Networks, Relationships and Value

I am starting with the assumption that it does not matter who you are, or, in a macro sense, you do not matter.  Value does not lie in matter at all.  Value is in relationships and every social contract that we have to represent value as a thing is just an abstraction of that fact. The space between us is real.  How we fill that space is what defines us. 

This is why I am interested in networks.

Desperate Need For Change

We are in desperate need of change.  It could be argued that we are perpetually in desperate need of change, that change for humanity is like breathing for the body.  The problem, as I see it, is that we spend our energy understanding self as if it were an orphaned node, as if my value was not derived from my relation to others, to you, as if I made me. The fundamental change that we need is to shift our understanding of self to internalize the networks that, while constantly shifting, define us. And, paradoxically, we need to believe that each of us are the source of change, that a constantly better world is sourced from self, that we are each responsible for the quality of our connections to the world.  What do I think that means in a more concrete sense.

Our Economy

I believe that the expeditious abstraction that is cash has impaired our ability to understand value.  The fact that money can't buy love does not devalue love, it debases money.  Money is not valuable. However, our social contract that defines money as the proxy for value and the total abstraction of that proxy from the real value that it represents has obscured our ability to feel love. In our world, where capitalism is spirituality, to possess money is to be worthy of love. To be blatant and maybe corny, cash is a false god.  We need to re-up our social contract and define love as a currency.

Our Divided Community

We have become masterful at building and inhabiting echo chambers.  In his recent book, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart, Bill Bishop argues that Americans are selecting where to live based on sameness and familiarity.  This sameness seems to manifest itself  in voting patterns, blue and red. I know that I am drawn to people that think like me and that I don't want to live near people with whom I would always disagree but that feels far to simplistic to me.  I wonder if this polarization is less about Americans moving around the country to feel comfortable than it is about the ideas and individuals that we are being sold.  Our leaders prefer to work in black and white as opposed shades of grey. If our choices are binary, right or wrong, it is easier to sell, easier to control the market, consumers are easier to manipulate.  Ironically, we have more more choice in tennis shoes than we do in the marketplace of political ideas.

Our Bellicose Soul

I believe that it is the irresponsibly simplified version of our world's problems and the presented solutions that has generated our bellicose soul.  If you can only be right or wrong, and you are not me, then you are wrong.  With out the instinct or even the ability to find common ground with Other we are doomed to forever be battling windmills.

Network Shape

I have written briefly about network shapes before. There are a lot of ways to envision, design or impose network shapes on communities.  Silos, hierarchies, centralized and distributed are some that I can think of; however, a scale-free network seems to be the best model for thinking about human networks. Scale-free networks are a specific case of the Social Circles Network Model. In Yochai Benkler's book, The Wealth of Networks, (chapter 7 PDF download, How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom) he discusses scale-free networks as a way to understand popularity and value on the Internet.

"...the most notable characteristic in a scale-free network is the relative commonness of vertices with a degree that greatly exceeds the average. The highest-degree nodes are often called "hubs", and are thought to serve specific purposes in their networks, although this depends greatly on the domain."
     - Wikipedia

The hubs or clusters are centers of activity or attractiveness or value.  This is an idealized way that I think about human networks and value discovery.  What if we could discover and move to value in a natural state or, dare I say, in a free market.  Capitalism with its abstracted and exploitable value structures likely forms a scale-free network as well but my guess is that the formal definition of value constrains the network to have fewer and larger hubs.

So, with this idealized lens on human networks, where value is discovered and not dictated, what does it mean to be on the edge of the network.  Since exiting value represents a sort of gravity, I like to think of the edge of this network as being representative of Innovation; emergent or potential value.  Our current economic model puts too much value on the hubs and not enough on the edges.

Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich can Save the World

(For a more nuanced critique than I am about to give see this post at Tactical Philanthropy.)

