Structure of Enki: community
Beth Sutton
The focus on community brought us to realize that - for this situation and for the future – it is important to explore and clarify what we are looking at in the Enki Farm community (here we are talking about the Enki Farm specifically; the “Enki book owners” community is a bigger and more general group). This is a core issue and will take some time to read, but we feel it is an important place to be quite detailed.
For our part, we start with the understanding that community, as well as just how it operates, is a hard spot for most of us. So we want to be clear that we do see many kinds of valuable community structures – and we are not criticizing other structures. Each has a value in some situation. In Enki we work with the one we feel best supports an educational ecosystem, but that is not to say that other systems don’t support other types of communities better – just the fact that you are free to choose whether or not to join Enki is thanks to the representative-democracy that runs the overall workings of the countries where most of us live!
Long ago we looked at the main models of governance to see what would best support bringing Enki into the world. We looked at: fully democratic communities (majority rules on all); representative-democracy (the community elects representatives who then make the decisions democratically – i.e. what we live in in the US); fully consensus ones (nothing is undertaken or changed without full agreement of all members); anarchical ones (no structure for decision making); lineage models (where those in power choose who will replace them); dictatorial leadership models (decisions come from above – no discussion); and responsive leadership models (discussion is encouraged and sought, but decisions are made by the leadership).
We – like the vast majority of indigenous cultures – use primarily a Responsive Leadership model (though the directors make decisions via consensus)
Why do we do it this way? To the best of our understanding, all Educational Ecosystems require leadership. Because the value in each is that there is a specific vision and understanding that identifies the system. And it takes time, study and experience to understand how that ecosystem fits together. That’s why there are different models of education – someone or ones has a vision and others choose to learn about it and a few choose to help carry it.
Some of you have said you see this as a top down model (which is more like the dictatorial style) – clearly, you are free to think so, but we do not see it that way. We see it as a living, breathing organism with a center and extremities. Certainly the extremities are very important and, at some point, without them the organism can’t survive: the extremities allow interaction with the world and that is needed for survival, as well as for dynamic health. But the center is there to keep the rest functioning in accord with the ecosystem. Without it, neither the limbs, nor the organism can survive. Is that an insult to the limbs? We don’t think so.
So in Enki we offer a Responsive-Leadership style community; everyone matters tremendously and our goal is to learn from and meet the needs of all who want to participate in what we are offering, at least as best we can.
We do realize that this model will not work for all, and that brings us, personally, back to the feelings of vulnerability with which we began this part of the discussion. Discovering whether or not the Enki process can be the core of a community is a vulnerable spot. If it can’t be, some may find another community, one that is informed by Enki and meets what they are seeking. But on our end, if that is the general feeling, we will lose the opportunity to do the Enki work as a community. That is a hard place for us (Amy and Beth), as that is why we do the work. Still, it may be reality at this time, and that is a vulnerable place for us; something we just have to sit with.
We imagine that this is also a very vulnerable place for those who feel this approach to discussion community won’t work for them. Basically, we are all in a vulnerable situation as we, together, seek our own truths and work to find the courage to live them. In that way, we all share this moment in the journey and we will just have to see what unfolds from each of our deep truths.
Beth and Amy