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# System prepended metadata

title: Considerations for a Robust Ethic
tags: [' todo', ' strategy', ' ethics', blog]

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tags: blog, todo, ethics, strategy
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# Considerations for a Robust Ethic

> :TODO: rewrite these snippets together into a blog post

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You won't find a values statement or list of our beliefs on this website. Each of us has participated in organisations that have spent many hours debating such things&mdash; a process which often fails to translate into concrete actions, or worse, becomes a symbolic shield for questionable practices.

Thus, we do not think it is very interesting to talk about the beliefs we share. Instead, we think it is much more powerful to speak to *what we will do together*.

The following "anchors" provide a grounding to guide us in that process. You can think of this set of criteria similarly to those you'd encounter in a job interview&mdash; everything is aspirational, and we don't expect that any organisations will be able to tick all these boxes (including ourselves). Rather, these are communicated here to indicate *how* we assess and prioritise potential engagements and partnerships. Compromising some values in the pursuit of others is sometimes acceptable, but only if it comes with clarity, transparency and accountability as to why we made such choices.

We have also created this list because (for the first time in history, we believe) *all of these aims are technologically achievable*. The only barriers that remain are social, political and cultural... barriers which, we hope, will shift slowly as we progress through this work.



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An effort is made to lean the writing of this section toward an *active verb* style, and to avoid nouns in our phrasing.[^engverbs] Especially in the context of assessing our behaviours and actions, nouns inherently create a reductionism and loss of information over our thought process. What happens is that we end up taking a stream of opinions, events and memories and compressing them together mentally before making a final judgement that "we uphold diversity" or "this group works to empower others". Instead, we hope to create a culture where *in every action* we ask the question&mdash; "is what I am about to do going to *uphold individual and collective sovereignty*?" (for example).

You can create your own anchors, too. 