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Max Borders, The Social Singularity, A Decentralist Manifesto

"The importance of the insight that code is law cannot be overstated. In a certain sense, the social singularity will be built on it" 

Welcome to the

2RowFlow Cultural Commons

Greetings Brothers & Sisters, who possess strong hearts!

 

Are you ready to tackle the single biggest injustice in Canada today?

Our failure, as Canadian Citizens, to defend the Inherent Rights of First Peoples of this land has lead to a massive injustice. 

 

THE TRUTH IS CANADIANS OWE A COLLECTIVE KARMIC DEBT TO INDIGENOUS PEOPLES & IT MUST BE RECONCILED

 

We each have an obligation as Treaty People to seek balanced reciprocity, to right this moral wrong. In a nation of bean counters run by petty bureaucrats this should be easy to do provided we are willing to demonstrate our presence, stand up straight, breathe deeply into your moral backbone and put some skin in the game.

 

Reciprocate. Balance. Flow. 

"There is a basic principle in the relationship between indigenious peoples and newcomers going back to 1600. 'In the native political and legal system the concept and practice of reciprocity is of fundamental importance. The whole practice, as the Western historian Jean Friesen puts it, of 'exchange' had 'magical, social, religious, political and moral aspects" --- John Ralston Saul, The Comeback

Now let's consider the quote posted above on the image of the Blackfoot Thunderbird. It tells of a quantum shift in thinking about the nature of the laws of Euro Centric cultures that is taking place world wide. "The importance of the insight that code is law cannot be overstated. In a certain sense, the social singularity will be built on it..." This way of thinking is based on how the "hacker" community encodes knowledge. Indeed, we are in the mist of a shift from Centralized Governance to Decentralized Systems both one line and off. 

 

We live in the era of Social Media. Our ability to connect and share knowledge has changed the way we communicate, think and behave.

This change is due to the power of "code", the medium of underlying programming languages that shape our daily communication tools and the user experience.  While almost everyone in Canadian culture has access to or uses digital tools, on a daily basis, less than 1% of the world know how to code. Those who do, form a powerful group of influencers, mostly comprised of young, highly educated, white males. 

 

At the same time, First Peoples, who know the laws of their people and the European laws that established these lands are also very powerful influencers. Like the point where two rivers meet, known as a confluence,  these two flows are now intertwingled. According Ted Nelson a pioneer of information technologyphilosopher and sociologist "EVERYTHING IS DEEPLY INTERTWINGLED". This notion, of being intertwingled is the way to express the complexity of interrelations in human knowledge. "In the 1960s, Ted Nelson saw a world of networked, interlinked – intertwingled, if you will – documents where all of the world’s knowledge is able to interact and intermingle." 

He said: "Hierarchical and sequential structures, especially popular since Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, in 1455, are usually forced and artificial.

 

Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged—people keep pretending they can make things hierarchicalcategorizable and sequential when they can't."

Now, recall the original treaty rebuttal from the late 1700's examined by Saul in his book The Comeback. He writes "when The Dutch initially proposed a patriarchal relationship with themselves as fathers and the Haudenosaunee people as children, according to Kanien’kehá:ka historian Ray Fadden, the Haudenosaunee rejected this notion (of Hierarchy) and instead proposed:

“We will not be like Father and Son, but like Brothers. [Our treaties] symbolize two paths or two vessels, travelling down the same river together. One, a birchbark canoe, will be for the Indian People, their laws, their customs, and their ways. The other, a ship, will be for the white people and their laws, their customs, and their ways. We shall each travel the river together, side by side, but in our own boat. Neither of us will make compulsory laws nor interfere in the internal affairs of the other. Neither of us will try to steer the other’s vessel.”

This exchange took place at the Covenant Chain Council of 1692.

"The term "Covenant Chain" was derived from the metaphor of a silver chain holding the English sailing ship to the Haudenosaunee also known as the Iroquois, Tree of Peace in the Onondaga Nation. A three-link silver chain was made to symbolize their first agreement. The links represent "Peace, Friendship and Respect" between the Haudenosaunee and the Crown. It was also the first written treaty to use such phrases as:

...as long as the sun shines upon the earth;

as long as the waters flow;

as long as the grass grows green, peace will last."

This imagery of the 2 Row Wampum describes what is known to painters as a figure ground relationship -- in which the figures are the two peoples in their vessels and the ground is the River, the water, the flow. This hidden ground, the environment -- totally ignored by Roman property law, in turn harkens to Canadian Media Theorist -- Marshall McLuhn, who wrote "we live invested in an electronic information environment that is imperceptible to us as water is to fish."

The wisdom and foresight of Treaty Chiefs is prophetic. We are now drowning in a sea of information. We believe that information is wealth but again, are mistaken. It is the organization of information that creates wealth. 

Brothers & Sisters keep your head above the water. 

It is time to LISTEN. GROW. SHINE. FLOW. 

Over the next few years we will build an online commons for Treaty People on the "living systems" code base known as Holochain

You may ask: Who are the treaty people?

We are the treaty people.

As John Ralston Saul writes in his book "The Comeback": 

"Treaties are signed by two parties. Both are bound by their signatures. Equally bound. Canada is built on and by treaties, going right back to the first oral agreements made in the summer of 1609 between the Maliseet, the Montagnais, the Algonquin and the French on the low-tide sands of the Suguenay opposite Tadoussac. And Canada is built not only on the legal structure of treaties, but equally on the cultural, ethical, human assumptions and commitments to those treaties contain. These were and are the commitments of both indigenous peoples and newcomers entering into permanent community relationships." 

We invite you to join us in building this community. To learn more details about the patterns that this commons will be built on go to "The Commons" section of this site. To join our email list for timely updates on our progress go to the "About" section. To participate send us an email as to what your initial contribution, be it skills, knowledge, time, or money might be. We welcome all forms of wealth. Get started on reconciling your part of our Collective Karmic Debt today! 

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