Mr Thiel and his colleagues say their ocean state would have no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons.

It sounded way too similar to the arguments that those rights many of us fought so hard for are just in the way of making money.

Still, i decided to check it out. After all, i have suggested my own experiment, though that one with family forms.

I listened to Patri Friedman’s talk on The Feast. I agree with many things Patri mentions, especially he emphasis on systems: “Invisible processes lead to the visible things we see around us.” His talk, though, helped me sharped my concerns. First, he seems to be making just as many assumptions as those not advancing governmental experiments, ignoring the invisible processes he is assuming. Then, he does not take into account findings in science. And finally, many of the feminist critiques of the liberal approach to ideas of justice are very applicable. I will address each in turn.

Assumptions & Processes
The first assumption Patri makes is that something that was started more than a decade or so ago is bad. Just because we get new techie toys every second does not mean that we have to reinvent everything. Take that saying seriously: There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Sure, improvements help and yet, the basic structure remains the same as it has been ever since it was first invented. Patri is not advancing any other reasons for the need of new governments. There is another assumption tied in here, which is harder to untangle because Patri doesn’t seem quite as clear: He seems to refer to government both as an industry and as a product. If it is an industry what is it producing? If it is a product what is it exactly? North and South Korea have different products, he claims. Okay, that doesn’t mean, though, that the government as a whole is a product. This premiss seems to be ill-defined yet necessary for his whole idea to work. If there is no product, there is no product testing needed.

The invisible process that Patri subscribes to, he does not question: Growth is good and progress means new, faster products. The idea that growth is good has fundamentally contributed to several crises we are currently facing as a planet, including global climate disruption and economic collapse. Last i checked there is only one Earth and even if we start populating the high seas, there is a limit to growth simply by the fact that the Earth is a limited resource.

Scientific Findings
Living on an oil-rig is tough. Workers there are facing challenges that go way beyond experimenting with governmental forms. I don’t see much on the Seasteding website that would design a system of assistance. For one, there are no psychologists on staff. Although i haven’t researched it, i am certain that there are a host of psychological challenges people face by simply living so far removed from what they are used to, confined onto a platform to live with the same people for an extended period of time.

Patri lists the core challenges as political autonomy, engineering, business models, and community. The website, though, concentrates on engineering, law and politics, and business. No research into community, whatever that might have meant in Patri’s talk. This probably also means ignoring much of the learning from existing intentional communities, many of whom are experimenting in ways of governing different from democracy.

There also does not seem to be any awareness of the influence those invisible processes Patri mentions have on us. Research in neuroscience could be enlightening here, though it would again require moving away from a focus on business toward a focus on people. For example, some neuroscientists are finding that conflict resolution programs might not work unless we address the underlying differences between the two groups in conflict. Even in an environment where people come together with the intention of healing the conflict, not acknowledging those differences can reek unexpected havoc. Which leads me to my final concern.

From a sustainability perspective, importing food does not work. The Seasteding Institute plans to import most foods, not aware of the invisible processes that currently enable long-distance food. The times of cheap energy are rapidly coming to an end and we need to figure out ways of growing our food more locally again. It probably would be possible to design a seasted as almost self-sufficient. The website does not indicate that there’s in interest for doing that.

Justice
Iris Marion Young pointed out that a focus on an ideal system ignores the invisible processes that perpetuate that system. Seasteding is supposed to avoid this, i guess, by completely removing people from the existing system to let them design and live in a new system. As pointed out in the previous section, though, that isn’t that easy. I consider myself a feminist – viewing all genders as equally worthy and valuable. Yet, i still notice how i react out of sexist beliefs that i carry around, like valuing male attention more than female. It is embarrassing and frustrating to uncover these beliefs. I can only choose to consciously counteract them if i am aware of them. There is nothing in the Seasteding proposal that would allow for such consciousness raising. The assumption seems to be that people don’t bring their beliefs, ways of behaving, or habits to a new place. Or maybe the assumption is that those things would simply fall away on high seas. Neither assumption makes much sense when we simply look at immigration.

Overall, the Seasteding proposal seems to be an elaborate way of circumventing laws that were meant to improve democracy – improve rather than reinvent the wheel. In a lot of ways, Seasteding does not go deep enough: Government is not the invisible process we need to experiment with. It’s how we interact, how we live our lives that is creating massive inequalities between people. Maybe Seasteding is good for business. Most of us are already hurting from this business as usual and these ideas sound like they would enlarge the inequalities further rather than making our society more compassionate.

Addendum
The story of Iceland shows that oil-rigs aren’t necessary to create a new government. And the new government people fought for put an end to financial services gambling. No oil-rigs required. Just people fed up with inequality.

