OTNS: Building Exclosures and the Institutional Scaffolding for Overlapping Sovereignties
While at Zuzalu, Primavera and I spoke with Jessy Kate Schingler who also attended and contributed to the coordi-nations private workshops. During the interview we spoke about her work on extitutional theory, her experience in building communities with intentional communities, and how this all relates to corrdi-nations. Since Zuzalu, Jessy and Primavera wrote a written explanation of what coordi-nations are on Medium. Check out the last episode to learn more about our concept of coordi-natio...
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Transcript
Alright. Hello, everyone. You are listening to the Blockchain Socials podcast. I'm Josh. I'm here with Primavera and Jesse Kate Schingler here in person at Zuzalu in Montenegro. And so we've brought Jesse Cates to come speak to us because she's been doing a lot of work on executional theory with Primavera, and this became a sort of common concept and framework that we use while coming up with our, ideas around coordinations. But maybe to start, Jesse, Kate, would you like to give yourself an introduction for those who don't know you? And then, we can get into, maybe like a summary of what executional theory is. I've talked about it before with Primavera, but I think we need a refresher on that. Thanks for having me. I,
I think like many people in this community and who probably come on this podcast, I wear a number of different hats. I've been involved with, self organizing intentional communities for about twenty years, with, project that we call the Embassy Network. I work in space exploration and, governance with an organization called the Open Lunar Foundation. And we are looking primarily at near and medium term lunar activities and thinking about positive precedent setting in that domain. And, more recently, I'm pursuing institutional theory research along with Primavera, at the CNRS and, through the Berkman Klein Institute.
Great. So would you care to give us maybe a quick summary of what institutional theory is to lay the foundation for the discussion? Sure.
Institutional theory is still very much a a concept or a theory in development, I would say. But but for me, it starts with the notion of relational dynamics. And, you know, I I think that it's not controversial to propose that relational dynamics are important in our lives. But institutional theory really looks at the ways in which relational dynamics structure larger scale, social organisms, you could say. When we when we look at, for example, you know, I think across the fabric of human communities, what is it that pulls us into solidarity with one another, into collaboration with one another? These are often not things that start off as institutional, projects or collaborations, but there's something more about the the the pairwise interaction between people that pulls us into wanting to create something that is more kind of structured or lasting or persistent together. Often we find that institutions feel like they're in conflict with our relational dynamics. And I think we see this more and more in society today as our institutions are getting, literally bigger, like operating a bigger scale with larger numbers of people. And we we tend to end up with this kind of narrative that institutions are are somehow undermining our relational dynamics. And I think I think actually that's true in many cases. Like, the way that we design institutions today often doesn't take into account or design specifically for relational dynamics. And so what we want to do with institutional theory is say, not that institutions are bad. Institutions are absolutely necessary, but we want to come up with new design patterns that are actually supportive of and and affirmative to relational dynamics so that relational dynamics and institutions are in kind of right relationship with each other, that they are balanced and that they're mutually co producing as opposed to intention or fighting with one another. Yeah. I think whenever
we were discussing the primavera on the first episode that I had her on, we talked a lot about it and kind of like howif I remember correctly and correct me if I'm wrongbut how sometimes institutions and sort of the social dynamics that underlie them can have a big mismatch and that there's sort of like institutional theory kind of brought about just, like, a term to be able to study those dynamics and how that relates to what is sort of said on paper in the institution versus what is done underneath the surface of it all. Yeah. We started to
use the term institutional scaffolding to think literally about, structures that would allow the growth of of relational dynamics. So if you think of vines that are growing up the side of a building or, construction scaffolding that makes additional activities possible on the outside of, an existing physical building, That notion of scaffolding for me is really helpful, because it it immediately puts the institution in relationship to the these, these other dynamics that are that are, kind of composed of a different, internal, physics, if you will. And what we really wanna do is we want we want to understand how do you design institutions in a way that, can support relational dynamics or institutional dynamics. And similarly, how do institutional dynamics, need or rely on or, look to institutions to support them, as opposed to seeing, again, institutions as somehow only,
undermining relational dynamics. Like one one of the things that we're trying to really explore and especially now with, like, the work on coordination but in general, is, is an institutional scaffolding necessarily something that will constrain and suffocate institutional dynamics or can we come up with institutional scaffolding that are actually almost nurturing and fostering and promoting specific types of, institutional dynamics? And I think these always require to have a dynamic and, like, foresight in the sense that what when you create an institutional scaffolding today, this is in order oftentimes, this is in order to either constrain some negative institutional dynamics or promote some positive ones. But then we need to also think about what happens into the long term and when those something that was created with the intention of promoting specific dynamics in the long term might actually end up constraining the evolution of those executional dynamics. And because, institutions are static and executional dynamic, anytime we inject some some staticity into it, even though it is in order to actually enable and foster new dynamics, it might actually preclude the natural dynamicity and evolution of those. And I think understanding this, like where is the dynamic equilibrium that exists and how we can actually ensure that there is, despite the statisticity of the institutional scaffolding, how can we ensure that it maintains the capacity of operating in a dynamic manner or at least allowing for the dynamicity of executional dynamics.
