(This is not a direct response to PhoenixFriend’s comment but I am inspired because of that comment, and I recommend reading theirs first.)
Note: CFAR recently had a staff reunion that I was present for. I made updates, including going from “Anna is avoidant, afraid, and tries to control more than she ought” to “Anna is in the process of updating, seeking feedback, and has reaffirmed honesty as a guiding principle.” Given this, I feel personally relaxed about CFAR being in good hands for now; otherwise, maybe I’d be more agitated about CFAR.
I’m not interested in questions of CFAR’s virtue or lack thereof or fighting over its reputation. So I’m just gonna talk about general group dynamics with CFAR as an example, and people can join on this segment of the convo if they want.
I don’t think CFAR is a cult, and things did not seem comparably bad to Leverage. This is almost a meaningless sentence? But let’s get it out of the way?
RE: Class distinctions within CFAR
So… my sense of the CFAR culture, even though it was indeed a small group of 12-ish people, was that there was a social hierarchy. Because as monkeys, of course, we would fall into such a pattern.
I felt an uncomfortable tension between the stated ‘egalitarian / flat’ thing and the actual, living, breathing group dynamics we were in. I saw people like Duncan and Eli embodying the egalitarian principles and treating everyone as equal peers. I admire them for this.
But I also think some (most?) people create a bubble field effect—where by their way of being, they create the reality around them, and this reality tends to align with their expectations / view of reality. And people even act differently as a result of being in their particular bubble field. (Reality distortion field is sometimes used, but I feel it has a negative connotation I’m not trying to bring in.)
So Duncan had a bubble field that I claim was kind of nice. Not universally pleasant but. Generally wholesome. Well, I claim it was better than mine.
My own bubble field at CFAR was like… “I’m a victim and nobody cares about me, and I hate everyone. I am impossible to understand, but if they bothered trying and succeeded, they would be on my side.” My mindset was more adversarial and scarcity-based. (Not as much these days! Good for me!)
There were other people with similarly… saddening? bubble fields. Sad to see. Don’t love it for them.
Victim-minded people tended to, I claim, be at the bottom of the social hierarchy. And other people… either didn’t really dispute that trend, or they didn’t know how to do anything about it, or they tried things but mostly helplessly and without significant effect.
...
Also, I claim a lot of people at CFAR and myself (and the world, let’s be honest) had the unfortunate quality of “cowardice”—or to expand:
A lack of trust in their own judgment and sense of right/wrong combined with various personal fears, which led to being avoidant of difficult truths and triggering social situations … and being passive in the face of potential wrongs. Sometimes this manifested as physical dissociation, being overwhelmed, or freeze states. This passivity was sometimes rationalized as ‘it’s not my business’ or ‘that’s their problem’ or ‘there’s nothing I can do about that’… but in practice, it looked like people had bad social norms which led to them being bad ‘neighbors, friends, colleagues’. I further claim certain ‘small town’ folk or ‘community-oriented’ folk do not have this problem.
No one is to blame for this quality; rather, I view it as a collective problem that the world needs to solve in our local and global culture. I don’t expect CFAR to ‘solve’ it for the world, but it could be a noble rationality project.
Some people at CFAR did not have this quality, which was a boon. But they may have had other blindspots that contributed to … not-great social norms. But not ‘not-great’ here doesn’t mean ‘not-great’ compared to most orgs or groups… for this analysis, I think CFAR’s norms are probably about on par with the average EA org.
I more and more feel like it was a mistake to turn down my invitation to the recent staff reunion/speaking-for-the-dead, but I continue to feel like I could not, at the time, have convinced myself, by telling myself only true things, that it was safe for me to be there or that I was in fact welcome.
I re-mention this here because it accords with and marginally confirms:
going from “Anna is avoidant, afraid, and tries to control more than she ought” to “Anna is in the process of updating, seeking feedback, and has reaffirmed honesty as a guiding principle.”
