[Foundation-l] VC - alternative resolution

Tue Apr 8 06:39:29 UTC 2008

On 4/7/08, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> > On 4/5/08, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Extreme cases are not the greatest need.  However
> >> slowly you feel these cases were addressed; they were
> >> addressed.  That cannot be said about the more common
> >> problems faced by communities.
> >>
> >> I would much prefer an organization that is built
> >> around the mundane problems and is able to empower the
> >> communities to implement good policies by giving them
> >> boundaries within which to work out their own
> >> solutions. A group that would put together and
> >> translate a copyright FAQ would be fulfill a need ten
> >> times greater than one going around examining, and
> >> when neccesary implementing changes for, all the
> >> Wikipedias NPOV policies.  Implementing policies is
> >> not scalable no matter how large the VC ends up being.
> >> And such an effort will only stifle the ability of
> >> individual communities to come up with creative
> >> methods that may be shared back across other
> >> communities if successful.
> >>
> >> I think everything Ec has been saying  lately has my
> >> strong agreement and I am glad to see he is part of
> >> this group.  Not just because of that, as we often
> >> disagree on other topics. But because he does not seem
> >> to be spread as thinly as the some of the other
> >> members with prior commitments. I must admit I prefer
> >> Nathan's alternative resolution. I like cautious
> >> approaches best. There is a reason that no Council has
> >> ever been created despite years of discussion. The
> >> reason is not because of a lack of ambition to
> >> actually do it so much as to a more widespread fear of
> >> the ambitious.  Caution in creating this Council will
> >> do a great deal to allievate those fears.
> >>
> >> Birgitte SB
> >>
> >
> > I have to admit I find your reasoning quite compelling,
> > even persuasive.
> >
> > Antheres posting just recently about barnraising,
> > about how barns were the biggest and often first
> > construction projects, sort of reminded me of an
> > anecdotal, apocryphal tale, explaining why in the
> > New Sweden colony (in the Americas) the settlers
> > who were ethnically swedish, fared many times
> > worse than ethnically finnish settlers. The reason
> > was explained to me to be the following:
> >
> > When Finnish settlers first broke ground, they
> > didn't start by building granaries, barns or grand
> > estate houses, but instead, first built a tiny sauna
> > with haste before the snows came and then slowly
> > but surely began to build a sturdy and well insulated
> > log cabin, rather than a house made of thin planks
> > hurriedly built as large as possible. The sauna was
> > flexible in its usages. Being frequently warmed to a
> > high temperature, it stayed louse and germ free,
> > keeping the people the same way. It could be used
> > to cure/dry meat, as a makeshift forge (very inefficient
> > but a workable forge for some purposes), but most
> > importantly, because the warmth was held in the
> > large amount of rocks, constantly radiating out,
> > the problem with not having a completely leak-proof
> > hermetically sealed wall structure wasn't that bad
> > even during winter, though they made darn sure
> > the log cabin they built as a more spacious
> > abode was tight as the anatomy of a gnat.
> >
> > And after they did get their sturdy, well insulated
> > log-cabin built, it might for a long time do double
> > time as a barn, with the animals staying with
> > the family in sweet harmony. A barnraising would
> > then be done only after the fields had been
> > cleared (for the duration living hand to mouth
> > foraging and fishing and so on), and a crop
> > and feedstock hay had been planted in such
> > amounts as to require more of a moreness
> > of space.
> >
> > It has however been suggested that saunas
> > had a spiritual function too for finns, so I guess
> > they built their "churches" first... Though their
> > churches were what one might call very "utilitarian".
> >
> > ;-)
> >
> > There is great virtue in building flexible first,
> > then solid, and after that, enlarging - I would
> > think.
> >
> >
> > Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
>
> I guess the saunas were built by the Collective though. Hence having the
> same benefit of collaborative success.

Actually no. There is a very strong quality of collective endeavours in
Finland, but never about setting out...

One of the most famous opening senteces for a Finnish novel goes
something to the tune of "In the beginning there was the bog, the hoe
and Jussi..."

And the rest of the trilogy goes on how it developes from that...

Even though the opening sentence is all about individual perseverence
and wanting to make ones own mark on the world, the book also has
the definitive description of Finnish "talkoo" houseraising. (I think there
is even an english wikipedia article [[talkoo]])

Though it has to be said that the whole story of Jussi setting out to
make a farm for himself is full of instances of asking for "stone soup",
and being a bit wiley about it.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]