I think there's another important aspect of the big picture of institutional theory, which is this notion of persistence or or sometimes we talk about it as success. Like when when we look at social phenomena, I think we often speak to whether they are successful as being whether the institution continues to exist. And there are many cases where what we have are persistent social phenomenon, but they're fundamentally relational social phenomenon. And that I think that's really interesting. It's one thing to recognize that a community is important for the success of, let's say, a company. But we're still looking at is the company still in operation, not is this relational creature with a certain pattern integrity, is that still continuing to persist in the world irrespective of an institutional aspect of it? So I think we're trying to broaden the notion of an our understanding, our collective understanding of what does it mean to have sort of sustainable social systems and sustainable social arrangements and, see institutions as one part of a healthy ecosystem of that, but not the only one.
Right. I think, and this is all this, I think, becomes super related based on, I guess, a couple of things that we kind of identified as the, things that people are potentially feeling, and identifying with concepts like the network state is that there is this growing, feeling that institutions are failing. Meanwhile, we have these cool crypto tools that are really interesting for perhaps being these institutional scaffolding, for executional dynamics that are happening within crypto or something like that. And as well, like, yeah, just the the lack of community and, like, people wanting to feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves, especially when they're, like, perhaps digital nomads that are uprooted from their, like, national territory that, like, traditionally would be the place where people would find community. This is an interesting framework to think about basically all these questions that that we were mulling over during our five days of of private workshops.
Yeah. One of the things that I find so has been so rich and interesting about being here in Zuzulu is that and we really got to talk to a lot of people about what is it that compels them when they hear the term network state. And I I I think I had my own expectations of what of what they would say, but, I think pretty much every single person that I had the opportunity to ask said that their association with it was actually a relational association. It was this idea that, that they don't feel that they have kinship or sort of shared identity with people that they are around in their, formal state, where they maybe were born. And so that they're they're sort of like seeking and excited for the kinship that they experience in an environment like this. And, and that they wanted to build that community in solidarity with I mean, I guess solidarity is my word, but, but I heard it, heard the the desire and the hunger really being about this kind of, like, relational fabric. And yet, you know, my read of, the network state book is really fundamentally an institutional proposal. Like, it's not Right. It doesn't in fact, it doesn't talk about relational dynamics at all. It really talks about, about establishing the institutional infrastructure that, you know, eventually after the seven step, process events eventually relate results in, diplomatic recognition. And, and so I you know, I think part of what we saw is that, that there is a kind of gap there. There's a lot that simply wasn't treated in the network state even if you have a very neutral interpretation of the network state's structural proposal, that there's this, like, massive space that we felt it's important to explore for the kinds of social phenomena that that we personally are interested in and and that, based on the people that we're talking to, it's anecdotal, but,
the kinds of things that, people around us are hungry for as well. And also, I think discussing with the people, I think this is this is like the, I would say what you're describing is the constructive approach of why we want something new. There is also the subtractive approach of why there is a resonance to network state, which is the idea of escaping from a particular framework that is too constraining. Right? And so in particular, like, the longevity people and, or, like, even the crypto people, where all of students have there are new technologies that apparently provide new opportunities, and, those opportunity cannot be explored because of the institutional scaffolding of the state, which has particular constraint on what you can or cannot do. And all of student, this is also a very strong component that brings resonance with the way in which Balazs describes the network state, because you want to escape or exclude yourself from those, from those systems. And I think what we're gonna discuss during this episode as well is, like, do we really need to go all the way as Balaji tries to argue, that we need to create a completely new state in order to escape from some of the institutional scaffolding of the state? Or, can we actually find little enclaves within the institutional structure of the state in which we can operate more freely, which brings us to the question of exclosure. So maybe, Jessica, you can give us a little, institutional introduction to exclosure. And I think I think what we when we're when we're formalizing the the notion of coordination, I think we need to think about both those question of, one, how do we create a better relational fabric with people that there is really a sense of tribe and affinity with? And how do we also create an institutional scaffolding, which is not designed to reproduce the state, but rather to exclude from the extensive grid that the state has provided.
