(no subject)
29 April 2020 12:39![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
haptalaonhttps://shaunaaura.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/how-do-we-pay-for-all-this-memberships-tithing-and-pagans/
I come back to this post pretty often, because I think it's important in multiple ways - but not necessarily agreeing with the author's conclusion.
I really, *really* resent the amount of money in paganism. I understand why - I understand that we don't have the infrastructure of a paid-for clergy that "big" religions have. But that's our strength, not our weakness: with the money comes a lot of hierarchical/bureaucratic/greed-driven bullshit.
If our community is centered around paid-for classes at £50 a go then in practice, this means I cannot participate. Our local community has a £5 monthly donation to pay for room, and while I don't resent this, it's still a barrier. We don't earn enough to pay £10 for room plus £5 for parking once a month.
And then when I encounter this online, paid-for long courses on various topics (I've come across three in the last week) - it leaves a sour taste in my mouth too. I am passionate about open internet culture. I learnt my paganism from websites freely shared in the 1990s.
As a teacher, as a librarian, I'm somewhat astonished by the sheer number of people saying "As a teacher, it's essential to pay teachers better". That is not where my path has led me. As a teacher, as a librarian, I am all about sharing knowledge for free, books for free, tuition for free, university for free, information for free. There should never be a cost barrier, period. Make it all free. People will say: but what about the expenses of the teachers? What about paying authors? And while I get it, I also just can't relate. I am profoundly moved by the cause of free information, and feel very strongly about this as a higher priority than the wellbeing/wage of information providers.
The part of her post which really speaks to me is the "buy in". Yes. This is essential, and this is kinda why I advocate for "no/less money in paganism" rather than "money, but distributed differently".
I'm very into anarchist societies and mutual aid. One of the incredible things about attending Extinction Rebellion events is the generosity; the number of things just being distributed for free. Food. Clothes. Time. Artwork. It is exchange, but without money as a mediator. People take things they need and distribute things they do not. By the third day of the October Rebellion I had gained, and lost again, like eight different tents. Giving them to people in need, knowing that when I was in need someone else would provide one for me. Being in these spaces kind of blows your mind, because it's so alien to what you're used to. And beautiful. One day, I was at a sit in and we realised it was going to go on for a while. Someone said - we need a Wellbeing team here. So we created one, the four of us, on the spot. I DIY'd blue Wellbeing sashes. And then, I set up a kitchen - which was me, sat on the floor, accumulating donations from people which others then took. A passer by bought us a tray of vegan coffees. Local shops sent us refills of hot water. Until you're part of a dynamic like this, it's hard to understand how it can work. Burning Man does the same thing: there is no money. So, you go up to a "cafe" where you are given food for free. And every year, thousands of volunteers create bars, cafes, restaurants, water stations, where they work for free to give away resources for free. Blows your mind. I've never been, but apparently they added one cafe at the information desk where you can spend money on coffee, and they did this because it can be so bizzare to be in this new environment that getting to pay for something can actually be quite comforting.
So yeah. The problem with money - any amount of it - is that it changes the dynamic. From two people working together, to a creator/provider and a consumer. A similar idea I found recently talked about how fandom has changed, as the internet infrastructure has changed. From communities, to Content Creators/Content Consumers. So, for example, the difference between a forum like the Cauldron - where everyone is a member participating in a conversation. And where the pagan community is at now, which is high profile bloggers who are good at producing content (tutorials...engaging Instagram images...engaging tumblr posts), and a myriad of followers who have a relationship to the *provider* but not to *one another*. And usually, the provider does not have a relationship back to them - they're just a follower number, not a co-participant. And, in fact, I think my expectation that when I initiate a conversation with a High Profile Blogger, they should reply, is in contemporary internet etiquette seen as rather rude and invasive and demanding. Like, they don't owe me anything, including time. Which is fair. But...I'm looking for that old school community, that old school communication with peers. So when I comment, I do expect a reply; I expect to be treated like a human in conversation with another human, not a client or customer who is to be dealt with, or treated as a resource of some kind.The idea that, in this blogger dynamic, my role is to consume the content, praise the creator, and then spend money or reblog the content to others - rather than to form any kind of relationship with the creator. Everything is mediated through the personal brand of this one creator.
