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@mzaman@todon.nl

2026-05-07 14:16 UTC

@transform@climatejustice.social Are those issues that are specific to future needs? To me, it seems those are more general issues when trying to reach consensus on something that is intangible or has a fair amount of uncertainty. And/or that might affect people who aren't present at the meeting (although here the issue is that you can't just go ask people, because they don't, strictly speaking, exist yet). We regularly make plans that involve uncertainty. How many people will be at our community event? What route will the fascist march take? Will the police use water cannons? I don't have, like, a write-up on how to best deal with that, but I do think that assuming relatively good faith and people making an effort to reach consensus we already manage to do this more often than not. If people accuse each other of having the wrong level of caution that, to me, points more to a need in learning how to communicate more constructively (we shouldn't be accusing each other) and a need to first discuss acceptable levels of risk. Consensus is something people need to practice to get good at. Part of this is self-reflection. For example, I know I tend to be to focused on what can go wrong. As such, I point out what I think are potential risks but I also trust my comrades to mitigate my innate pessimism.

Replies (1)

  • @mzaman@todon.nl you are right, characteristics like intangible issues, uncertainty, affected beings not present can also apply to questions not related to future needs. I think an additional characteristic when discussing questions related to needs is that this tends to get more emotional than other topics because the idea of not having important needs met evokes existential fears and feelings of not being accepted as a being. So this, combined with the three characteristics you mentioned which get more challenging the further into the future we look, might make future needs topics especially challenging. I do think anarchist ideas are a good way to address questions of future needs, not only because we can change decisions as you wrote, but also because of decentralization. IMO it is still worth thinking about more concrete ways to facilitate discussions about future needs. I liked your idea of defining acceptable risk levels first. I think people might even want to form decentralized groups depending on the risk levels they are comfortable with.

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