Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: RE: Voting backup

[Ann Zabaldo (zabaldo]

Hello all --

First, with some modification, I agree w/ this statement from Rob:

"So, if you don't have a voting backup, you should at least have in place a
process that holds the blocker somehow accountable to the group."

However, like Robert Arjet (I think)  I do not believe a voting back-up is
the solution.  Not because it's "bad."  Rather, because it's inconsistent w/
the consensus process. (There are other ways to handle this situation.)

Just to expand this conversation a little bit --

Voting and consensus are two very different paradigms.  They are not
interchangeable.  One is not the handmaid or savior of the other.

Consensus is an act of faith that there IS a solution that will arise from
the group.

A voting back-up asserts in advance that this faith is not well placed.  A
voting back-up says the group cannot trust that it will find a creative
solution when the issues are difficult.  (Ironically, it's w/ the difficult
decisions that consensus works the best.)

When you are moving toward consensus in a group, you are committed to and
moving towards finding a solution that reflects the best thinking of "the
whole."  Each person in the group has "a piece of the truth" and no one's
piece of the truth is any greater or lesser than anyone else's.  Community
building (building trust) is an important outcome of consensus.
Collaboration is the nature of consensus.

In using a voting back up you move from "the whole" towards   finding the
solution of only a part of the whole.  Voting reflects not necessarily the
best thinking of the group but rather the interest(s) of only a part of the
group.   The group is split.  The minority has no role in the outcome of the
decision except to become the majority in the next deliberation.
Competition is one of the outcomes of voting.  To contest, dispute and
intervene is the nature of voting -- even in extreme cases using a super
majority.

When you start out in a consensus process and end up voting -- regardless of
best intentions -- the group is pulled from one paradigm into a totally
different paradigm at the very time in the process when consensus could
assist the group in a difficult decision.    (Personally, I think this is
more damaging than just using a good, solid Robert's Rules of Order voting
process from the beginning.    Everyone is then on the same page and no one
is "fooled" into thinking my "truth" is equal to everyone else's "truth"
only to find out some people's is more equal than others.)

But the real losses of a voting back-up are that the creativity of the group
is stifled and that the power of  the consensus process to weave and
strengthen the bonds of community are restricted (the bonds are actually
broken.)

A couple more things:

Consensus does NOT mean agreement.  This is one of the misconceptions about
consensus.  (There are lots of others.)

Consensus takes a long time.  It's supposed to take a long time.  It's used
to address large overarching questions of values, vision, mission, etc.

Questions of what color to paint the CH bathroom are inappropriate for a
consensus process.  Construction decisions,  details about operations (e.g.
creating meal plans) etc. are appropriately handled in small teams, sub
teams and task groups. (Zev Paiss uses the term "delegated consensus" to
describe this.)  If you have an interest in what kind of garden hose to buy
for the community get on the  team that makes that decision.

Consensus is not an "easy" process.  People's dander gets up when questions
about values arise.  I know mine does!!  I'm very wedded to my values.  Both
of them.  :-)

When we adopt the consensus process for cohousing our hearts are in the
right place.  The biggest problem I see is that we don't understand it very
well (that is, how very different consensus is from voting.)  Usually, we
don't get solid, on-going training to learn it either.  There are very few
places in our entire society where consensus is used, therefore, we get
little practice or support for using it outside our coho communities.

Consensus is such a different animal.  I, for one, am awed that as a
"movement" for lack of another word, cohousing groups adopt consensus --
almost intuitively -- as their process.  This says a number of things to me:
that cohousing groups/communities are "different," that we are on the
cutting edge of discovery and somehow consensus is the key to it.   I don't
know what the discovery is yet but I'm willing to keep engaging the
consensus process to find out.

Now, on a different note and for more excitement, I maintain that the person
who blocks "walks on holy ground," is the most important person in the
community at the time and deserves the thanks and appreciation of the
community for stepping forward.

Ann Zabaldo

Takoma Village Cohousing
Washington, DC. -- America's
Hometown!
zabaldo [at] earthlink.net

----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert P. Arjet" <rarjet [at] LearnLink.Emory.Edu>
To: <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Sent: Monday, April 01, 2002 1:35 AM
Subject: Re: [C-L]_RE: Voting backup


> cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org writes:
> >So, if you don't have a voting backup, you should at least have in place
a
> >process that holds the blocker somehow accountable to the group
>
> I think that's very important.  I have serious reservations about voting
> (not the least of which being that if I know I'm in the majority, there's
> much less incentive to truly struggle for consensus) but hate the idea of
> one dysfunctional individual deliberately sabotaging decisions.

One process that I like is requiring the objection to be a) principled and
b) based on the threat of harm to the group.  This (I'm told) goes far to
eliminating frivolous or bad-faith objections.

One note: I loved Sharon's earlier post that pointed out that since
consensus is a full agreement among group members, you can't "block"
consensus--you can't block what doesn't exist.   The behavior described by
Rob ("These type of people have held groups decision  making hostage by
blocking all decisions") does, however, seem to deserve the term
"blocking."  That is, they are blocking not consensus, but the entire
decision-making process.

If we use voting as an analogy,   "I'll block that proposal if it comes
up" doesn't mean "I'll vote against it," but "I'll burn down the polling
station."  It's not a statement of opposition to a proposal, it's a
rejection of the entire decision-making process
>
rum.net/mailman/listinfo/cohousing-l

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