(and an example which particularly annoys me in a hobby community I'm in: one high profile blogger has a facebook community for a certain rank of their patreon. In other words, this blogger doesn't grow the community, or participate in the community as an equal, but sells access to their time and hives off participants into a space isolated from others. Or anyone who contributes for free while building up thei brand/identity, but then immediately paywalls their content)
So "buy in" can have multiple forms, but specifically giving everyone meaningful jobs, and making it feel like a space whose values and goals are being co-created.
And I feel like we're so used to what commerce feels like, you can't create a mutual space where money is involved. Because then we apply our pattern, our pattern of "buying an object or service", rather than being in the kind of value mindset which makes community.
When you gift things for free, people are compelled to say thank you for free in return. Examples in my family from just last week - my dad gifted away his old lawnmower, only to find a bottle of wine on his doorstep. It's natural to wish to repay people, when we see labour done for free.
There are two strands in leftie thought and I'm sympathetic to both of them. One is: more people should be paid more money. Including, say, Wages for Housework: the idea that women's everyday labour is real work, and thus should be valued as real work, and recompensed as such. A blogger I admire calls herself "the unit of caring", as in, money is the unity we can use to express what we care about and value. I like that concept. I don't like capitalism, but that's got a beauty to it.
The other strand is about moneyless society: a lot of anarchist thought is like this. Encouraging people to share objects, resources, and time freely to reduce our dependence on money and, more importantly, to reduce our odd & destructive views we have around the economy (like, the idea that unproductive people should not have any resources. Or the idea that full employment is desirable. Coronavirus is making it pretty clear just how many jobs aren't really needed, and that perhaps sustenance without pointless labour is a good goal to aspire to). Anarchist ideas include, tool libraries - no one buys new tools, you borrow them instead, and that also saves on manufacturing pollution because most tools are not used very often. Or, seedshares - noone needs all the seeds in the packet, so give away what you cannot use. And so forth.
Both have value. The "more money for everyone" approach is essential under our current system, in which money is required for living. But the no-money anarchist model is better, in my opinion, because it starts dismantling things about money which we believe are objectively true, but are actually just conventions or traditions.
When I think about moneyless pagan communities, I imagine the task of bringing food to a ritual. I imagine a very put-upon person resenting that they have to do this. In fact, one time I went to an open ritual where the leader deliberately arrived an hour late, because he resented no one else put any work in. The *last* time I went to an open ritual. This person feels like their labour is being both compelled, and devalued. But the second person is someone who chooses to bring food to the ritual, because they value the outcome this action: they want people to be fed, they want the ritual to go well. That's the difference, I think. The second person is experiencing co-creation: she feels invested in the ritual, and responsible for doing her part. I think the second dynamic leads to better communities.
Like, Shauna is 100% correct about this emotion of "I could go to a class but I won't bother". IMO, that's the consumer mindset in action, and it betrays a lack of investment in community wellbeing. You're not part of the community, or, you don't feel responsible for it, or you don't feel like a participant/co-creator. My experience of moneyless spaces is that you really do need to take cash out of the equation entirely, to get the emotional/psychological transformation to take place.
"I feel compelled to teach (but resentful no one pays me)" is very human, but it's also a self-centered mindset. It's all very well for people with a pagan vocation to think that real training and real clergy is important, but I'm going to hazard a guess that no one else gives a damn. Paganism isn't like that. We are all our own priest, and the people attracted to paganism tend to be people who are into that dynamic. I think a lot about going to a pagan semenary or taking classes in, say, counselling to upskill my ability to serve as priest. But is anyone else going to pay for that? Is anyone in the area really feeling the lack of well-trained pagan clergy? I'm thinking probably not. It would be satisfying for my personal development, that is all.
I come back to this post pretty often, because I think it's important in multiple ways - but not necessarily agreeing with the author's conclusion.
I really, *really* resent the amount of money in paganism. I understand why - I understand that we don't have the infrastructure of a paid-for clergy that "big" religions have. But that's our strength, not our weakness: with the money comes a lot of hierarchical/bureaucratic/greed-driven bullshit.