While there is no direct link between pay secrecy and pay inequality, some evidence suggests that pay transparency reduces the gender wage gap. The gender wage gap for all full-time workers, based on median annual earnings, is 23 percent (IWPR 2011). In the federal government, where pay rates are transparent and publicly available, the gender wage gap is only 11 percent (GAO 2009). It is estimated that discrimination (rather than differences in occupations, industry, experience or education) is responsible for about 40 percent of the wage gap (Blau and Kahn 2007).

Just how much secrecy is there? IWPR found that overall almost half of all workers don’t divulge how much they’re paid either because they are explicitly forbidden or strongly discouraged to do so. This secrecy is much more prevalent in the private sector: There over 60% of workers cannot discuss their pay. Compare that with around 14% in the public sector! In fact, 65% of public employees report that their pay information is readily available to the public.

As long as such secrecy is upheld, it is difficult to enforce laws against pay discrimination since it is up to workers to make the legal system aware of discrepancies. Maybe this is another taboo worth breaking since it doesn’t benefit those of us who are being paid…

A woman’s success or failure in life is defined largely in terms of her activities within the family. It is important for her that she marry, and when she does she is expected to take responsibility for the wifely tasks: the housework, the child care, and the general emotional welfare of the husband and children.

The success of a woman is defined within the family. If she doesn’t marry, she’s a failure.

Note: Here is a more recent example of the asymmetrical attention paid to women’s marital status: Forbes’ most powerful women list includes marital status, the male-dominated most powerful people does not…

We teach about oppression in the midst of privilege, fight for greater recognition even as it often means greater co-optation, and teach about the construction and politics of identities in order to empower as well as to deconstruct the categories produced. Feminist scholars operate within and inevitably in support of capitalism, classism, racism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism, elitism, imperialism, etc., while working to undermine their operations and effects. We work for change within institutions while in the process of “becoming” the institutions – being produced by them. In material terms, we find ourselves caught between a desire for better lives for ourselves – surely a mark of improvement in the world – and the knowledge that our own privilege is gained at the expense of others within current systems of power.

Balén suggests that we need to keep several things in mind to counter-act the forces of institutionalization while also reducing the discomfort produced by “living paradox” (272). Although these points are targeted at academia, I think they are important also for general movement building.

• Questioning Identity: Feminists teach that identity is constructed and thus fluid and requiring questioning. To “practice what we teach, we need to keep all levels of identity consciously provisional and negotiable” (278).
• Honor Diversity: Calls for unity inevitably hide complexity and diversity although unity might increase the visibility of a group. We need to utilize “multilayered approach[es] to develop greater articulation of the complexity of intellectual diversity [, which] resist any tokenizing” (280).
• Create Alliances: These alliances need to cross institutional boundaries and can help with honoring diversity as long as we keep the lines of communication open (280).
• Question Oppression: “There is no subject position fully ‘outside’ the system; only provisional opportunities for resistance within specific contexts exist. No one is free of the operations of oppression – internalized and/or externalized – and, therefore, each of us inevitably reproduces oppression in every moment that we are not actively resisting on every level.” (281) This requires constant vigilance about our own contribution to oppression and a willingness to remove our blinders. It requires that we are willing to listen to others who can point out our complicity in the system. It also, though, requires our patience and compassion: It can be painful to realize this complicity (278).
• Challenge Meritocracies: “Meritocracies without full social justice are problematic at best and must always be regarded critically – including the ones we have successfully negotiated” (282). Being considered smarter than others might simply be a reflection of our access to better education, which in turn reflects privilege. We might also had the luxury to fully devote ourselves to studying rather than splitting our time with part-time jobs simply to survive.
• Counteract Silencing: “Silencing is a primary mode of oppression; producing greater social justice requires practices that counter this tendency at every level” (282). We need to observe ourselves as we might be silencing others.

It is rather ironic to be reading about the privileging of certain disciplines by having stumbled on these books because a professor is reluctant to let me into her class because I did not take the required prerequisite… Clearly, this is an example of institutionalized knowledge: You have to have the background we require or else you are not welcome. That’s called silencing. I learned that term in the book, which is required reading in the prereq I haven’t taken…

Another chapter thematizes the North-South divide, which often becomes obvious in transnational projects lead by Northern feminists in Southern countries. Linda Peake and Karen de Souza share their experience and observations in “Feminist Academic and Activist Praxis in Service of the Transnational.” They particularly stress concerns with the “increasing corporatization of NGOs,” which often take away the local power and transfer it to the (corporate?) donors and sponsors of projects. Funders want to influence what is done with the money (110) and seek measurable results (111). Both require considerable time investment by the activists and often take them away from the work they find important. Especially problematic is that funders from the North impose their standards on Southern activists often without sufficient knowledge of the needs on the ground. Peake and de Souza are also raising concerns about the Northern academic feminist label, which all too often describes academics far removed from activism and often writing so convoluted that their work can only be understood by equally initiated academics. Individual women have made careers out of feminism and this tokenism blinds them to the realization that most women are still oppressed. Tokenism has clear system justification implications: Because we can point to women who “have made it,” we claim the end of patriarchy (or because we have an African-American US president, there is no more racism). As Stephen C. Wright documents, such claims are absurd and serve to maintain the status quo, sadly often especially by the tokens themselves. De Souza and Peake also caution that within activist organizations that train new activists, awareness needs to be maintained to avoid creating an elite of activists that are above untrained grassroots activists (113).

