Multi-Perspectival Prayer Over Dinner
Addressing the 1-2 punch of the halo effect & pluralistic ignorance
On the Sunday that Fluidity Forum concluded, fourteen of us went out to eat at a local restaurant that served African cuisine. There’s a group photo, but I forgot to ask if everyone was cool with me posting it here, so I won’t for now.
Several attendees stayed the night at my house and departed Monday. Some stayed two nights and departed Tuesday. We sat around the fire pit in my back yard having great conversations long into the night.
On Tuesday morning, I was thrilled to perform my Coffee Ritual at my house, a presentation which I have honed at Penguicon ever since 2005. It’s a Monty Pythonesque parody ritual based on Presbyterian/Episcopalian high church, in which the acolytes serve the sacrament unto the congregation, then we raise our cups to the east and say “God, I needed that!” It’s an ironic joke ceremony, “Ha Ha Only Serious”. It is still affecting at a sincere level, and has been popular each time I’ve performed it.
On Sunday at the restaurant, suddenly I was asked to say a prayer over the food. I was unprepared, so I recited a lightly-paraphrased version of The Agnostic's Prayer, by Roger Zelazny, from Creatures of Light and Darkness, 1969.
To whom it may concern: Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that we be forgiven for anything we may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which we may be eligible after the destruction of our bodies, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure our receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as our designated intermediary between us and that which may not be us, but which may have an interest in the matter of our receiving as much as it is possible for us to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen.
A few minutes earlier, someone said they used to spend time in another space, but they don't want to go there any more, because there were so many polyamorous cougars who chose to never have children. I could have responded to that by taking offense at the implicit rejection of me as a childfree polyamorist, but *shrug*. One of our agreements is:
During the Fluidity Forum weekend, we will ask ourselves, “does this support wonderment, open-ended curiosity, humor, play, enjoyment, or creativity?”
Using humor, I made a genial quip that I wanted to know where to find these childfree polyamorous cougars. I was told "I'm not saying anything about you. At your age, you still have time to have kids, because you're a man." The conversation quickly moved on. There was no curiosity expressed about whether, for example, I had a vasectomy in 2006 and have never regretted it.
I’ve been thinking about that moment. I founded Fluidity Forum, so I'm confident my perspective is valued there, but what about someone else? Well. If an attendee doesn’t come back because just one other attendee didn’t value their perspective, they’re going to leave eventually no matter what we do. Attempting to get everyone to validate everyone would result in a boring lowest-common-denominator anodyne environment instead of a multi-perspectival one. I am more concerned about the overall group indicating that we place no value on a perspective. Which perspectives. And why. And when. (For reference, I previously discussed Decoherence, Vibe Cascade, and Tribalism.)
And so, having had time to think it over, the following is what I wish I had prayed instead.
To whom it may concern:
I want to bring you a question crucial to this moment.
If there is anything listening to this prayer, whatever you are, we address you. I'm confident that you do not exist, but I don't speak for the group on that point. I've been asked to speak on behalf of a multi-perspectival group. So we'll hedge our bets.
In this moment, we're all aglow, at the beginning of something beautiful. It feels like how a new romantic relationship feels. Polyamorists have a word for it-- New Relationship Energy. There are fireworks, it’s going great, but we don't yet know each other well enough to know what conflicts we will need to work out later. When we have a peak experience with exciting new people, we assume they share certain opinions. It’s kind of like the Halo Effect. We hold certain opinions which we assume all smart and good people have, and obviously the exciting new person is smart and good, so we assume they agree. For example, about whether there is anyone listening to this prayer.
Sometimes, one such topic is children. Suppose someone at Fluidity Forum speaks as if they confidently assume everyone present agrees that it's wrong to have children. And suppose they say that in front of someone who, unbeknownst to them, had kids, or plans to. Suppose others say it's wrong to choose to never have children, in front of someone who chooses to never have them. I happen to hold a third position in which reproduction is neither universally mandatory nor universally forbidden. There could be a fourth position in which "it depends."
The point is that when a position is stated in a group, and no one objects, everyone thinks they're the only one who disagrees, even though most of those present might disagree. It's called pluralistic ignorance. Attending a group where one person doesn’t value your perspective would be fine. Who cares? We’re all pretty secure people. But why bother attending a group where almost everyone doesn’t value your perspective? It’s not about getting validation for insecurity, I’m just saying, why would they waste their valuable time doing that? So people will leave, needlessly, which causes the assumed unanimity to become real.
That might be fine on some topics! There are some perspectives where, if that's your perspective, you genuinely cannot have a productive or useful place at Fluidity Forum. There does exist such a thing as a very minimal canon. Maybe let's think of them as central topics and other things as non-central? My point is… discussion needs to eventually occur.
I'm guessing reproduction won't be a central topic on which someone needs to either conform or leave. I hope not. It could be true that we all owe it to each other to have children, or to not have children. If so, we must bite the bullet, and say it, and discuss it. I'd prefer we didn't assume unanimity. The halo effect and pluralistic ignorance provide a one-two punch to a multi-perspectival group, on topics that aren't central. We might inadvertently arrive at unanimity through hyperstition, if we substitute vibes for discourse. If this takes place on an endless series of non-central topics, assuming too many topics as central canon, it might result in a bland conformity.