If our community is centered around paid-for classes at £50 a go then in practice, this means I cannot participate. Our local community has a £5 monthly donation to pay for room, and while I don't resent this, it's still a barrier. We don't earn enough to pay £10 for room plus £5 for parking once a month.
And then when I encounter this online, paid-for long courses on various topics (I've come across three in the last week) - it leaves a sour taste in my mouth too. I am passionate about open internet culture. I learnt my paganism from websites freely shared in the 1990s.
As a teacher, as a librarian, I'm somewhat astonished by the sheer number of people saying "As a teacher, it's essential to pay teachers better". That is not where my path has led me. As a teacher, as a librarian, I am all about sharing knowledge for free, books for free, tuition for free, university for free, information for free. There should never be a cost barrier, period. Make it all free. People will say: but what about the expenses of the teachers? What about paying authors? And while I get it, I also just can't relate. I am profoundly moved by the cause of free information, and feel very strongly about this as a higher priority than the wellbeing/wage of information providers.
The part of her post which really speaks to me is the "buy in". Yes. This is essential, and this is kinda why I advocate for "no/less money in paganism" rather than "money, but distributed differently".
I'm very into anarchist societies and mutual aid. One of the incredible things about attending Extinction Rebellion events is the generosity; the number of things just being distributed for free. Food. Clothes. Time. Artwork. It is exchange, but without money as a mediator. People take things they need and distribute things they do not. By the third day of the October Rebellion I had gained, and lost again, like eight different tents. Giving them to people in need, knowing that when I was in need someone else would provide one for me. Being in these spaces kind of blows your mind, because it's so alien to what you're used to. And beautiful. One day, I was at a sit in and we realised it was going to go on for a while. Someone said - we need a Wellbeing team here. So we created one, the four of us, on the spot. I DIY'd blue Wellbeing sashes. And then, I set up a kitchen - which was me, sat on the floor, accumulating donations from people which others then took. A passer by bought us a tray of vegan coffees. Local shops sent us refills of hot water. Until you're part of a dynamic like this, it's hard to understand how it can work. Burning Man does the same thing: there is no money. So, you go up to a "cafe" where you are given food for free. And every year, thousands of volunteers create bars, cafes, restaurants, water stations, where they work for free to give away resources for free. Blows your mind. I've never been, but apparently they added one cafe at the information desk where you can spend money on coffee, and they did this because it can be so bizzare to be in this new environment that getting to pay for something can actually be quite comforting.
So yeah. The problem with money - any amount of it - is that it changes the dynamic. From two people working together, to a creator/provider and a consumer. A similar idea I found recently talked about how fandom has changed, as the internet infrastructure has changed. From communities, to Content Creators/Content Consumers. So, for example, the difference between a forum like the Cauldron - where everyone is a member participating in a conversation. And where the pagan community is at now, which is high profile bloggers who are good at producing content (tutorials...engaging Instagram images...engaging tumblr posts), and a myriad of followers who have a relationship to the *provider* but not to *one another*. And usually, the provider does not have a relationship back to them - they're just a follower number, not a co-participant. And, in fact, I think my expectation that when I initiate a conversation with a High Profile Blogger, they should reply, is in contemporary internet etiquette seen as rather rude and invasive and demanding. Like, they don't owe me anything, including time. Which is fair. But...I'm looking for that old school community, that old school communication with peers. So when I comment, I do expect a reply; I expect to be treated like a human in conversation with another human, not a client or customer who is to be dealt with, or treated as a resource of some kind.The idea that, in this blogger dynamic, my role is to consume the content, praise the creator, and then spend money or reblog the content to others - rather than to form any kind of relationship with the creator. Everything is mediated through the personal brand of this one creator.
(and an example which particularly annoys me in a hobby community I'm in: one high profile blogger has a facebook community for a certain rank of their patreon. In other words, this blogger doesn't grow the community, or participate in the community as an equal, but sells access to their time and hives off participants into a space isolated from others. Or anyone who contributes for free while building up thei brand/identity, but then immediately paywalls their content)
So "buy in" can have multiple forms, but specifically giving everyone meaningful jobs, and making it feel like a space whose values and goals are being co-created.
