[p2p-research] responding to salingaros

[Michel Bauwens]

Responding to Salingaros



First of all, I want to state clearly that I find this to be a very
stimulating text, and I’m of course thankful and even honoured and proud
that someone from Nikos Salingaros’ stature would engage with my thinking on
peer to peer.



I will list here possible agreements/disagreements, and miscellaneous
remarks and questions.

First my overall expression. I find much merit in the p2p-inspired (more
correctly the pattern language of Christopher Alexander and recent biophilic
findings in science) architectural stance of Dr. Salingaros. However, I am
worried that the tonality of the article could be counterproductive. Yes, we
need participatory, life-affirming urbanism and architecture, and yes, much
of modern and postmodern architecture sins against both, and is in the hands
of both experts and an elite power structure. Nevertheless, I wonder if the
approach is sufficiently integrative. If we want to build alliances on a
broad scale, I do not think that an approach which seems to completely
reject modernity/postmodernity, both architects/urbanists and the public
that is interested or following those principles, wholesale.  Perhaps this
is not the intention, but this text gives that expression.

For example, as an outsider, it does not seem to me that there is a
wholesale rejection of the past, at least not anymore, and not in Europe. It
seems to me that there is a lot of urbanism that is again centered on the
preservation of the past, and not all urbanistic tendencies of the last
decades are negative. I’m thinking for example of how many cities in Europe
now have car-free and pedestrian centers. While our principles need to be
stated clearly, we also have to use and favour the many trends and
initiatives that go in a positive direction. I fear a wholesale attack on
the totality of architecture and urbanism would make enemies of many
potential friends. In general, in the expert/citizen autonomy polarity, I
think in every field, experts need to be guides and helpers, oriented
towards the interests of the citizens and civil society, and I’m assuming
urbanism is not different and that we still need architects and city
planners, provided they work differently and help society makes the right
decisions, not instead of it.

I of course have to agree with the fundamental critique of Nikos, that the
left has been complicit in the sins of modernity, and that in many ways it
shared the same presuppositions. At the same time, left and right consists
of a myriad of contrasting approaches, some of which had strong critiques of
modernity. My own take, as someone favourable to the left, is that we need
to re-create a civil society oriented approach, not necessarily adopting a
virulent anti-statism as the libertarians do, but clearly seeing the state
as a mere vehicle and partner/servant of civil society, rather than the core
of the strategy and the master of social change. I have noted that similar
peer to peer orientations are also happening and being debated on the right
side of the political spectrum. An important debate is how far both trends
could find commonality in a set of common p2p priorities.



A key contribution of the text is the distinction between individuality and
groupthink orientations. Undoubtedly, those tendencies exist. Against the
digital Maoism thesis of Jaron Lanier, I agree totally with Nikos that peer
to peer is essentially networked individuality, i.e. relational augmentation
of the free but socially embedded human being, who is helped hereby to
create free communities based on diversity. Nevertheless, the groupthink
danger is not just an issue for industrial society, but also for the peer to
peer society and practices. Jaron Lanier is not totally wrong in pointing
out that certain practices of collective decision-making, such as the google
double page ranking algorhythm, digg voting and NPOV Wikipedia processes,
have mainstreaming and groupthink oriented effects.

I prefer to see peer to peer infrastructures as a potentially emancipator
technology that allows the free aggregation of individuals, but up to strong
collective forms of human organization, which we need just as much as
individual freedom. But such cooperative and collective organization is
distinct from the groupthink pathology.

Going further into the essay, I also agree that the commons arises out of
love for concrete collective infrastructures, but of course they may be
virtual, such as a commonly created knowledge commons or software or design
depository.

I also think that Nikos stress on the value of conservation, and hence a
certain conservatism, is an important message for those on the left with
nihilistic tendencies. That humanity wants to preserve traditional forms of
life, against the dislocations of global capitalism, is a positive tendency
and I personally have tremendously benefitted from the extended family
tradition in my adopted country.

Nikos then goes on to point out the relatively unsuccessful attempts at p2p
urbanism, due to the existing power structure. We can only agree with such
analysis, but at the same time, we also see how many communities are
adopting p2p principles in many other areas of social life, and from my
vantage point, I see many p2p trends in urbanism, even as they many not
reach the design of architecture itself.

My conclusion, which agrees with Nikos basic point about groupthink, but I
think represents a more useful concept, is that both left and right are
divided by a centralist/decentralist dynamic, and that p2p, both in its left
and right expressions, re-introduces this dynamic of localization in human
history, after a long intermezzo of gigantism and centralization. At the
same time, we do not abandon human commonality and universality, but give it
a new expression, no longer through the visible hand of centralized
planning, or the invisible hand of greedy market forces, but by the mutual
coordination, on a global scale, of individual and collective endeavours.
Localization alone would be regressive and unable to survive centralist
onslaughts, but when coupled with mutual coordination, it is almost
invincible.

What is new in the contribution by Salingaros, is in my view the stress on
pattern language, on a renewed embrace of what has worked in the past, and
that the left can no longer blindly  believe in abstract progress and social
engineering from above, but instead must not only embrace current
participation, but all that we can learn from the past. If the p2p left
achieves this change, instead of rejecting people in the hands of
pro-capitalist forces, because they talk the language of conservatism, even
while they support the most subservice economic system the world has ever
known.

It is worth citing what is for me the most important contribution of the
text:



“*The other component of P2P is the re-utilization of patterns of geometry,
of socio-economic actions, of tradition, which have worked in the past. Most
(though certainly not all) of these traditional patterns are intrinsically
sustainable because they arose out of necessity, and apply on the human
scale. Here we are in the traditional domain of the Right. The Right
preserves the essential respect of traditions by making them sacred. The
cultural baggage of conservatives includes not only an essential
understanding of what is worth saving, but also the worldview that gives an
individual the strength of character to oppose the massive brainwashing that
is converting the world into a groupthink population. The Left might be
surprised to realize that it needs essential tools from the Right in order
to complete the basic requirements for a P2P society*. “

What I expect though, is that many forms of the left-right polarity will
persist, so I do not believe in pure non-political approaches. However, I
think that forces that are ordinarily on other sides of the spectrum, can
find concrete commonalities are p2p proposals, that fit the decentralist
preferences of both left and right.


-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org

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