Like, “Duncan felt unsafe because of the former, and is now regretting his non-attendance because of signals and bits of information which are evidence of the latter.”
(This is not a direct response to PhoenixFriend’s comment but I am inspired because of that comment, and I recommend reading theirs first.)
Note: CFAR recently had a staff reunion that I was present for. I made updates, including going from “Anna is avoidant, afraid, and tries to control more than she ought” to “Anna is in the process of updating, seeking feedback, and has reaffirmed honesty as a guiding principle.” Given this, I feel personally relaxed about CFAR being in good hands for now; otherwise, maybe I’d be more agitated about CFAR.
I’m not interested in questions of CFAR’s virtue or lack thereof or fighting over its reputation. So I’m just gonna talk about general group dynamics with CFAR as an example, and people can join on this segment of the convo if they want.
I don’t think CFAR is a cult, and things did not seem comparably bad to Leverage. This is almost a meaningless sentence? But let’s get it out of the way?
RE: Class distinctions within CFAR
So… my sense of the CFAR culture, even though it was indeed a small group of 12-ish people, was that there was a social hierarchy. Because as monkeys, of course, we would fall into such a pattern.
I felt an uncomfortable tension between the stated ‘egalitarian / flat’ thing and the actual, living, breathing group dynamics we were in. I saw people like Duncan and Eli embodying the egalitarian principles and treating everyone as equal peers. I admire them for this.
But I also think some (most?) people create a bubble field effect—where by their way of being, they create the reality around them, and this reality tends to align with their expectations / view of reality. And people even act differently as a result of being in their particular bubble field. (Reality distortion field is sometimes used, but I feel it has a negative connotation I’m not trying to bring in.)
So Duncan had a bubble field that I claim was kind of nice. Not universally pleasant but. Generally wholesome. Well, I claim it was better than mine.
My own bubble field at CFAR was like… “I’m a victim and nobody cares about me, and I hate everyone. I am impossible to understand, but if they bothered trying and succeeded, they would be on my side.” My mindset was more adversarial and scarcity-based. (Not as much these days! Good for me!)
There were other people with similarly… saddening? bubble fields. Sad to see. Don’t love it for them.
Victim-minded people tended to, I claim, be at the bottom of the social hierarchy. And other people… either didn’t really dispute that trend, or they didn’t know how to do anything about it, or they tried things but mostly helplessly and without significant effect.
...
Also, I claim a lot of people at CFAR and myself (and the world, let’s be honest) had the unfortunate quality of “cowardice”—or to expand:
A lack of trust in their own judgment and sense of right/wrong combined with various personal fears, which led to being avoidant of difficult truths and triggering social situations … and being passive in the face of potential wrongs. Sometimes this manifested as physical dissociation, being overwhelmed, or freeze states. This passivity was sometimes rationalized as ‘it’s not my business’ or ‘that’s their problem’ or ‘there’s nothing I can do about that’… but in practice, it looked like people had bad social norms which led to them being bad ‘neighbors, friends, colleagues’. I further claim certain ‘small town’ folk or ‘community-oriented’ folk do not have this problem.
No one is to blame for this quality; rather, I view it as a collective problem that the world needs to solve in our local and global culture. I don’t expect CFAR to ‘solve’ it for the world, but it could be a noble rationality project.
Some people at CFAR did not have this quality, which was a boon. But they may have had other blindspots that contributed to … not-great social norms. But not ‘not-great’ here doesn’t mean ‘not-great’ compared to most orgs or groups… for this analysis, I think CFAR’s norms are probably about on par with the average EA org.
I endorse Unreal’s commentary.
I more and more feel like it was a mistake to turn down my invitation to the recent staff reunion/speaking-for-the-dead, but I continue to feel like I could not, at the time, have convinced myself, by telling myself only true things, that it was safe for me to be there or that I was in fact welcome.
I re-mention this here because it accords with and marginally confirms:
Like, “Duncan felt unsafe because of the former, and is now regretting his non-attendance because of signals and bits of information which are evidence of the latter.”