And I feel like we're so used to what commerce feels like, you can't create a mutual space where money is involved. Because then we apply our pattern, our pattern of "buying an object or service", rather than being in the kind of value mindset which makes community.
When you gift things for free, people are compelled to say thank you for free in return. Examples in my family from just last week - my dad gifted away his old lawnmower, only to find a bottle of wine on his doorstep. It's natural to wish to repay people, when we see labour done for free.
There are two strands in leftie thought and I'm sympathetic to both of them. One is: more people should be paid more money. Including, say, Wages for Housework: the idea that women's everyday labour is real work, and thus should be valued as real work, and recompensed as such. A blogger I admire calls herself "the unit of caring", as in, money is the unity we can use to express what we care about and value. I like that concept. I don't like capitalism, but that's got a beauty to it.
The other strand is about moneyless society: a lot of anarchist thought is like this. Encouraging people to share objects, resources, and time freely to reduce our dependence on money and, more importantly, to reduce our odd & destructive views we have around the economy (like, the idea that unproductive people should not have any resources. Or the idea that full employment is desirable. Coronavirus is making it pretty clear just how many jobs aren't really needed, and that perhaps sustenance without pointless labour is a good goal to aspire to). Anarchist ideas include, tool libraries - no one buys new tools, you borrow them instead, and that also saves on manufacturing pollution because most tools are not used very often. Or, seedshares - noone needs all the seeds in the packet, so give away what you cannot use. And so forth.
Both have value. The "more money for everyone" approach is essential under our current system, in which money is required for living. But the no-money anarchist model is better, in my opinion, because it starts dismantling things about money which we believe are objectively true, but are actually just conventions or traditions.
When I think about moneyless pagan communities, I imagine the task of bringing food to a ritual. I imagine a very put-upon person resenting that they have to do this. In fact, one time I went to an open ritual where the leader deliberately arrived an hour late, because he resented no one else put any work in. The *last* time I went to an open ritual. This person feels like their labour is being both compelled, and devalued. But the second person is someone who chooses to bring food to the ritual, because they value the outcome this action: they want people to be fed, they want the ritual to go well. That's the difference, I think. The second person is experiencing co-creation: she feels invested in the ritual, and responsible for doing her part. I think the second dynamic leads to better communities.
Like, Shauna is 100% correct about this emotion of "I could go to a class but I won't bother". IMO, that's the consumer mindset in action, and it betrays a lack of investment in community wellbeing. You're not part of the community, or, you don't feel responsible for it, or you don't feel like a participant/co-creator. My experience of moneyless spaces is that you really do need to take cash out of the equation entirely, to get the emotional/psychological transformation to take place.
"I feel compelled to teach (but resentful no one pays me)" is very human, but it's also a self-centered mindset. It's all very well for people with a pagan vocation to think that real training and real clergy is important, but I'm going to hazard a guess that no one else gives a damn. Paganism isn't like that. We are all our own priest, and the people attracted to paganism tend to be people who are into that dynamic. I think a lot about going to a pagan semenary or taking classes in, say, counselling to upskill my ability to serve as priest. But is anyone else going to pay for that? Is anyone in the area really feeling the lack of well-trained pagan clergy? I'm thinking probably not. It would be satisfying for my personal development, that is all.
no subject
Date: 29 April 2020 19:58 (UTC)First, I am firmly in the don't charge for coven work or related teaching (but will consider it for things outside of that, based on the criteria below). I do think that charging changes the equation, especially in small group settings, and I fundamentally don't want to work with someone in a coven setting who needs the fact they're paying money for it to be why they take it seriously.
That said, I do know people who charge for teaching, in various ways, some of whom where I think they handle it really well, and some of whom where I'm more dubious (sometimes knowing that I don't have sufficient info to make a reasonable judgement.) I have run into people, though, who have kept people on as students (or initiates or supported them as teachers themselves) where it's pretty clear money was a significant deciding factor, and that wasn't actually good for people down the road.