Yeah. Ex exclosure is one of our Sexy terms. Yeah. One of our favorite terms. And to describe exclosure, I think it's useful to start with enclosure because exclosure is different than enclosure. Enclosure is I think we all have a kind of intuitive, familiarity with the notion of enclosure. But, if you think about some enclosed social dynamics or even institutional dynamics, you might think of a company or an organization, an institution like like a university or something like that. And that that institution will have a set of rules and rules associated with it. And those the the interactions within that institutional framework are sort of enclosed and they they have a certain, domain of operation, you could say. But there's a lot of, interaction between that institution and the world outside of it. And so the the interactions that take place according to the rules and rules of that institution are very much visible, by and legible to the institutions outside, of it as well. And we, as we were exploring the, this idea of institutional dynamics and what, institutional scaffolding might look like, we, we noticed that in some cases, there are institutional designs that actually seem to almost like hide the social dynamics that take place inside of them and and make those social dynamics a bit invisible to the surrounding institution. And that that creates this kind of fascinating opportunity to, this is what we call an exclosure and it's this opportunity to kind of, to explore or experiment with fundamentally different kind of internal physics of, how you might organize yourself within that exposed area. So one of the examples that we like to think about, is some, the Berkman Klein Center or other kind of academic environments where where there are these kind of, very strong communities that, of of, let's say, affiliates. So I'm also, involved with the Ostrom workshop, and I think they do this very well as well, where they have a community of people that they give an official, title, an official role, like you are an affiliate, with the Berkman Klein Center. And through that, that is an institutional role. So the institution knows how to see that I am an affiliate. But once you get into the group of affiliates, there's no particular requirements of what I do as an affiliate besides some I mean, obviously, there's some basic things like, you know, don't defame the university's reputation, stuff like that. But but besides that, what we do as affiliates is not a structured interaction. It's very much a, totally dynamic relational set of interactions. And and often the reason why universities do this is that the most incredible work is produced in these environments, but the institution itself doesn't regulate or codify the dynamics that are happening within that exclosure. And and so, again, this I relate this to the notion of prefiguration as well. Like it creates an exposure creates this environment where we can potentially prefigure, futures that we would like to, see exist.
Does just to be, like, maybe to, I don't know, to to be the critic, is that like because it sounds to me because I'm not in the academic world. Maybe I'm just kinda dumb on this. But it sounds to me like this type of thing is almost like, is it because it's there's it's an exclusive club to be a part of? Is that part of it? It doesn't
have to be exclusive. I think the important, sort of definitional components is that there is some there's a kind of, boundary that's created where, the people who are part of that exclosure or at least some of them have an institutional role. But as a result of that institutional role, and this is obviously, this is a design question, like how you create exclusures is, is a whole other podcast, let's say. But but there are people who straddle the institutional and the institutional realm and create this kind of protective bubble within which, these other social dynamics can take place.
I think I will I will add maybe like one one of the distinguishing, feature of an exclosure as opposed to a club or to any type of like social gathering is that the exclosure is invisible to the institution because the membrane that it uses in order to shape its community is something that speaks exactly the same language of the institution so that the institution cannot see through. Right? And so as opposed to a club, like, if we create, like, I don't know, you know, membership club or something, there is nothing that prevents the institution from stepping in, if the club is doing stuff that the institution doesn't like. When you actually create an disclosure, it's a little bit more powerful because you understand precisely the rules of the institution and you are crafting the membrane of the exclosure in such a way that there is no possible penetration of the institution inside the exclosure, right? So the exclosure is an enclosure within an enclosure. And so you're carving out a space of freedom from the external enclosure. And because it is made of the same fabric, because it is speaking exactly the same language, then the only way for the institution to penetrate within the exclosure is to actually violate its own rules and therefore, self defeating itself. So this is the magic and I think this is very relevant when we talk about network state and coordination is if there is an underlying desire of escaping from the institutional grids that a particular state has created, then either you have to move away from the enclosure of the state, which is Balaji's solution of, well, let's let's declare sovereignty and therefore the state has no longer we are no longer part of the enclosure of the state. We are now our own enclosure. Or, and this is what we are advocating for, let's stay within the enclosure of the state because there is many grids that we are actually fine with. But within that enclosure, let's craft our own exclosure so that the state doesn't get in and we can therefore operate with greater degrees of freedom without having to completely separate ourselves from the territory and from the sovereignty of the state.
