Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: non-participants in the consensus process

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Dec 5, 2006, at 6:55 PM, Leah wrote:

> Hi everyone! Here at Fordyce Street cohousing we recently had a 
> consensus decision about something that had some emotions around it 
> and a few people decided not to put up any kind of card for the 
> decision-making process. [snip] I don't think anyone felt any negative 
> feelings about the low income participants getting this "great deal" 
> but had personal feelings about the fact that they could not have it 
> and therefore decided not to participate at all in the decision 
> making. This made us wonder -is it really consensus if poeple are not 
> participating when they are sitting right there in the room?

One of the frequently undisclosed aspects of consensus when people 
begin being rapturous about the joy and harmony of consensus decisions 
is that making choices is hard and making them by consensus doesn't 
remove that hardness.

One of my personal frustrations about consensus is the number of 
decisions in my community that get made by any other means than asking 
the whole group what they think. This is to me the great under-belly of 
consensus decisionmaking and belies its intended function -- to build 
and preserve a true community where each voice is heard and valued.

But in your case, I would suggest that it depends on what the group's 
definition of consensus is. One definition of consensus from the OED is 
"Agreement in opinion; the collective unanimous opinion of a number of 
persons." It is used in statements like "The consensus amongst 
economists is that inflation...."  But these are opinions -- not 
choices. For cohousing groups, consensus usually means making rock hard 
choices. And the choice some members of your group wanted to make was 
not available to them.

In making choices, sociocracy defines consent/consensus as "no 
objections" so it is much easier to give consent. You don't have to 
agree or to feel joy or harmony. Most importantly, you do a consent 
round in which each participant can say "no objections" but also state 
any other feelings they may have. This is more nuanced than voting and 
allows for deeper expression and deeper understanding. You listen to 
each person, in turn, and hear the "no objections."

In your case, where you are using cards, people were required to vote 
up or down. And they didn't feel like doing that. Personally, I don't 
participate in votes like this -- some of our facilitators like to use 
thumbs so I just sit it out. To me, consensus is consensus of the group 
and I want to hear the objections of others. I might personally be in 
favor of a choice but I want all the other objections resolved before I 
would move forward just as I would want everyone else to refrain from 
moving forward until my objections are resolved. When every one is 
holding up cards at the same time, often only the facilitator can see 
the results, and the number of yes cards can be overwhelming to one or 
two no cards (I forget what the cards actually say but the effect is 
yes or no). I see this as undue pressure and very much like majority 
vote -- the majority demonstrates their solidarity in a way that is 
sometimes, even intentionally, intimidating.

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
http://www.sociocracy.info