Collective Identity Project

We believe that any good idea should speak for itself – a good idea neither belongs to, nor is the property of, any one individual. In effect, the good idea is always aimed at the greater good. The process of revealing/creating a good idea is the result of a collective mental effort aimed at sharpening our focus in one direction. A good idea is not driven by self-promoting, individual egos. Rather, a good idea is driven by the collective activities of the nameless who, for no personal gain (and only for the benefit of all), lay down the tracks towards one end/goal. In other words, ideas form us, we don’t form them – just as it is the nameless many laying down the “train” tracks (and not the individual “train” engineer) who dictate the direction of the train.

Our goal is to develop software that allows communities to develop good ideas as a result of participating in collective identities. This software will enable participants to meet and create solutions in an environment unlike anything previously available. This environment will move us beyond the dichotomy of singular “individuals” who belong to a “group”. Essentially, with the notion of a “collective”, we seek to harmonize the individual within the group to such an extent that it will no longer make sense to speak of those “individuals” within the “group” as two separate identities. We can think of this notion of a “collective” as a “gestalt”, in so far as it is both logically and temporally prior to our designation of phenomena as an “individual” or a “group”.

What is unique to the Collective Identity Project (CIP), is that it provides a new “playground” for ideas, where anonymity is absolutely enforced. The submission, discussion, critique, rating, and pruning of ideas is to be done in a completely anonymous forum. We strongly believe that the process of discussing, solving, and creating ideas/answers/solutions desperately needs to move away from ego-driven-self-promoting goals. Only in and through a CIP (moving away from the discourse of the individual versus the individual) can we let the ideas speak for themselves. Ideally, the end result of the CIP’s response to a question or task (e.g., the CIP’s answer or solution) speaks from and yields one voice, where that one voice is equally both a “we” and a “me”.

With the above in mind, we can say that the CIP is an evolving dynamic (a work in progress). While the CIP engenders respect and openness among the participants (a respect and attraction between like minds), this does not mean, however, that there is no disagreement within the CIP. On the contrary, the very process of “working-through” an idea encourages and requires working-through differences. The CIP fosters a community of openness, respect, and collaboration all aimed at working-through differences, and working towards one and the same end/goal. We believe that the solutions or answers reached through the CIP will be good, beautiful, and harmonious ideas for the benefit of all (i.e., the entire collective). The CIP seeks the beautiful way towards the beautiful end. To put this all very playfully, we might say that our purpose in coming together as one, in and through a CIP, is to “play music” as best and as harmoniously as we can.

While the CIP shares a core concept with democracy – namely, that all may participate in forming the community voice – the CIP does not embrace the notion that everyone’s opinion counts equally. What is distinctive about the CIP is its dynamic, self-pruning ability to filter-out some dissenting voices without having to rely on a central and hierarchical judge/individual. While the naturally-occurring pruning of the CIP is made through the judgements of others within the collective, these others remain anonymous. These anonymous judgements will be made, statistically speaking, from those who spend the most time participating in the collective collaboration of ideas.

The idea that all may participate, but not everyone will continue to participate equally, is a natural result of either the participant’s lack of interest and/or a statistically higher number of those who choose to prune that dissenting voice rather than harmonize or work-through that voice. Once a voice is pruned as a dissenting or non-harmonious voice, the collective keeps a random channel open between itself and this “outsider”, which we can now call the fringe-random-voice (FRV). Indeed, the collective does not ignore the FRV altogether, but always leaves room for the possibility of a random encounter with the FRV. Each collective will leave a channel open so that the FRV signal can randomly reach any given collective identity. In this way, the FRV provides the bridge between different collectives.

In the end, the core mission of the CIP is to let the idea speak for itself!