I think that that also brings us to an important concept that we've been discussing a lot over the past week or so, which is the notion of sovereignty. And we've been talking about this question or this idea of, kind of layered sovereignties. Sovereignty is not being, within the state context, we often think about sovereignty as this kind of hegemonic phenomena. And the notion of sovereignty within the the coordination's idea is much more about this kind of, like, coexisting, but sort of, like, mutually autonomous and perhaps exposed from each other, layers of sovereignty. And that to me is a really important distinction. And it's a it's also, experientially, it's a quality of the world that I seek. Like, I don't I don't want to create entirely kind of isolated, bubble of existence from the rest of the world, but I'd like to create kind of these pockets of autonomy that somehow are are themselves, persistent and kind of self reliant, but also are able to interact with and and navigate and and be in relationship with these other pockets. And so so sovereignty and exclosure, I think, have this intimate relationship with each other that are fascinating for me to explore.
Yeah. And, I think this is particularly relevant to the work we've done in the sense that, the traditional way of saying seeing things in a more institutional manner is that you cannot have sovereignty if you are subject to someone else's sovereignty. And what what we are trying to develop here is more of a, an an a conceptualization of multiple layers of overlapping sovereignties, And you can actually be sovereign in a particular domain while also being subject to someone else's sovereignty in a broader, larger scale domain. And I think exploring those overlapping jurisdictions and additional layer of sovereignties is really what distinguished the coordination type of work we're doing from the more traditional and institutional, Balaji style of network states.
I mean, even even the idea that sovereignty can ever be pure is itself, I think, a fallacy. Like, and it often gets talked about as a paradox. Like, you talk about, well, if you read, you know, Homo Seser or something like that, the whole book is about the paradox of sovereignty. But I actually don't think of sovereignty as a paradox. I think that sovereignty is kind of mutually co constituted even in the cons construct of the nation state or the Westphalian state. Sovereignty exists through pure recognition among other features. And so this idea of, kind of enriching that landscape of sovereignties is, to me, it's actually, like, in high integrity with the the fundamental concept as I understand it.
So let's let's go back to the basics and, let's try and map the notions that we have developed in the context of executional theory with, the more traditional concept of nation and states, and nation states, and network states, and coordination. So, maybe just in case you can give us a little, a little introduction to, like, to which extent does nation relates to execution, to the to which extent of the state relates to the institution, and and how do you see, the notion of nation states and network states and our new concept of coordinations, to interface with those two concepts of institution and execution.
Simplistically, I guess you could see the state is an institutional construct and the the nation is an institutional construct. And, you know, when we think about nation, we spend a lot of time talking about the concept of nation and and itself, you know, is is also probably worth a podcast. But there are these qualities that we associate with kind of national identity, of shared identity, shared belonging, in, let's say, traditional national, concept of nationality. You might say shared history or even inherited identity or history or cultural norms. When we start to think about the network state or coordinations, the network state is, as we were already discussing, is, an institutional concept predominantly. And, you know, I think if Balaji was here, Balaji might say, well, it wasn't my attempt to describe the relational fabric of the network state. I was describing the institutional construct. And, what we were were doing was actually, I think, starting more from the institutional side, the sort of, national identity side. But, but there are some observations that we are making that not if you take the concept of national identity and you look at, the the the world that we live in today, there are a lot of people who are kind of constructing a very, very deep sense of belonging and identity outside of those inherited national identities. Those sort of like you might call them the, the classic or the traditional notion of national identity. And so we feel that there is something that's, like, nation like or nation ish or maybe like finding your tribe or, you know, there's many different words that we could use for it. Something that's happening, these days in the world that, that relies on kind of networked, communication and coordination. And that that is kind of that that's this new landscape across which these identities are being produced. And it's, it's on some level, it's, it's our hypothesis that the ability to produce identity in this way or, or for identity to emerge and grow and develop in this way, that that might well lead to, a different kind of, quality to the national identity or whatever we wanna call it. And, as a result that it also might warrant or rely on a slightly modified, institutional, form. So what is the evolution of, let's say, the concept of national identity and what is as a result the evolution of the concept of the institutional scaffolding that that identity might warrant.
