On Sunday, April 14th, the Boston group held our first Schelling Day celebration. The idea was to open up and share our private selves. It was a rousing success.
That doesn't do it justice. Let me try again.
By all the stars, you guys. This was beautiful.
About fifteen people showed up. Most of us were from the hard core of Boston's rationalist community. Two of us were new to the group. (I'm hopeful this will convince them to start attending our regular meetups.) There was a brief explanation and a few vital clarifying questions before we began the ritual, which went for maybe 90-120 minutes, including a couple of short breaks. All of us spoke at least once.
I don't want to go into specifics about what people said, but it was powerful. I learned about sides of my friends I would never have guessed at. People went into depth about issues I had only seen from the surface. I heard things that will make me change my behavior towards my friends. I saw angst and guilt and hope and pain and wild joy. I saw compassion and uncertainty and courage. People said things they had never said before, things I might not have been brave enough even to think in their position. I had tears in my eyes more than once.
Speaking went remarkably smoothly. I set a timer for five minutes for each speaker, but it never ran out. (Five minutes is a surprisingly long time.) Partway through, Julia suggested we leave a long moment of silence between speakers, which was a very good idea and I wish I'd done a better job of enforcing it.
Afterwards, we had a potluck and mingled in small groups. At first we talked about our revelations, but over time our conversation started drifting towards our usual topics. Next time, in order to keep us on topic, I'll probably try adding more structure to this stage.
The other area I wanted to improve was the ritual with the snacks. We had five categories: Struggles, Confessions, Hopes, Joys, and Other. There weren't many Hopes, and there wasn't much distinction between Struggles and Confessions. I'll change this for next time, possibly to Hardships, Joys, Histories, and Other. There's room for improvement in the specific snacks I picked, too.
This celebration was the most powerful thing I've experienced since the Solstice megameetup. I don't think I want to do this again soon—it was one of the most exhausting things I've ever done, even if I didn't notice until after I'd left—but I know I want to do it again sometime.
To everyone who came: I'm so proud of what you did and who you are. Thank you for your courage and sincerity.
I agree that destructive people can do a lot of damage, and that removing them is a good idea. I also agree that destructiveness doesn't even require maliciousness.
The strategy I'd like to see is "cultivate dissent." If someone is being critical in an unproductive way, then show them the productive way to be critical, and if they fail to shape up, then remove them from the community, through a ban or deletion/hiding of comments. Documenting the steps along the way, and linking to previous warnings, makes it clear to observers that dissent is carefully managed, not suppressed.
Tying the moderator reaction to whether or not the criticism is fun to receive, rather than if it is useful to receive, is a recipe for receiving fun but useless criticisms and not receiving unfun but useful criticisms.
Receiving and processing unfun but useful criticisms is a core part of rationality, to the point that there are litanies about it.
Useless criticisms are no fun at all.