Consensus/ was Another Bush Crime against humanity and Gaia

	Just because you don't like my idea of consensus doesn't mean I don't
understand consensus. Let's be adults. You can define consensus any way you
want, and so can I. I've never heard consensus defined as everybody doing
something together, but you can believe anything you want.  In fact,
consensus in most local societies simply means people usually go along with
whoever exercises leadership by persuasion or initiative. Leaders arise in
every kind of organization and this is natural.  The main reason so many
intentional communities' grandiose plans fail miserably is because someone
decides in advance that this or that process of consensus must be used by
the group to make decisions.  And before it ever gets off the ground,
everybody involved gets really tired of every clueless participant wasting
everybody else's time.  You see it all over the Internet.  One person
thinks they have to impose their vision on the others, and the others
aren't buying.  Case in point - your insistence that "Dissenting views are
accommodated and integrated throughout the process".  You're narrowing down
consensus to what you think it ought to be, and that's final.  Call it
whatever you want, but traditional local or tribal governance ("consensus",
if you will) generally rejects or ignores dissenting views because they
can't be "integrated".  Most want it one way, and some want it the other
way. They can't have it both ways. A little common sense would go a long
way here. 

paul [email protected]
http://largocreekfarms.com
http://medicinehill.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 1/28/2005 at 8:36 PM Jan Steinman wrote:

>On 28 Jan 2005, at 19:15, Globalcircle wrote:
>
>> I agree and promote " the paradigm shift to small decentralized 
>> bioregional
>> consensus group land based actions...." but without the consensus group
>> part... Such
>> communities usually had the independence to decide their own governance
>> without ideas of democracy, consensus, or dictatorship shoved down 
>> their
>> throats from outside.
>
>I don't think you understand consensus. And I think the only societies 
>that have ever survived for long had some form of consensus -- whatever 
>they called it.
>
>In whatever words, it's a feature that Jared Diamond says is essential 
>to long-term survival. (In his new book, "Collapse.")
>
>Consensus does not mean everyone agrees with something; it means 
>everyone does something together.
>
>There's a world of difference in beating the last dissenter into doing 
>something the way everyone else wants to do it and having no dissent in 
>the first place. Consensus drives agreement into the process at the 
>very beginning, including dissenting views. Dissenting views are 
>accommodated and integrated throughout the process.
>
>That sure is different from what people are calling "democracy" today! 
>And I imagine it's very different from what you imagined it was.
>
>:::: Nothing  will replace what we are burning up quickly now. Every 
>possible  replacement has problems which have received little 
>publicity. -- Dr. Kenneth Watt
>:::: Jan Steinman <http://www.Bytesmiths.com/Van>
>
>
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