Making Octopus Agreements
Inspiration for rethinking how we form relationships and make agreements to create a repaired and transformed world
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This is experimental and emergent. Inviting feedback!
It’s time to expand, not contract.
Can we blur our boundaries and create a more expansive space within our agreements to forge bonds, create, and adapt together as we shape our futures in the cradle of collective repair and thriving?
Conventional contracts assume – and then reinforce – sharp boundaries between people, each party with a set of distinct interests, seeking primarily to gain from the transaction.
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How can we be like an octopus?*
Octopuses have unique qualities that have allowed them to thrive on this planet for 400 million years. Octopuses can teach us how to:
*Inspiration for this Octopus Agreement exploration came from:
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We are each like the arm of an octopus
“Instead of understanding the octopus as a single organism with nine brains, we should understand it as nine organisms – housed within a single skin.” – Miriam Simun
Like individuals in a community, every arm of an octopus has its own intelligence, with autonomy to move in response to nuances in its environment.
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And together, we are a single organism
A group of individuals creates a new organism when they join together to engage in a project or form a household, an organization, or another community.
The agreements we make with each other (contracts, bylaws, and other documents) are like the skin of an octopus, holding all of us together according to the values, visions, and plans we share.
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We have the power to repair
As a collective organism, �we’ve been weakened by centuries of harm done�to land and people. Like an octopus, we can repair and heal. We honor our collective body by honoring each individual. We adapt and provide the nutrients needed for each unique individual to thrive. In the spirit of reparations, we send energy and nourishment to the parts that are healing.
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Repair makes us powerful
By attending to the wellbeing of each member of our group, we attain the greatest collective strength and agility. Reparations is not charity. We are all stronger and more resilient when we repair all parts of ourselves and move together toward collective empowerment and liberation.
Repair requires adaptive agreements, not static contracts. We must be sensitive to changing needs and continually shift to channel resources to where they are most needed.
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We have tools to adapt
Like the skin of the octopus, an agreement holds our collective organism together and gives us tools to adapt and survive. Each part of a document can be like a skin cell of the octopus, which can be recolored, reshaped, and retextured in response to changing circumstances and needs. As long as a group understands the cells that bind them together, a group can voluntarily change individual cells. Shorter and simpler agreements can create stronger bonds and more adaptive groups. The modularity of a slide-based document allows cells to be moved in, out, and around with ease. In multi-party agreements, some cells can be crafted to be controlled by just some parties, while other cells are controlled by all parties.
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We are learning and practicing
We’ve been immersed in a culture, legal system, and economy founded on exploitation. To inhabit a transformed world, we must unlearn, then learn and practice different ways of being, re-imagining every part of our world.
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Like an octopus, we survive and thrive by continually learning, sensing into and adapting to our shifting environment. As an organism composed of many organisms, our most powerful learnings may be about each other. As we learn the nuances of one another’s unique experiences, habits, and needs, we can refine our practice of working together.
Welcome to a living document.
This document brings together a group of people and/or organizations in a common pursuit to collectively heal, thrive, and continually adapt as the future unfolds. This is a living document that will be brought to life and periodically adapted through a 5-part participatory process.
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How we’ll co-create this agreement
We will create this agreement over the course or one or a few conversations. The conversations will cover the following 5 subjects:
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This agreement brings people together to materialize both our individual and our collective visions. Below we each share our own visions, values, and purposes, then jointly develop our shared purposes and points of unity.
This section will keep us oriented to our higher purposes, even as we adapt our agreement over time to changing needs and circumstances.
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Below, we deepen our understanding of our shared and individual circumstances and needs, which will inform the commitments we make to each other in this agreement. In the context of an unjust and unequal society, a one-size-fits-all agreement will be inadequate. The past experiences, present circumstances, important relationships, future goals, and broader social/economic/legal circumstances are all relevant as we decide what each party may give and receive as part of this agreement.
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Here, each party makes commitments to others. This will form the main substance of this agreement, and will likely grow and change over time, as we work together to create or borrow from a menu of options for shaping our relationships.
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Here, we make a commitment to continued learning by collectively identifying specific learning goals, resources, and plans. To eventually inhabit a transformed world, we must carefully study the patterns that keep us oppressed and the pathways to liberation. This may include political education, practical skill-building, personal development, ongoing learning about the contexts we inhabit, deepening learning about each other, and more.
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Here, we commit to participation in various activities and conversations that will allow us to constantly adapt this agreement and our relationships. This may include conflict resolution processes, routine meetings, fun activities, rituals, written communication tools, and more.
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