I get this IRL with people’s faces. I want to keep looking at someone to see whether or not they *approve*.
There’s a flip side to this, where I notice that if I play a video game, or watch a tv show, I have the sense that I am going to be punished for *getting up and leaving the game*. That exiting the approval system of the game will draw the game’s ire.
When I notice lotus-taste, I also look for an expected punishment. I also find that that is helpful, because the expected punishment is somehow easier to source as coming from within me.
In fact, I can feel this right now—it seems like by typing more words I’m pressing a button on a video game console, and I know that when I go away from this post I’ll feel fear.
I think it’s worth thinking about how much to turn the thing into a machine that keeps the events and meetings churning as they have been on easy mode, and how much to have new heroes that turn the organization into a new labor of love that is in a slightly different direction. In one direction, you’re building systems, and in another direction you’re building autonomy and instigatingyness.
I think there can be a problem where when people are working in a system and it is easy and pretty good, they aren’t quite paying attention to the things they would really want if they were running things—and often those ideas are better than the system. The simplest way that this occurs is when people do the minimum the system asks, vs when they are working with the system and using it to help them make things awesome.
People can be influenced to move towards the self organizing direction by asking them what they think would be awesome, and getting details of what’s cool about that and why they want, and providing social capital / organizational capital etc to help implement their thing. It’s usually well received if you are trying to help them get more of the thing that they want. There might be some other things that are important in this process, I’m not sure what those are.