1) Am I spending more money on it than I would be if I were doing my ritual practices by myself?
I do not use more candles on the altar if 5 people are in my living room than if it's just me. I will use a bit more wine and bread (or whatever it is I'm using), but realistically, that's at a "I have slightly less left over" not "I need a whole new loaf/bottle/whatever" when it's a coven-sized group. If there are objects being used during ritual (like herbs, supplies, etc.) then more people will use more up, but there are plenty of ritual options where people either bring their own stuff, or where the materials are a nominal expense.
n a larger group ritual, though, that equation can change - you may need more physical stuff, you may need to rent space, you may need additional storage space when the stuff isn't being used. And it gets more complicated to manage all those things, including financially.
2) Is this thing we're doing about building relationships and connections (especially long-term ones) or is it about a specific skill at a specific time and I may never see these people again?
I don't charge for coven training, or anything related to it, and I expect people to buy their own books, tools, and materials for study (with lots of options for inexpensive ideas for what will work.) That's for a lot of reasons, but partly because I'm building up a long term relationship with these people, and you don't charge your friends for time with you, that's just weird.
But if someone asks me to do a workshop for a different group, then that's not particularly an ongoing relationship, that's a "We want your expertise on our schedule" and not the same thing (see point 4)
3) What are the actual costs of running the thing, and if so, how do we share them equitably?
My living room is going to exist as my living room whether we have a coven in it or not, on a given Saturday morning. I'm not spending more to have coven there. But if I need to go rent a large space that can fit 20 or 50 or 100 people - that's not going to fit in my living room. (Even outside, we may need park permits, etc. plus some items to make sure we can function outside for ritual like tables or materials.)
I think it's not fair to ask the person planning and running or facilitating a ritual or class to bear all the costs of the space for the class (because that puts all the burden on one person, who, as the person teaching or facilitating, is quite possibly getting less overall benefit from it on a religious level, because they have to pay attention to the group and how things are going with part of their brain, plus they will have at least some at-home prep/packing/unpacking).
So I do think it's fair to say things like "Room rental so we can do this ritual inside, it being December, is $X. Our other expenses come out to around $Y. Please plan to chip in $Z to cover your share. Extra amounts will go toward future rituals/materials for the group/whatever." (i.e. basic financial transparency). And I also think it's fair for the person/people planning/facilitating the ritual to say "I can do X to support this, but not X and Y and Z"
For coven stuff, I ask them to bring potluck for rituals (and I usually just provide the rest of the bread and wine/mead/whatever from ritual), but I am also the person doing all the planning right now, and the person who has to clean the house before everyone shows up. Someone else usually does the dishes, for which I am very grateful, but I'm still probably doing 3-5 hours prep work total, where they're doing usually 1-2 depending on the cooking. So, not quite equal, but it's a balance that means they contribute, and I don't have to do everything.
I also do think about 'what is the time investment someone has put in here'. I do have a side business (not that it makes me much) for research consulting: in the same stuff I do for free for friends, I am really clear that I can do stuff in many cases in 15 minute that would take them dozens of hours to duplicate - because I have invested hundreds or thousands of hours in improving my skills.
Similarly, I am cheerfully willing to exchange something worthwhile with other people (often money, because that's the exchange system we've got mechanisms for online) for people who have natural skills I don't (some kinds of divination work) or who have spent their hundreds or thousands of hours developing different skills than mine. A lot of these are things where if we were local to each other, we might work out barter, but we're not, and so money is the most frictionless exchange option. (My editor for my romance writing is a long-time friend who does the editing for free, but who also gets me as an on-tap reference librarian any time I'm remotely awake and available. Most people pay their editors. However, neither of those has much direct cost except for time for either of us.)
4) Is someone asking me to do something outside of my existing commitments, especially in ways that cost me money and time directly (prep and travel time and expenses) or indirectly (prepping for this time will make it harder for me keep up on things like errands/groceries/cooking).
Or as I say, my job doesn't pay me to librarian, I do that for free if you catch me when I have sufficient spoons. My job pays me to show up ready to librarian at a given time on a given day, when I might rather be doing something else.
