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Now that the consent series pilot is complete, let's use the excuse of choosing a badgename for the module to try to deconstruct the relationship between consent and desire.

Martin's book is called The Art of Giving and Receiving, and it's definitely about that. In the same way that an AR conversation can be understood as taking turns giving and receiving, speaking and listening. Listening as a gift, speaking as a gift.

But there is more:

• what is my sense of desire, or not
• what is my sense of entitlement, or not
• what (the heck) do i want (without defining it by its negative)
• how do i ask without attachment
• seeking permission, and asking for help, as two quite different things
• it's not just about inspiration or initiative, collaboration is baked in

In search of a word

The objective of this post is the notionally practical task of finding a badge name for the Consent module. The placeholder name is currently "Consenter". But that isn't actually a word, and arguably misses much of the juice.

While the module is currently, rather dryly, named The Wheel of Consent (after the name of Martins model), instead for random reasons (using the series as a test of our new quick start path to membership), the pilot series offering became named: The Juciness of Consent. I guess it sounded more appealing.

It does seem like an edgy as heck game. I have a sense of the game as incredibly disorienting, and opaque. It's like trying to wipe the fog off the mirror in a steamy bathroom.

First there is the fascination of the request itself, which we went into some depth in Anatomy. "If it would please you", "Express desire without attachment". Holding precious the other's sense of agency, and my own.

And then there is a sense of "seek discomfort". There is a youtube channel that i like called Yes Theory, that has this same phrase plastered all over their t-shirts. Try new things, meet new people. It might be scary at first, but the reward is worth it.

While the game tends to boggle the mind, one important thing is becoming very clear to me is that consent and desire are inextricably bound together.

Desire as generative, emergent, juicy

To be honest there is something very apropos about the word juicy here. Juicy has windows into that sense of peering into the uncertainty, eg, do we even get how juicy desire and consent are? Knowing the juice is there available to us, and having the right tools to get at it. To get at the thing. To get nearer to it, that perhaps ultimately unknowable thing. A name involving juice or juicy speaks to squeezing the juice out of life by daring to ask.

In that first post i spoke of how "Knowing what i actually want seems to hint at the very act of creation itself". As in, if my desire was to be truly unleashed why would i ever be content with just wanting the same old mundane things that i have already encountered before? If it's truly a blank check, just imagine how infinite the scope of desire could be. As one participant asked me during the game, if you were to take the hand brake off, what might you want me to say to you?

This all seems like such a rich fertile field to be cultivating. Here we see how wanting can lead to asking, and asking can lead to creating the actual fabric of reality. That's so much more than just interpersonal consent, but unleashing the generative power of desire.

But there is more. Collaboration and connection are baked in. I can want, make and eat pizza on my own, but "i'd love to go out and share some pizza with you", speaks to something that can not be done alone.

Badge name?

Which brings us back to the name. Three actual dictionary words that speaks to consent are: Consentee ("the one who gives consent"), Consentient (actually a word, "of one mind or feeling"), and Consensualist (also rare, "acting by mutual agreement").

For the desire theme, extracting the essence from life: Juice maker, Juicer. Then we have candidates that speak to the emergence theme: Architect, Cultivator, Decider. Speaking to a spirit of collaborative desire, we might get: Weaver, Navigator or Co-creator.

I'm still sitting on the fence. For a change i don't have an opinion. Shock horror.