Hi there!
My name is Lin and I am very excited to say that I am joining Commons Network as an intern for the upcoming couple of months! I am currently 22-years old and studying the Master’s program Organising Social Impact at Utrecht University. This Master focuses on alternative organising and mobilising people for, perhaps much needed, changes in society.
Some fun facts about me: I absolutely adore cats, am a fervent Formula 1 fan, and love dancing (contemporary) and playing the violin!
While I was a hardcore STEM student during high school, my interests shifted slowly but surely towards social sciences and eventually policy, governance, and organising. Because every day I wondered why our society is shaped the way it is. Why are there so many inequalities? Why do we, consciously or subconsciously, treat people differently based on race, gender, social-economic status, and all these other markers we bear with us. As a transnational adoptee who stood out easily growing up in quite the white village, these types of questions increasingly guided my personal, academic and professional journey.
Inequality and polarisations are my two main interests. I remember, as a young teenager, watching a scene in the movie The Hunger Games where their class divide had many people starve and yet had some barf intentionally just to keep eating more. I was repulsed and remember that I thought: what is so difficult about sharing resources, about giving up on exorbitant excess just so everyone has a livelihood? Why do we find it difficult to move away from us-them thinking? And while The Hunger Games is a fictional story, I could clearly see the links to our very real society. Because poverty is not (only) some far-away problem as we sometimes like to think. Poverty is that absent-minded kid who comes to school without lunch. Poverty is your seemingly well-off neighbour that has to choose between that important dentist appointment and paying for the washing machine that just broke down. Poverty is seeing a foreclosure notice on the house you always thought was dirty and unkept. Hearing about and seeing these situations, I wondered how these things could exist when at the same time some billionaire builds a luxurious yacht so big it can’t even dock in many ports.
To me, the answer to this problem is simply capitalism. Because capitalism entrenches existing wealth with the sole goal of accumulating more wealth. Stripping more people of their land, their labour, their histories, their dignities, the capitalist grows their capital empire and strengthens their individual position. Especially in this increasingly digital age, I see daily that inequalities and polarisation are more pronounced than ever. A very small group of people is in charge of a very large and frighteningly increasing amount of wealth, data, and power. They currently show no signs of halting this immense growth that is depleting our finite planetary resources every second. Moreover, social and political bubbles are increasingly reinforced through online platforms through for example echo chambers and confirmation bias. This further increases individualism and polarisation. Capitalists’ viper grip on and increasing control over resources and information structures is at the very least alarming.
In this perhaps depressing scene, Commons Network is extremely inspiring to me. Their mission to show everyone that we can organise ourselves differently and create different outcomes resonates deeply with my desire to combat inequality and polarisation. Because I am sometimes sceptical of such initiatives, it is an incredible opportunity to experience working and connecting in their network. I hope I will learn much about and from the practices and opportunities Commons Network presents by contributing to their Digital Commons project. I will be assisting with pitches and fundraising, as well as developing informative and educational material on digital commons and public infrastructures. By doing so I will also gain familiarity with the commons initiatives across Amsterdam, which could assist me a lot in writing my Master thesis. I firmly believe I can add a grounded pragmatic point of view backed by both social sciences and organisational sciences to this project within Commons Network.