Right. This is I'm getting maybe getting too delusian here, but, I feel that, like, capital has sort of deterritorialized, our sort of traditional, relationships with territory, with land, with local, existence and and shared history, through globalization, through, like, the ability to move anywhere and for capital to go anywhere mostly. And so now we're at a point where people, just as humans, still have this desire for kinship and community, but the institutions that sort of, govern over them don't fit kind of like the deterritorialized space now of what they're, declaring their sovereignty over that so people are being coerced into. So there's this huge contradiction for people and, yeah. So I guess, like, crypto is this interesting potential for institutional scaffolding and Balaji, I think, was, like, one attempt, although he probably I don't know if he agrees with exactly this reasoning or, like, this, trajectory as to what caused this, situation. But it's perhaps an attempt at trying to reconcile
those things. I think it's good that you mentioned, sort of like crypto and new these new forms of organizing there. There's two things that makes me think of. One is that we were actually talking the other day about the fact that we were surprised that despite sort of the network state book being situated very much in a kind of like modern technological landscape and being written by somebody who's embedded in, you know, Silicon Valley and the venture capital world and technology, that it doesn't actually really look deeply at the ways in which technology is kind of able to be instrumented for new forms of organizing. Right. That's what's so frustrating. Yeah. It's a bit, not and not only is it frustrating, but to me, it links to what is, potentially or or to me, it it is perhaps, perhaps central to what is different about these new national like identities, which is that they are I mean, among other things, obviously, they're, so that you have this kind of networked coordination and communication that is that is enabling this production of identity and shared belonging. As a result, it's not it's not inherited. It's something that people are actually finding each other and kind of co creating. So that that's like that's kind of new, right? Because historically again that level of, identification was something that you kind of received. Like, you are you are Jewish, you are Arab, you are, even like you're you're Canadian, whatever you are. But these days what we find is people are, you know, traveling around the world to not just find but to build that depth of, like, nation like or tribe like identity with other people.
I mean, the Bellagian approach is, like, you know, trying to make a, you know, nation ish type of thing through people who like keto or, like, want to get rid of the FDA or whatever as being, like, something, but, of course, it misses, I guess the actual things that you need to to create a community, which I think we identified as being kinship Mhmm. As not necessarily alignments or not agreeing necessarily with a particular thing, but like that there is mutual support and solidarity that if something happens to you then I'll be there for you and if something happens for me then I'll be there for you.
Which importantly is super different from us all agreeing on something. Like, if we have the depth of relationship, if we have a depth of relationship, then if you feel like we should, invest more in agriculture and I feel like we should invest more in education, then we have a basis on which to have a discussion with one another. But it also it it makes clear why having some commentary on the kind of internal aspects of voice versus, simply characterizing exit. Like, why that's so important? Because kinship needs to coexist with some form of our ability to navigate and reconcile differences with each
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I also want to, introduce the concept of interdependence, because I think it's actually, tackling also into that. Meaning that it seems to me that in the past, before having easy transportation means and network communications, we were deeply, deeply interdependent of our neighbors and, our people that are part of the same territory. And so, all of a sudden, I feel like this this feeling of kinship is also a feeling that emerge from a sense of interdependence, meaning that I am here for you and you are here for me because we are in in in it together. And somehow, I feel that two things have happened with the Internet is that on the one hand I mean, Internet and mobility. On the one hand, we feel less interdependent of our local neighbors, and we feel, on the other hand, more interdependent of with people that are not at all, associated with our territory. And and then we choose, because now we can choose. We choose to create new type of interdependencies with people that we feel an affinity with because that's the one we want to be interdependent with. So I feel that I feel like because I'm I'm thinking like, why why do we feel kinship with people that just live on the same territory? There's such a large variety of people. And, of course, there is culture, ethnicity, and things like this. But but the reality is that we are we are part of the same thing, and we are subject to the same, you know, law of natures and and institutional frameworks. And so all of Sudan, we create kinship because of the existing interdependence. And interestingly, it feels to me that when we move into the digital, we are actually creating interdependencies because we have kinship. And eventually, it is both this feeling of kinship and interdependence. Which one is the chicken and which one is the egg? It's really hard to tell, but that's what actually triggers a desire of coordinating
together. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. I think for me, what comes keeps coming back, it seems that creates, kind of a shared identity, a shared struggle. Like, to me, that seems to be keep coming back. I mean, at some point, you know, we were humans were cavemen who just kind of, like, freely, well, I guess associated with each other because they're right next to each other and they're probably family. And eventually, like, culture kind of was created because of the material conditions in which they lived in. So, like, I mean, of course, you're you're going to have a different type of culture around, like, I don't know, groups of humans that were living near rivers versus living in the middle of the desert versus living in the jungle or whatever else just because of the, like, physical manifestation of the struggle that they, have to go through. And so, like, the creation of national identities even before the Internet is always, like, like the the the cultural, practices that you do is just based on how you over how have you historically overcome these struggles that everyone else in your territory have also overcome. And what's really, extremely fucked up about, like, the Balaji, network state we were talking about earlier with his, like, really crazy quote about manifest destiny that was extremely racist was he cites, like, manifest destiny, which was, like, the struggle for white people to move across the continent all the way to the West. And that has I mean, it's not wrong. That has, like, ident like, created the identity of American culture and creates and it is like a a root of what it is today. And, you know, he will say that's a good thing. I will say that's a very, problematic thing. But I think now we're at a point where our struggles that we experience are not just territorially bound, or the one the struggles that we identify with are not territorially bound, but have become perhaps also more abstract.