If you want me to show up and talk about a topic of your choosing (not mine), in a context I don't have a lot of control over, then I need some reason to do that as opposed to the dozens or so other things I might want to be doing. Money is one way to even that out, though it's certainly not the only one. (There are things I've been glad to do for free because it meant I got to meet or spend time with people I like, or it brought me into a new community, or because I was going to be at an event anyway, and didn't mind doing the prep work to be able to present, which I actually often like.)
Ditto stuff that's going to be super time or energy consuming: my health stuff means that sometimes being able to throw money at commercial freezer meals or takeout or laundry service is the way I'm going to get through the following week(s) after doing more intensive teaching or ritual work. The ability to do those chores and have enough stamina to do them doesn't magically show up in my body just because I did good stuff for my community, and the money that can substitute for cope doesn't appear in my bank account either. So if you want that particular thing from me, you either have to deal with my ability to schedule it (which may mean waiting a while for that thing) or make it so I can throw some money at some solutions to get through my basic daily need stuff like food and clean clothes. A couple of times I've been really clear about "I could do that thing sooner, but it will wipe me out for a couple of weeks." with people.
5) Is the exchange of energy actually reasonable?
Taking your High Profile Blogger example - for me, where I get a handful of comments to reply to across different discussion spaces most days, I can generally keep up on them just fine.
But for the people who are getting dozens of comments, if not hundreds a day? That suddenly gets to be a much trickier proposition even if the replies don't demand much thought. People can get really really nasty if their communication expectations aren't met, so it's often a lot more realistic (especially for people who have other time-consuming commitments like jobs on other people's schedules, or kids, or eldercare or chronic health stuff) to go to "I'll reply where I can." People who don't set boundaries often stop producing content at all or much more slowly, because they're spending so much time on the comment hamster wheel rather than having time and space to create new material.
People also have unrealistic expectations. I've had less in the way of people demanding my time than a lot of people I know, but I've had my share of people expecting I'd take 3 hours to help with a thing, at their demand, and who threw a fit when I didn't provide what they wanted in exactly the way they wanted it. I've also known people (and helped people) where that's crossed the line from irritation into harassment and stalking, and it only takes one of those situations to make anyone near it super cautious of it happening again. If everyone had good boundaries, and took a "Hey, sorry, that's not a thing I can help with" or "That's not something I'm up for right now" well, it'd be different. But alas, a bunch of people are horrific at respecting boundaries or time or other stuff in someone's life.
Clearly, I could ramble about this a lot more, but thoughts.
no subject
Date: 6 May 2020 13:52 (UTC)1)
I certainly understand the need to charge more when actual resources are being consumed. I suppose I'm kinda devaluing "time/energy" as a resource that could also be recompensed with money. It is different to me, though, because additional money can fill up a deficit in my bank balance, actually *can't* recompense my energy in any meaningful way. I like your idea about being able to turn that money into a life-ease, like laundry, which helps with the energy thing & I'm going to consider this for future.
My perception is often not "I'm charging for this specific thing, which I could evidence with receipts and a budget" rather, "I'll charge for this and decide what to do with the money later". Not that I'm entitled to peoples receipts/private budgeting information. But, as an example: I run a local environmental meetup. I was talking to someone about it and he said "You should apply for grant funding - there's a lot of it about". Apropos of nothing. What, exactly, should I use the grant funding for? This stranger has no real idea what my group does or what our outgoings are, just the vague idea that "there's money available in this". And I connect it to my work as a craftsman where people simply cannot get their head around "I do my hobby for fun and have no desire to sell my objects or time". I don't care that there's *potentially* money in something, I want to answer first "is monetising this activity necessary, and is it the best/most effective way of accomplishing my goals?".
I tend not to associate this with greed in the classic moralistic sense; more like this free market capitalism logic which infects everything, that everything has to be a side-hustle, everyone has to be working constantly, and if you've got free time and a skill then you should be charging for it.
"2) Is this thing we're doing about building relationships and connections (especially long-term ones) or is it about a specific skill at a specific time and I may never see these people again?"
I think this is at the heart of the conversation, both what Shauna and I am dancing around. The problem isn't "money is bad" in an abstract/moralistic sense.
