Iâm not sure Amber is saying that a community should have no norms at all? It sounded more like she was saying that in the domain of personal relationships there shouldnât be norms.
One could argue, of course, that there are implicit norms around this already in the community, so maybe the argument I think is stronger is something like:
âThere are implicit norms in the community around personal relationships alreadyâwe should evaluate this norms and figure out if we think they are actually good or notâ
(I think this might be a fruitful exercise that it think many individual organizations are doing now as a result of recent events, but is harder to do for the more nebulous âcommunityâ and network of people)
Yes, I think itâs impossible not to have norms about personal relationships (or really, anything socially important). I should perhaps have provided an example of this. Here is one:
If you move to a new place with a lot of EAs, you will likely at some point be asked if you want to live in a large group house with other EAs. These group houses are a norm, and a lot of people live in them. This is not a norm outside of EA (though it is in maybe some other communities), so itâs certainly a positive norm that has been created.
Even if EAs tended to live overwhelmingly in smaller houses, or lived with people who werenât EAs, then that would just be another norm. So I really donât think there is a way to escape norms.
This is a fair point. I think there are maybe two different meanings of norms at play that might be useful to disambiguate:
(1) whatâs normal in a community, in the sense of âwhat most people doâ (2) whatâs expected, approved of, recommended in the community
(1) can bleed into (2), because if you are the odd one out, you might feel like an outsider, even if no-one is actively expressing disapproval of what youâre doing. Vegans in an majority-omnivore space, or omnivores in a majority-vegan space, might feel kind of awkward, even if no-one criticizes or remarks on their dietary choices. Similarly, Iâve heard some people say they felt ambient social pressure to be poly in the Bay Area just because loads of other people were, or because people assumed it of them, etc.
I think what Iâm against is not norms existing, but people trying to intervene in the norms âtop downâ, as it were, by talking about what the norms should be. I think the correct way to contribute to community norms is just by âbeing the change you want to seeâ. So if any individual EA wants the community norms to be less overlap-y and/âor less polyamorous, what they should do is not date multiple people, and not date other EAs. But itâs not legitimate for them to tell other people what to do.
Iâm not sure Amber is saying that a community should have no norms at all? It sounded more like she was saying that in the domain of personal relationships there shouldnât be norms.
One could argue, of course, that there are implicit norms around this already in the community, so maybe the argument I think is stronger is something like:
âThere are implicit norms in the community around personal relationships alreadyâwe should evaluate this norms and figure out if we think they are actually good or notâ
(I think this might be a fruitful exercise that it think many individual organizations are doing now as a result of recent events, but is harder to do for the more nebulous âcommunityâ and network of people)
Yes, I think itâs impossible not to have norms about personal relationships (or really, anything socially important). I should perhaps have provided an example of this. Here is one:
If you move to a new place with a lot of EAs, you will likely at some point be asked if you want to live in a large group house with other EAs. These group houses are a norm, and a lot of people live in them. This is not a norm outside of EA (though it is in maybe some other communities), so itâs certainly a positive norm that has been created.
Even if EAs tended to live overwhelmingly in smaller houses, or lived with people who werenât EAs, then that would just be another norm. So I really donât think there is a way to escape norms.
This is a fair point. I think there are maybe two different meanings of norms at play that might be useful to disambiguate:
(1) whatâs normal in a community, in the sense of âwhat most people doâ
(2) whatâs expected, approved of, recommended in the community
(1) can bleed into (2), because if you are the odd one out, you might feel like an outsider, even if no-one is actively expressing disapproval of what youâre doing. Vegans in an majority-omnivore space, or omnivores in a majority-vegan space, might feel kind of awkward, even if no-one criticizes or remarks on their dietary choices. Similarly, Iâve heard some people say they felt ambient social pressure to be poly in the Bay Area just because loads of other people were, or because people assumed it of them, etc.
I think what Iâm against is not norms existing, but people trying to intervene in the norms âtop downâ, as it were, by talking about what the norms should be. I think the correct way to contribute to community norms is just by âbeing the change you want to seeâ. So if any individual EA wants the community norms to be less overlap-y and/âor less polyamorous, what they should do is not date multiple people, and not date other EAs. But itâs not legitimate for them to tell other people what to do.