That brings me back to something that Primavera was saying earlier, which is that in the concept of coordinations, the idea as as we've conceived of it, you know, in this intensive workshop over the last week or so altogether was, was actually not as a territorial construct but actually something that, in in many cases might rely affirmatively on, a territorial state construct. So the idea is, we have those constructs and and I have in my mind the notion of like a thick state and a thin state. And, traditionally perhaps, you know, we grew these like thick Westphalian states and then as you were saying, we kind of began to to thin them out or perhaps like make them a bit more porous through globalization and economic interdependence. And, there's this kind of like, Primavera has a great diagram that maybe we can include in the show notes somewhere. But, what we're exploring is this kind of like middle layer perhaps of like mutualism and and, solidarity, that again makes, I think it's not about, it's not sort of about being anti, like territorial state, but I think it is about, thinning out the state to where its core competencies lie. And the reason that I'm talking about this is because I think that this ability to kind of find people and choose who to enter into, shared struggle with, in many cases relies on the fact that these like basic territorial functions are are handled. You know, like we have roads, we have airports that we can go to physically to fly to the places that we meet all our new kin with. So it's not that territorial management, isn't needed anymore. Like, obviously, we need that and it's an important function in the world. How we want to do that or obviously the spectrum of states out there is wide and, and some of them are what you might call good and some of them are what you might call bad. But I do think it, I do think we need something at the territorial level. And then you get into this sort of like more affirmative notion of who do I want to be kin with. And, and that's just such an important part of the engine of, you know, I think of building beautiful, solidaristic and, and sort of like sustainable social communities. And one of the things that that really stood out to me as I was beginning to get into reading, the network state book at one point, I was like, I was a bit confused because, you know, perhaps because I'm a bit overly biased towards thinking about governance structures and decision making structures. And so I was like, where do we talk about this? And, so I started to, sort of, you know, like, command f, search for certain words in the book. And, I was looking for the word, like, care. I was looking for the word poor. Uh-huh. And, you know, mental health is, like, obviously, it's particular phrasing, but, like, I was just poking around for words like this, and, and I didn't find them. And Yeah. You know, to me, shared struggle is also a bit about, like, you know, if one person is struggling, like, yeah, how do we swarm around them? Like, how or if lots of people are struggling, like, how do we build systems that can be, that can kind of, like, heal and sustain and persist around people who are in different states, or even different states of agreement or different states of of thriving. And that feels like a really important part of, like, a really important quality
that I think we were grasping for, in the work that we've been doing. Maybe I think it might be interesting if you wanna talk about, like, if we get more, practical because I think you have experience in living living in intentional communities, which came up a lot in our discussions and, like, what it is like to live in this type of living arrangement and how probably a lot of people who are interested in network space actually just want an intentional community. But, could you maybe talk a bit about your experience with intentional communities and, like, what are the, like, I don't know, practical things that you found around creating kinship and creating, like, a healthy, intentional community?
Yeah. It's a it's a very rich question. So I'll I'll try and, like, find some Not a straightforward one. I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But I'll try and, you know, maybe bring in some salient points. I mean, in my experience, our starting point was deciding that we wanted to live together in order to create an environment that was, I would say, permissive of, like, rich intellectual explorations and focused on, hospitality. And that, you know, it was, like, quite basic on some level. Right? We wanted to be around people who inspired us and, and, make sure that it was easy for all of our our extended community members to be around us. But I think in some ways, accidentally, we stumbled into some properties that we're we're seeing now kind of come up in the coordinations work and concept. One of those being, an ability to be in a kind of like, solidaristic relationship with the outside world, not just the internal world. So as a as a result of hosting lots of events and and an emphasis on hospitality, and like accommodations, means that, our communities are very much always, receiving new new inputs, new material, new ideas, and new activities. And that I think that those inputs create, a kind of like ongoing engine for, change and innovation and like positive shared experience, but also something that where we have to navigate, we have to navigate that together. And so through doing that, we end up with this sort of like shared struggle or, you know, having disagreements about how many events we should have or how we should spend our money or whatever it is. And coming through that to the other side creates then also that shared sense of identity and kinship and all these other things. I didn't actually talk that much about the embassy itself. I can do that if we would like. I do. I'm very close because the more
the more we think about the network state and coordination work, the more I have this internal admiration for the name Embassy Network. So I would love if you can actually give us a little bit, of a sneak peek into, like, what is it that actually motivated the name, And, and do you feel that the the name and the does the path is there a performativity as well to the name that, that that was given to this network? But but especially, like, why why did you call it the embassy network?
