla and Charybdis, here; trying to adhere to normal social norms of live-and-let-live and employers and employees not badmouthing each other without serious justification and so forth. Trying to be honest and candid without starting social wars.
But it’s not just people not knowing how to get along. It’s something much closer to the gestalt of this comment, although please note that I directly replied to that comment with a lot of disagreements on the level of fact.
I had to read this a few times before I pieced it together, so I wanted to make sure to clarify this publicly.
You are NOT saying this public forum is the place for that. Correct?
You are proposing that it might be nice, if someone else pulled this together?
Perhaps as something like a carefully-moderated facebook group, or an event.
(I think this would require a good moderator, or it will generate more drama than it solves. It would have to be someone who does NOT have “Leverage PR firm vibes,” and needs a lot of early clarity about who will not be invited. Also? Work out early what your privacy policy is! And be clear about how much it intends to be reports-oriented or action-oriented, and do not change that status later. People sometimes make these mistakes, and it’s awful.)
Because on the off-chance that you didn’t mean that...
I did have some contact with the Leverage strangeness here. But despite that, I have remarkably few social ties that would keep me from “saying what I think about it.” I still feel seriously reluctant to get into it, on a public forum like this. I imagine that some others would have an even harder time.
That’s right; I am daydreaming of something very difficult being brought together somehow, in person or in writing (probably slightly less easily-visible-across-the-whole-internet writing, if in writing). I’d be interested in helping but don’t have the know-how on my own to pull it off. I agree with you there’re lots of ways to try this and make things worse; I expect it’s key to have very limited ambitions and to be clear about how very much one is not attempting/promising.
This is an agreeable target, and also, it seems like we have to keep open hypotheses under which many kinds of detail are systematically not shared. E.g., if someone spent some years self-flagellating for remembering details that would contradict a narrative, those details might have not fully crystallized into verbalizable memories. So more detail is better, of course, but assuming that the (“default”) asymptote of more detail will be sufficient for anything is fraught, not that anyone made that assumption.