Re: consensus child care"??? / wasAnother Bush Crime against humanity and Gaia

Ken

Thats good to hear, I'd be interested to hear the experience of 
people who've tried to continue to use Consensus (with no fallback to 
voting) in a community which is pretty spread out (i.e. more like an 
eco-village  than a commune), and in a situation where relationships 
have broken down. All the stories I've heard have been negative.

- Mitra

At 5:16 PM -0500 1/2/05, Kenneth Winchenbach Walden wrote:
>Mitra wrote:
>>While our own community (10 households)  mostly uses consensus, we 
>>allow fall-back to voting though this very rarely happens. Working 
>>towards consensus, and in particular listening and seriously 
>>considering minority opinons, and looking for compromise and ways 
>>to keep everyone happy  has been important to our senese of 
>>cohesion. BUT allowing for votes, has proved critical in the 
>>community's past to prevent obstructionism from one person (not 
>>always the same person).
>>
>>  From the stories I've heard from other communities,  and my own 
>>experience in activist groups,  I would strongly recommend against 
>>adopting formal consensus (with blocking) for any project, and in 
>>particular for a housing situation. For example several people at 
>>one community (which I'd prefer not to name) told me how they had 
>>been unable to make any significant decision for years, because of 
>>particular people who would block most things, despite the 
>>overwhelming majority wanting to move on some issue.  Also they had 
>>the issue of a particular personal emnity between two members (I 
>>think former lovers, or something like that), where if one brought 
>>up an issue, then the other would block it. This person had had to 
>>resort to having other people present their suggestions to avoid 
>>them getting blocked out of spite.
>>
>>These are real situations, and occur many many times in consensus 
>>based housing situations, essentially you can easily end up with 
>>the tyranny of one.
>>
>>- Mitra
>
>From my understanding, and without knowing all the details, some of 
>the situations you describe should not happen under formal 
>consensus. Our community uses formal consensus as described by 
>Butler and Rothstein, and has for over five years now. Under that 
>system a person can only block a decision based on principles of the 
>group, and the group must affirm that the block is based on those 
>principles. Therefore it is not in the spirit of the system, nor is 
>it likely, that someone could block on personal emnity or just out 
>of habit. In our experience with the system we have never had an 
>occasion for anyone to attempt a block of any decision.
>
>Ken Walden
>Meadowdance Community
>
>
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Life is a Mystery to be Lived, not a Problem to be Solved

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