Processes

It’s only us and it’s only now and it’s only here.
— Maynard James Keenan

Becoming a member

We welcome anyone—however knowledgeable, not knowledgeable, old, young, from Earth, not from Earth—who wants to be part of our community.

Feel free to attend our events, join our group on Discord, suggest ideas, take part and/or create initiatives.

We operate on a strict Code of Conduct to maintain a friendly space.

Starting new projects

We want to operate in a do-ocratic fashion. Anyone who wants to start a new project or initiative, feel free to pitch the idea on Discord and then implement it. We’ll try to help as much as we can!

Making decisions

How groups of people make decisions is a fundamentally difficult problem. Until now, given our small size, we didn’t have to make many. The ones we did were easy to make. For example, an event can happen when the organiser for it can do it in the first place.

As more people take part, more ideas will be on the table and more decisions will need to be made. In principle and in practice, we aspire to make decisions democratically and consensually.

Holding the keys

There is no physical space for Chaitin School to give the keys to. However, shared ownership and trust are fundamental to the community of the kind we want to have. Thus, sharing admin access to our online assets (website, Discord) is standard practice for all members.

Incident response

We have a strict Code of Conduct to create an open space where everybody feels welcomed. However, if there is someone not following our Code of Conduct, it might be hard to identify and respond to it. We recommend:

1. Take some space. We recommend to first create some distance between you and the person who’s engaging at potentially unacceptable behaviour. This will hopefully help one see the incident more clearly.
2. Notify someone else. Hopefully there is someone in this event you find trustworthy. Share your concern with them, see what they think.
3. Identify the issue. It’s a good idea to acquire a clear understanding of the problematic behavior so that it can be communicated clearly and effectively.
4. Assess response. Various levels of response are valid. In addition to one’s current actions, it’s worth taking into consideration past actions as well as their response. Did they become aware of their problematic behaviour? Have they repeatedly ignored signs of their behaviour causing stress? Has anyone talked to them about this before?
5. Act. This can be either talking to them direcly, talking to someone else, or even bringing the problem forward as a group discussion. Eventually, the community can decide how to handle the matter together.

The above lack strict structure as well as defined outcomes. We are a small and new community and, as we learn more, we can make this process more detailed.

Handling disagreements

Inevitably, there will be disagreements. How we handle them is one more indication of our skills and the quality of our community. We don’t want to have rigid rules for such matters, so two points to follow are:

• Let’s try that our solutions include everyone’s needs. This is in contrast to assuming everyone will fend for themselves.
• Chaitin School wants to be a space that will allow something different to exist. With this in mind, let’s try to reconcile differences in a way that multiple ideas can flourish.