consensus history | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Tree Bressen (treeic.org) | |
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2002 14:54:02 -0700 (MST) |
(Name of thread altered from sociocracy.) >> This kinda talk makes me feel goosebumpy with excitement! My experience, >> living in community, is that we are trying to do something that we haven't >> had the opportunity to absorb from our culture. >Interestingly, there was an old Dutch tradition of neighborhood >associations that were ruled by consensus. They set rules about who shovels >snow and sweeps the walks and stuff like that. They ran their own >neighborhoods. The Polish parliament made decisions by consensus until the mid-18th century. The book that i read about that in (The Polish Way, by Adam Zamoyski) states: "Some such convention originally existed in virtually every parliamentary body in Europe, and survived in areas such as the English jury system. . . . It originated in the twin convictions that any measure not freely assented to by all lacked full authority and that no genuinely dissenting opinion should be simply disregarded by the majority. As the saying went, votes should be weighed, not counted. Dissenting minorities were listened to, argued with and persuaded, and only when broad agreement had been reached (the word used was the Latin 'consensus') was a measure passed." I personally find it very inspiring that only a few hundred years ago, in the cultures of "White" peoples as well as other peoples, consensus was well enough established that it was used at the highest levels of decision-making. Zamoyski also explains the role of the facilitator in that system, and how the system itself became so badly abused (mainly when power and money interests resulted in frivolous blocking, but there were also obvious challenges with using consensus in a representative rather than direct democracy) that eventually it was dumped entirely. When i read stuff like that i think the difficulties of governance haven't changed much in the past few centuries. Cheers, --Tree ----------------------------------------------- Tree Bressen 1680 Walnut St. Eugene, OR 97403 (541) 484-1156 tree [at] ic.org _______________________________________________ Cohousing-L mailing list Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org Unsubscribe and other info: http://www.communityforum.net/mailman/listinfo/cohousing-l
- Re: Sociocracy Email List, (continued)
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Re: Sociocracy Email List Sheila Braun, February 26 2002
- Re: Sociocracy Email List Sharon Villines, February 26 2002
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Re: Sociocracy Robyn Williams, February 26 2002
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Re: Sociocracy Sharon Villines, February 27 2002
- consensus history Tree Bressen, March 1 2002
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Re: Sociocracy Sharon Villines, February 27 2002
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Re: Sociocracy Email List Sheila Braun, February 26 2002
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