Strangely, I now get to why I wrote this post in the first place. Ever since philanthrocapitalism became a thing, it has sat wrong with me and it wasn't until recently that I have been able to figure it out. It comes down to the inherent difficulty for those who have been successful in a system to create solutions for systemic problems.  Those solutions will inevitably rely on the rules that created their success and inhibited the success of the communities that are now in need of a solution, a solution that to a large extent requires a re-imagining of the system itself.  Or, put another way, it makes much more sense to ask for solutions from the start up, garage company version of Bill Gates than it does the highly successful capitalist, multi-billionaire version of Bill gates.  Except for the cash. 

 

There seems to be a new meme against "picking winners."  I think this is primarily because it is done in a vacuum.  If we had a sound methodology for funding emerging successes (Acumen Fund investment discipline, The "Bernholz Law" of Philanthropic Adaption ) I think we could mitigate the problems with picking winners.  What I am more concerned with is philanthrocapitalists creating something new themselves.  I do not believe that the rich can save the world.  I do believe that they can fund those that will.

Leaders must be enigmas, embodying both the ability to listen and to forge ahead, to be vulnerable and unstoppable, to have hubris and humility, to be willing to lead by getting out of the way. 

The role of the rich is to gather all of theit wisdom, a little bit of their knowledge, and their money and offer, it with humility, to the next great success.  Because, the next great success knows more than does the last one.

Comments

[Jason Wyman]

Hey Steve:

Thanks for this very thought-provoking blog. I really appreciate the many layers surrounding network theories that are shared within it, specifically the idea of scale-free networks: that those that are most connected exponentially grow to become even more connected.

This is actually an issue I am trying to address within the YDPN, and even more specifically as to how to relates to individual donor cultivation in a collaborative setting and how it relates overall to the issues of workforce development for the youth development field. I am concerned that youth workers (professionals who work with or on behalf of youth) are finding themselves more and more isolated within their respective communities. This is a sentiment that is being echoed across the multiple sectors of youth development (e.g. after school, youth leadership, violence prevention, the arts, etc.) and throughout the Bay Area community at large.

I attribute some of this isolation due to a lack of understanding of value or values, what resources really mean and are, and that we rarely go outside our own comfort zone to increase our own awareness of what is available. Yes the day-to-day work is hard. Yes it is difficult to find time in the day to actually build and maintain your network. Yes there is a feeling (due in large part to grant requirements of both foundations and government funding AND to employers own self interest in increasing their numbers sometimes at the expense of increased positive outcomes for communities) that money and resources are scarce. Yet, in my experience, building the capacity of your personal network dramatically impacts the individuals ability to truly support social change in a scalable way.

Thanks in large part to YDPN and the California School-Age Consortium, I have been given the opportunity to teach resource mapping across California as a tool to not only meet the needs of your program but also to further your own personal goals. Too often we think of this work as "self-less". This places an emphasis that you as an individual within a field dedicated to social change through creation of social value(s) are minuscule and your person doesn't enter into the equation. Yes, social movements and social change are not about "me", but "I" play a role within that social movement based largely on my personal value(s) whether identified or not.

Helping youth workers (in my case) identify portions of their value base, resources that surround them, and where they are currently connected in life helps to explore those edges you are speaking of. It has to start with some introspection. Through this reflection, you can find very specifically how you are connected rather the just who you are connected to. The how definitely helps people also understand what they need to do to expand their network.

As I mentioned earlier, the YDPN is trying to figure out how this also ties to individual donor cultivation and overall to workforce development. I am interested in the real world practicality of harnessing not just the hubs and node, but also the connectors and spaces between. I think there is much information and data to be mined in those spaces. And by looking at the spaces in between hopefully we can find out more about humanity and our space and place within other systems.

Some books that have put me on this trajectory are:

Linked by Alber-Lazslo Barabasi
The Clock of the Long Now by Stuart Brand
Chaos: A Very Short Introduction by Lenny Smith
And multiple articles in the Stanford Social Innovation Review and Seed Magazines

[Michael Lewkowitz]

Great post. I think you are bang on. So what's next for you? How are you putting it in action to your fullest extent. Seems like something is brewing here...

[Conches]

Jason, Many thanks for the thoughtful post. The work that you are doing with YDPN is great. Building networks is hard work.