Monday, August 29, 2016

Roberto Simonovich resigns from the Venus Project

2016.08.29

My name is Roberto Simonovich. I joined TVPA (The Venus Project Activism) in September 2014. I went through the TVPA Orientation Process and became a POC for Slovenia alongside the already existing POC, Sašo Luznar. As a POC, I organized multiple events to promote TVP locally and in addition, I helped the TVPA admins with their work. Eventually, due to my contributions, I was appointed an admin in October 2015. I also went through the TVPA Study Group (which is now renamed as “Discussion Group”) multiple times and eventually became a host for it. From September 2015 to July 2016 (11 months) I hosted weekly Study Group sessions for POCs and helped prepare the “bullet points” (summaries) of the lectures.

With this letter I am resigning from all my current positions and I am leaving TVPA.

The specific reasons that lead to my resignation would take too much time to write in a document, therefore I will only provide a short list of the most frustrating problems which I encountered when working with the administration of TVPA and wasn’t successful in solving, in spite of my best efforts. The following list contains statements which are purposefully generalized and void of examples for the sake of brevity and simplicity. They apply in different degrees to some of the current admins, but here I want to focus on the problems which need to be solved rather than on the individuals who are the source of them. I will therefore simply refer to the admins (as a group) as “they”.

  1. They are unable or unwilling to state clearly what the problems are in TVPA, which makes proposed solutions seem unnecessary or unimportant.
  2. Those who see and point out the problems with the organization, in order to be able to search for solutions, are treated as an obstacle to be removed.
  3. They confuse symptoms with problems.
  4. They are unwilling to resolve conflicts or learn conflict-resolution methods. The best way they know of to resolve conflicts is by removing from the organization those who have a lower rank in TVPA. And they don’t realize they are creating their own enemies in this way.
  5. They only see problems with other people and not themselves.
  6. They are reluctant to collaborate with candidates or POCs in order to solve problems which they don’t know how to solve.
  7. They don't understand the importance of creating and using procedures (procedural systems) in order to streamline their work and provide clarity to everyone in the organization. And when they do create procedures, they don’t always follow them.
  8. They prefer keeping their methods of work secret and they discourage enquiring and healthy skepticism. Instead, they reinforce and expect unquestioning obedience.
  9. They are more interested in maintaining the status quo and deceiving POCs and Roxanne into believing that everything works fine, rather than admitting that there are problems which need to be solved.
  10. They are unable to conduct rational discussions where logic and evidence are used to evaluate situations and help make decisions. Instead they rely on opinions and feelings.
  11. They are unable to distinguish their own projections and emotions from observations of behaviors. They don’t understand the following quote from Jacque: "Whatever happens in the world is real, what one thinks should have happened is projection. We suffer more from our fictitious illusion and expectations of reality."
  12. They are unfair and use double standards. Depending on how much they like someone, they will treat them differently. They will however deny it vigorously when confronted with evidence.
  13. In spite of their endorsement for science and the scientific method, they are not scientifically literate and they don’t consider scientific studies to be useful when making decisions.
  14. They are unwilling to learn about general semantics, which is a topic Jacque himself emphasized as having immense importance in understanding the RBE.
  15. They deny that they are in a leadership position and they therefore don’t see the importance of learning and improving their own management and leadership skills, which are indispensable to run an organization.
  16. They are unwilling to admit that there is a hierarchy in TVPA, where different roles have different amounts of power and authority over their subordinates. The hierarchy looks something like this:
  1. They are unclear and confused about the role of Roxanne in TVPA. Different admins on different occasions will give different conflicting answers.
  2. They are unable to recognize the real reasons for which so many productive volunteers (some former admins) like Risto Kantonen, Steven Black, Riitta Veijalainen, Lucy Li, Simon Šandor and Arnaut Maat left TVPA.
  3. Before Arnaut left TVPA in April 2015, in order to explain to me what was the problem that most frustrated him in TVP/TVPA, he shared with me the following link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronyism. I found it presents an accurate description of how the admins appoint people to certain roles.
  4. Lastly, as corroborated by the documents below, most of the problems listed here have been persisting at least since 2014, which means that very little progress has been made in solving them, despite great efforts made by many volunteers who came with great hope and enthusiasm, and left demoralized and disillusioned.




In conclusion, all things considered, I have learned a lot and had many positive experiences while in TVPA. The problems mentioned above, however, seem deeply ingrained and resistant to change, which unfortunately leaves me with no other option than leaving. I am sorry for all the new unsuspecting volunteers who will have to watch their own passion slowly turn into disappointment because of them.

I hope to see all my fellow POCs some day in a much more professional and productive environment, which will unequivocally lead the world closer to a RBE :)

Live Long and Prosper




Roberto Simonovich

Skype ID: rob.sim.rs
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