Got the physical copy of Radical Friends in the mail yesterday and felt like it was time to get a thread up for the various ppl who are reading this book. If u dont have the hardcopy dm me I can send u the pdf version.
It didn’t click for me until just this morning that this book is a study of the exact type of experiment we are running at PA. That experiment (among others) being: what if instead of sharding ourselves into different personas – work persona, family persona, friend persona, etc – we rejected the concept that work + “everyday life” must be kept separate. This separation has made sense for me in my previous life BC (before crypto), where the two companies I worked at after leaving university left me with a very strong “get the job done and get ur paycheck” feeling.
Since I left that world (or at least reduced my exposure to it) and started being active in DAO/DAO-adjacent communities (Developer DAO, ZORA, PA, etc.), that work/life separation blurred as I found myself “working” with people I was actively choosing to be friends with at the same time. Speaking at least for how FF89DE has operated, there has definitely been a blurring of these lines, and while that leads to new positive/negative dynamics emerging, I’m now realizing that this is one of the more interesting components of this meta-experiment we are running.
There’s so many good quotes from this book already within the first ~30 pages, but will leave one here (pg 27 in the paperback) that spoke to me:
“Presented in this book are the chronicles of different communities of radical friends connected to and exploring a variety of contexts across continents, to experiment with new rules for distributing agency and resources, simultaneously communal and decentralised. Together, they are building the collective imagination muscle for co-creating resilient support systems for the life of the physical and data body in a principled unending hack of totalising systems of violent coercive control”
this book goes so hard. it’s kinda surreal to read about things happening in the space in a physical book. read the first chapter twice because I had to lead a talk on it at fwb fest - going to try and catch up on the rest over the holiday.
The section What is Radical Friendship Made Of? is the best I’ve gotten through yet. so many good quotes to share. will edit this post with more as I go, but heres one to start:
”As an open source PTP technology, DAOs lend themselves to templating and revision by other groups trying to find similar answers. As the code bases for the suites of smart contracts that DAOs are made of grow and are made available for scrutiny and adaptation, other DAO builders can learn from or reuse existing pieces of code, making changes, and reconfiguring elements for their own contexts. DAOs offer both the tools and the practical philosophical context for people to test their own critical faculties, their own agendas, and to practice collective decision-making in hybrid online/onlife communal spaces” – pg. 36 physical copy
Just finished up the Ruth Catlow essay. I am not reading in order btw, so my apologies if no one has encountered it yet.
I feel like to me the most interesting part was the self-reflection it induced, thinking about my own relationship to where I currently live, and the places I’ve lived before (while my mind has been fixated on crypto/blockchains). But basically, I feel largely removed from the environments I find myself in, at least on a deep level. And I wonder the role that buying in to this world view of crypto, DAOs, etc, contributes to that.
This sounds really somber, but really just a public reflection. I’m curious if anyone has thoughts about this/wants to share their experience.
A while back, I read a reddit post about a teenager who was explaining how difficult it was to feel any kind of freedom in the suburbs after spending a summer at his grandparent’s in Warsaw. Unlike the suburbs where he lives, the OP was saying how extremely walkable and good public transportation Warsaw had.
I feel like this is a big importance in the connection we feel most potent to us. The ability to move freely and easily explore, the high probability of chance occurrence, and quality engagement — they all give us the sense of freedom to be who we desire.
I feel focused but I also realize how out of touch with I am with other people’s (mostly non-crypto/less-digital) perception of time/space. Wondering how I can reconcile this distance I feel sometimes.
Just finished Radical Friends! So many gems in this book, particularly aligned with the Black Swan process for art daos coordination.
A chapter I resonated with was “Translocal Belonging and Cultural Cooperation after the Blockchain - A Citizen Sci-fi” by Ruth Catlow. Here are a few quotes I found interesting and pertinent to this forum:
It starts with this idea of Translocality:
“Translocality” is a term intended to change the way we think about
the places, people and cultures that we belong to as a result of globalisation,
migration and hyperconnectivity. It specifically describes the fact
that most of us now feel that we belong to many communities in multiple
places at once. And that these place-based communities make conflicting
demands on us, shaping our identities in new ways."
Nouns Builder facilitates group coordination and I’ve been considering the impact of space on community building. For instance, how does a forum compare to a Discord server?
Specifically, this quote here in the Activating radial imagination, for translocal approaches:
All participants will need to “choose what governance patterns, along with their rights, responsibilities, and remembrances, to reinforce” and to remember that we make them not just for ourselves but “for those who come after us.
Today this means cultivating our awareness of and responsibility for our participation in systems of financialization, labour regimes and their alternatives. Artists engagement with emerging financial infrastructures and the cultures they play host to do important work to lay these systems bare.
Shared vibes are critical. Acknowledging this gives even more weight to the physical activations. I actually love so much how this weaves such a casual, meme-able concept “vibes”, with academic language.
What do you think is meant by “overly moralising”?
It’s hard to take all these things and not directly apply them to PA. I feel like during our north star discussions we certainly held a shared vibe, but still ended up with a vague mission. I wonder how we all individually feel about that now.
I interpret “overly moralising” in that section to mean “reaching” for a justification / definition / prescription of moral value. Like when ur so focused on defining ur North Star, u make declarations to provide an argument/point that may not actually be true/reflective of what u rlly think in order to create a cohesive argument/perspective
I think what’s key here is imo the act of being overly moralising isn’t bad if your doing it simply to test what ur views/beliefs are, but u need to be very self aware of the fact u might be reaching to cast moral judgment due to an artificial desire to create a definition. sometimes you just can’t define things like that
Hey everyone, I am stoked to have found this niche community and looking forward to picking up this book as well. I’ve been wanting to join a book club for the longest (I never have joined on before). About the concept of the “North Star”, what would some of the more tenured members of this community say that is? Looking forward to periodically checking in on this thread with any insights I find from reading this book.
feels free to poke around 