Yeah. It's it's funny that you ask that because these days I almost feel a bit sheepish about the name because, I think it's a very Western, term and I'm I'm like way more familiar now with all of the colonial implications of that term than my, you know, 20 whatever, you know, four year old self, might have been. But the inspiration, you know, for for the term Embassy Network was that we wanted to create a or be part of a network of places around the world that like our kind of naive concept of an embassy that you an embassy is was was in our minds a place where you go and you can always find people who speak your language and share your culture. And that there are kind of like little exclaves or exclosures from the environment around them. And, yeah. And so the embassy network was just was these these embassies, were embassies to the future that we were all cocreating. But they're each sort of you know, they're each different, and they're in different locations, and they have different different internal kind of, you know, like the embassy. If you're thinking about, like, the Canadian embassy or something like that, the embassy in Sudan is gonna be different than the embassy in China is gonna be different than the embassy in The United States. But there's a familiarity there or, like, this concept of pattern integrity that we talk of a lot. I wanna talk about the the performativity
of the name because I think it's actually so one thing interesting is that you could have called it embassy, but you call it embassy network. And and in some way, personally, I have only experienced Embassy San Francisco in terms of the thing that, at least up to now, that is emerging. It's hard to tell. But up to the time in which it was still the embassy network as an embassy network. But what's interesting is that, you know, and then and then other communities have been inspired and and spin out some some some their own manifestation. But what's interesting is that I think if it was just called, you know, embassy or maybe any name, it would be very it would be harder, I think, for someone that comes and visit the embassy to actually even think about the fact that this can be spin off. And because it was called the embassy network, then anyone can can relate to the idea. Well, if it's a network, I can become a node of the network. And my intuition, and I'm I'm curious what you think is that the fact that the embassy network has managed to inspire and spin off many different instances, whether or not they became part of the embassy network or not, is because it was not presented through the naming as a single instance, but rather as a network of nodes. Mhmm.
Yeah. Well, I I think that's a fascinating question. And for I'm gonna get into it. But one thing I'll say is that, kind of in support of your point, often people don't even know whether to call the house the location in San Francisco the embassy or the embassy network. Like, they're they're kinda like, I'm a bit confused. Like, is this the embassy network or the embassy? But I I actually think that, you know, the the idea of the embassy network I wanna tell a bit of a story about that because when we first started calling what we were doing the embassy network or using that term, we like so many other communities, I think we were both starting the first node and we had aspirations of creating a network. And and so we narrated it a lot. We talked about, you know, we were like building our our local community, but then we would kind of go out in the world and we would say, and we're building a network. And we would kind of have this, like, who wants to join together and create a network together? And what, actually, just like over the last week as we've been doing this work and insight that it gave me is that because at the very beginning we were just one node, but we were narrating it as a network. I think a lot of people were like, well, what's the formal way to join it? And we're not sure. And, we didn't want to create this like hyper institutionalized form of, joining the network or what membership looks like. And so it was always this kind of murky thing and we never really settled on something that was concrete. And I think many other people kind of received it as, well, you're just one node. Who are you to go and like create the network? Like, why would we join your network? Why wouldn't you join our network? Or why wouldn't we create a network together? But we weren't talking about it that way. And so in my experience, which are retrospectively, the notion of the network, we, like, came out of the gate fast with the idea of a network, but then it actually, I would say, kind of receded into the background for many years as we didn't quite crystallize into a network, but we did so the network the idea of the network kind of receded into the background for a bit, and then we actually just formed authentic, meaningful relationships with other communities. And we weren't fussed about calling it a network or not. We were just like, we're just we're just relating to each other. We're exchanging members of the community. We're sharing documentation. We're sometimes, lending each other money, whatever, but it was totally informal. And now fast forward, like ten years, and now there are all these different nodes and they're legitimately kind of autonomous nodes, but we have, real, ongoing relationships with one another. And what I notice is that the term embassy network is sort of starting to get readopted by members of those nodes in a way that I don't feel like I've had any, particular role or say in. So I can't I'm trying to think about if that, supports or undermines your hypothesis, but I do think that there is a performativity to the word network. And I guess if you look at that whole arc, what I would say is that, the performativity isn't always positive, right? Like it was performing in that way at the beginning. And that's actually why I think it was hard to build the network because we weren't like, we weren't quite ready to be peers as autonomous communities creating that network. But now that we feel that strength and that we've, you know, achieved a kind of internal self reliance and, like, autopoiesis is the word we've been using, now we can almost engage with that concept of network in a more sophisticated way, that I think is more likely to constitute something that looks like a coordination.
