Cohousing-L Mailing List: Question about Consent Governance

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

I feel so gratified this morning to wake up to so many wonderful responses to 
the question about one person “blocking” a decision and what to do about it. I 
read the question thinking, can I take this on again? Can I write the same 
explanation again? And again. Can I look for an old message and recycle it? No, 
each new question exists in a unique universe and deserves a new response.

To my great satisfaction and pleasure, the following responses were wonderful. 
Muriel, David, Dick, and Patti (so far) supported all the reasoning that 
sociocracy presents and presented ways to work through the objection rather 
than treat it as a veto and override it. And even more than supporting, Dick, 
in particular, explained clearly how to use that reasoning to resolve 
objections. And why it is important to do it — harmony, yes, but also 
intelligence. Look for information. Test options. Analyze results. Moving 
forward is a method of getting more information. To test the hypothesis. 
Collect evidence to see if the decision produces the results everyone else 
expects.

It’s a changing world. Decisions are bullet points in a process of change, not 
boulders establishing permanent boundaries that only a hundred-year war can 
change.

So thank you to everyone for making my day!

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines, Washington DC
Coauthor with John Buck of
"We the People: Consenting to a Deeper Democracy” 2nd Edition
Print: ISBN: 978-0979282737
Digital: ISBN 978-0979282720
http://www.sociocracy.info

The Spanish translation is now available as an ebook, “Nosotros, el Pueblo.” 
(Embarrassingly, the first version has an error on the cover which will be 
corrected as soon as the publisher can process a revision.)