The problem is...my vision of A Pagan Community should be built more around these longterm connections. I think Shauna feels similarly, although with a slightly different angle, about the importance of infrastructure. She's envisaging a network of covens, communities, shops and community centers, which would then have the money to support her as a travelling teachers. My vision is more fixed/local than that, focused on building up those covens and communities for their own sake.
What we both agree on, and you as well, is there's something Different about a context in which you're showing up and teaching strangers. For me, my sense is that there's too much of this in Paganism, and I'd like to move towards more of a "religion as village" structure. I don't know whether that means, the decisions I make about my personal religion, or more broadly wanting to put time into building these structures for others.
My instinct is that people are drawn to this "Weekend £200 Tarot Archetype Workshop" paganism because that's all/predominantly what there is, and because community models are less visible, or less well supported.
3)
I love your phrase "I don't charge to hang out with my friends", and yeah again this is kind of what I'm pointing at. Less about me wanting a coven leader to pay room rental on their own while I just show up, because I'm cheap. More about, a coven leader shouldn't even have to ask: if the ritual or workshop is rooted in friendship and community, then it should be intuitive that "this collective expense is collectively paid for".
I don't want to pay to attend a ritual the same way I pay to attend a concert, where I consume something which is provided. I'm happy to pay to attend the same way I pay for my own meal when I go out with friends.
Again, it's less about the money, and more about what these kinds of money exchanges imply about how community is structured/organised.
What this is reminding me of is, for a couple of weeks the piano player at my choir was sick, so I volunteered to do the accompanying. And the person running the choir came over each time and gave me money for it. It was a weird interaction for me, though I'm in no position to turn down a tenner. But my mindset about the choir is "This is a collective endevour, and so when I play music that's my contribution to our shared goal, just as the singers are contributing their voice." Whereas the choirmaster's understanding of what was happening was, the singers pay to attend because it's their fun hobby, but we pay the piano player because he's doing work. Or something. This didn't have to be a moneyed interaction, and to me it wasn't a moneyed interaction.
(Like most people who love their instrument, give me half a chance and I'll pay *you* to get my hands on a piano for half an hour.)
4)
Yeah, this is what my husband said: if someone asked for his expertise and invited him to talk, he would expect payment for that. Certainly if travel is involved.
Again, I'm thinking about contexts where I'm paid in nontangible things: for example, I teach people about {god} and my reward is more people revere {god}. This only really functions on the local level, when there's this longterm investment.
5) High Profile Bloggers
I definitely don't intend the critique to be aimed at the blogger, here. I think it's extremely reasonable for people not to expend energy on strangers in this context, it's overwhelming.
The critique is that the online community dynamics have moved away from forums, and into the comments section of particular HPBs. If I post in a community forum, then *someone* is going to respond: the "work" of interaction is spread out among all the forum participants. If HPBs don't reply to comments, then they're creating a kind of press briefing or announcement or magazine article or inert text, rather than starting a conversation. Which means conversations no longer happen. There's nothing wrong with people doing this kind of "It's basically a book, but published online" writing - except when the whole internet infrastructure moves towards this as the primary representation/gateway of the community.
I guess it's like nodes: in communities, forums, and so forth, fifty nodes connect to fifty other nodes. In a blog comment thread or in your tumblr/instagram followers, fifty nodes connect to the single node of the author. I think the former model is more social, more sustainable, more resilient and also pleasurable to participate in.
I absolutely don't think a blogger who finds themselves in the unattractive position of a huge and rowdy comment section should no longer have boundaries about how they interact with it. But what I would like to see is, when things get to that point, these people creating or promoting forum spaces to try and turn their comment section into community, rather than trying to keep stuff centered around them and their brand. I don't care that much whether the interactions I have online are with High Profile Bloggers, or with general citizens of the internet - but I do want to be interacting with someone - I don't want it to be one-directional.
And then when we talk about real-world communities, I don't want my interactions there to be fifty student nodes attaching to one teacher node, and the next week fifty different students and a different teacher. I want the structure to be there so that the fifty nodes connect to one another, and we're all building one another up.