And, just to to continue a little bit to riff on on naming, I think it sounds interesting the extent to which when you have, like, communities which each have their own names, and then when those communities start to have such extensive degrees of not just interaction, but really, cross pollination, Meaning that at some point, it becomes difficult to tell whether one person belongs to one, the other, but or maybe something else. Right? And, and and what is this something else, and to which extent is the mere fact of naming that something else and give it a proper independent name, to which extent does that actually manifest itself? Or to to which extent does it facilitate? It's kind of an intention. It's like we intend to recognize this as its own overarching or umbrella entity. And by the mere fact that now we have something to refer to, then this thing starts actually instantiating itself into the world. So and I think we've seen it a little bit with, like, Embassy, Featopia, Wilbur, etcetera. I think there is a desire to find the right name, and it's difficult to find a good name. But, like, what is this feeling? Like, to which extent is, like, just when when when does this state change archive in which we are no longer just a set of independent community interfacing and interacting with one another? And when do we become a multicellular organism that has its own identity?
I don't know if you can see it in the moment. I I think it might be one of those things where it's kind of like asking when does a liquid become a gas? You know, it's like it is a fundamental phase change that you you know that it's happened once once it's sort of like more comprehensively complete. But in the precise moment, I think it's really subtle. And I do think that it's a it's a delicious question. And I think that the act of naming is itself this kind of like mysterious yeah. Again, delightfully mysterious phenomenon where somehow it creates this, like, lightning rod where people can begin to orbit around a concept. And so to the extent I mean, I guess, what are things that are associated with the name kind of catalyzing that phase change? Certainly, it's using the name. Right? Like beginning to refer, not, not at the expense of the name that you've already been using. So if you're a node in, that is constituting a network, it's not that you would stop using your individual node's name, but as you begin to, it's almost like, calling in like a, like, a spirit guide or something like that. Right? Like the name itself is this thing that you begin to refer to, and you kind of co produce it as you're referring to it, as you discuss it. That brings in the relationality where we can kind of navigate amongst different nodes. How do you feel about this name? What do you associate with this name? What do you attribute to this name? And I can hear what you're saying, and I can begin to internalize that, respond to it. You understand what I see. And then through that, we kind of scaffold, no pun intended, into the identity of of the name itself.
So maybe just like, to to bring this, wonderful episode to a closing. I'm curious about so within executional theory, we've been discussing a lot about, the extent to which the the institutions can be a a driver for competition, but inside the institution because there is, like, less space. There's a limited amount of space to who can be member and what are the holes within those members, but also outside because since you identify something as a box, and then all of a sudden this thing, the survival of the box, I. E. The institution needs to compete to put the environment against the other boxes, as opposed to when we move into the executional dynamics, orbiting orbiting dynamics and so forth. We have this intuition at least that, there is more of a cooperative potential. And, and so bringing this to the question of, contra comparing and contrasting the Balaji's vision of network state, which is actually likely to be in competition with existing nation states versus, our idea of coordination that, that operate as additional layers. To which extent do you see that the coordination is more prone to facilitate cooperation and collaboration rather than competition?
Yeah. I think that in the conception of the network state as I understand it, it's, I would say, like, a kind of flatter concept. Like, it it sort of, projects or or, like, really only describes social interactions through these fairly institutional constructs. And I do think institutions inherently have a stronger characteristic of being in, maybe not always competition with each other, but that they are, often operating in environments of, like, fundamental scarcity of one way, shape, or form. And that's that's not like, I don't mean that in a valenced way. I mean that in just like a practical technical sense. And so institutions tend to exist in domains that require navigating some form of scarcity or competition. Sometimes they do that well. Sometimes they do that less well. And and in that sense, the network state concept, given that it exists primarily in that institutional domain, is more likely to be in, constantly navigating that kind of environment or sorry, those kinds of, dynamics. What I think, is introduced by this notion of coordination is this additional, dimensionality. Like, we kind of like blow open the notion of these new, I'd say, these new domains of sovereignty outside of just the institutional structure. And and we add these other layers that are fundamentally institutional. And institutional, relationships and dynamics, I think both, function well in and tend to produce, environments of abundance and kind of local navigation of of, mutual support. And in that sense, I think that we're basically we're, like, adding space for many of the dynamics that constitute these coordinations to occur outside of institutional constructs. And what that does is that makes room for for an additional sort of, cooperative approaches or environment.
Nice. So I think, we will end it there. Thank you so much, Jesse Cade, for coming on and sharing your experience and wisdom with us on, that you shared with us throughout all the workshops.
Thank you. It's been fun, jamming with you for the last, couple weeks.
You can say that you're sick of me now.