My question for you, to whom this prayer is directed, is what do we do? Should we establish a norm in which, when we notice the halo effect and pluralistic ignorance, we will point to the ceremonial altar, and suggest that the person speaking place an item there to represent their perspective? That would create a frame in which it's just one perspective among many. Perhaps we need to develop something else. If you have any power to affect events, such that we get ideas for approaches to this, thank you.
Goodness, I do go on. It's time for us to eat. If you had anything to do with the food we are about to eat, thank you. If you had anything to do with the wonderful weekend we just had, thank you. If not, I hope listening to this prayer was at least an amusing way to pass your day. Aeon. Whatever it may be.
Have a nice aeon, amen.
So that would have been my prayer over the meal. There was a time when I was the only person involved in Fluidity Forum, and it would have been a mistake to create an “About Our Staff” page and talk about my life choices and opinions as I am doing now. Very few people spend time at a group where they don’t respect the opinions of all the other people involved, and at that time, “all the other people involved” was just me. If my past experiences in organizations is any indication, before long, newcomers will say “Matt who?”, and people mostly stop caring too much about my opinions. That will be a good thing for the group’s health.
Then they’ll probably find other people to pray over things. In 2009 I officiated a wedding.
It was an emergency wedding because of a sudden military deployment
They couldn’t get a pastor on short notice because it was Independence Day
I was the only person they knew who graduated from Bible college
and I was ordained by the Universal Life Church because it was funny.
Of course they got divorced almost immediately, as I knew they would— they and their parents had a brittle concept of love and marriage which matched what David Chapman describes as eternalism, and their concept of God was eternalism personified. When caught in the inevitable churn of nebulosity, their fixed patterns compelled them to ask me, an unmarried atheist who doesn’t enjoy weddings, to make it sanctioned in their eyes. I should not have accepted, but I needed the cash. I felt so dirty about participating in the financial and courtroom conflict they got themselves in, I wanted to take out my soul and wipe it off on my pants.
I’m very pleased that Fluidity Forum does not seem to have all that much eternalism— at least, not yet. If one thing were central topic of Fluidity Forum, in our very minimal canon, I’d like it to be that. If some day we maintained and committed to an eternalistic system (or even a Spiritual But Not Religious commitment to a vague eternalistic stance), I’d be disappointed. Sure, we had a little eternalism at the first Fluidity Forum already. There are attendees who clearly didn’t do the background reading; that’s fine. They have no obligation to have read Meaningness.com or Metarationality.com, or even to know the motivating origins of our event. Those of us who like that perspective will bring it. Eternalism and its effect on our group decisions is a discussion I plan to have on the Discord, and at Fluidity Fest in February. Someone will probably catch me nihilizing various things as meaningless that are meaningful, and they’ll point it out. (Bonus points if you noticed it already in this newsletter entry.) There is no one eternal fixed interpretation of eternalism and nihilism, pattern and nebulosity. I’ll bring it up a lot when discussing the concrete decisions of the group, because it’s better to hash it out in merely reasonable practice than just in the abstract.
I've been writing a lengthy report of the overall weekend, and lessons learned, but I'm still working on it. If I'm being honest, I gave myself a couple of months for some R&R and attending to other matters; at some point I might carve out time in my schedule to look for those rumored childfree polyamorous cougars. For now, I hope you enjoyed this newsletter no matter your perspective.
-Matt A
What a delightful read. I enjoyed the weekend immensely and reading this reminded me of many of the things that felt special and rare about being in the group you brought together. I sincerely hope to see your coffee ritual one day!
-Evelyn
Why do people gather together? Just off the top of my head, I can think of 3 distinct types of groups:
- A group with a purpose, e.g., Effective Altruism. Such groups will probably need to exclude many viewpoints in order to have a shared purpose and plan. That's okay, at least if it doesn't go so far as to exclude people who have valid critiques of the group's plans.
- A group with a common interest, e.g., science fiction fandom. Such groups don't need to exclude any viewpoints other than "science fiction is stupid", because your views outside of the fandom don't need to cause arguments, and your views inside of the fandom are the things you're gathering together to argue about. But they can develop exclusionary views because interests correlate with viewpoints. E.g., science fiction conventions are attended mainly by white people over age 40, while anime conventions are attended mainly by people under 30.
- A geographic or political community, e.g., your county. Democracy means the idea that everyone's viewpoint is important, so if you think democracy is morally superior to, say, a totalitarian theocracy, you have a moral obligation be maximally inclusive. But /this only has moral force if membership in the community is not quite voluntary/, e.g., it's very costly to move to another community, or there are no communities available for certain people.
I don't know which kind of group you're trying to create. I sense from your blog post that you feel a moral imperative to be as inclusive as a geographically-based community should be, but I don't think that's the kind of thing Fluidity should be. Don't beat yourself up for building a group of a particular kind rather than The One Perfect Group. I suspect Fluidity is in more danger of being too open-ended and under-specified than too exclusive.