One aspect of this chapter I found particularly gratifying. I am trained in quantitative statistical methods and have always been somewhat taken aback with many feminists’ dismissal of these methods as chauvinist. Peake and de Souza also address this by calling for training in quantitative methods with particular emphasis on being able to evaluate the validity of this research (115). I have found such evaluations a tremendously powerful tool!

Finally, I read a chapter in a book that I almost dismissed because I had trouble understanding its introduction (elitist writing maybe?). Nancy A. Naples discusses her teaching method in “Negotiating the Politics of Experiential Learning in Women’s Studies: Lessons from the Community Action Project.” The CAP offers a way to incorporate some aspects of consciousness raising into the classroom, encouraging students to become theory-informed activists. Unfortunately, I found the chapter too sketchy to be useful since Naples does not detail the specific steps she asks students to take. But it was like a taste-sampler, with promise of satisfaction. So, I will do more research on this.

I started by rereading the chapter “Sex and the Single Woman” in Kay Trimberger’s book. Although tempting, I decided not to take up flamenco but instead to check out the two books on celibacy she mentioned. One is Sensual Celibacy by Donna Marie Williams. The other Women, Passion & Celibacy by Sally Cline.

Williams’ book is steeped in religiosity – a bit much in my opinion – and, more troubling even, couplemania. Yes, odd, isn’t it: A book about celibacy steeped in couplemania but Williams pulls it off. Basically, she sees celibacy as a way to prepare yourself for a monogamous relationship, which you will be even more likely to find once you’ve followed her 10-step program. It seems a rather similar approach to the abstinence/chastity pledges, which she mentions admiringly. I had trouble reading the book because of both , so I mostly skimmed it. There were a couple of ideas in the book, though, that I found valuable: Nurturing self-love (being loving and respectful toward yourself; not narcissism or masturbation), building friendships, and discovering triggers. Often we want others to love us because we feel unlovable otherwise. We think unless someone else loves us, we are just not worthy of love. Williams stresses how wrong this thinking is and thus suggests to nurture self-love, which includes sensual approaches directed toward ourselves, like relishing soft bedsheets. It also means realizing that love can come from other places than The One. We need to build our friendships because they can help us create a loving environment. Williams suggests that we should try to get 10 hugs per day! I know I often fall way short of that (so be forewarned: I’ll be hugging even more people now!). The suggestion that I found most useful in Williams’ book is contained in her chapter on strengthening the celibacy practice: Figure out your sexual triggers.

Close your eyes and think back to your most satisfying sexual experience. It may be difficult, but try not to get lost in feelings, sensations, and images. Instead, try and remember the steps that led up to the act. What did your partner do to turn you on so? Did he wear a certain fragrance or did he call you up the night before in that deep, sexy voice of his? Or was there something else – a haunting melody in the background, candlelight flickering? (121)

In other words: Start paying attention to what is going on whenever you feel sexually attracted to someone. Sure, there might be biology involved but usually there’s more. I’ve noticed that my dear dragons love that opportunity to whisper into my heart, especially the first one – “I am unlovable.” Because we often equate sex with love – aided by the messages in books and movies – we think that if we have sex we must be in love. If someone wants to have sex with us, they must love us. This might actually be a way couplemania devalues love because there’s so much more to love than sex. And this dragon is probably so strong because our self-love is so weak. Williams doesn’t stop at the self-discovery part. She then suggests to create a conversion chart that allows us to turn our sexual triggers into solo activities. For example:

Sexual Triggers
Times of the day, week, month, year. The times when I feel sexiest are at the end of the day, Fridays and Saturdays, when I’m ovulating, holidays, and change of seasons.

Conversions to Solo Activities
Create self-love rituals for those times when you’re at your most sensual. For example, at the end of the day, take a bubble bath with jazz music playing in the background. Take deep belly breaths. Buy new soft bed linens as winter ends and spring begins.

I am not convinced yet that this rechanneling works – my monthly trigger is coming up soon, so I’ll be testing it shortly… I wonder if it might increase sexual energy but I’ll find out.

I have not read much in Sally Cline’s book yet. Unlike Williams’ it sounds less like a self-help book. It is also much less religious. I will write more about it once I’ve read it as I continue to explore this topic. I will leave you with some thoughts about recent research comparing people who imagined “a long, loving walk with their partners” versus people who thought “of casual sex with someone they did not love” (cite and abstract of research article). Love helped on creative tasks and sex on analytical questions. Maybe that is how channeling sexual energy into friendships and self-love increases creative energy…