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

[Brian Bartholomew (bb]

> 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.

'Build and preserve a true community where each voice is heard and
valued' is I think one of several viewpoints of the attractions of
consensus.  My personal attraction is that nobody is forced into doing
something they don't want.  Note that we can hold these wildly
different, quite possibly even contradictory views about consensus,
yet could still happily cooperate in a consensus process together.

> This is more nuanced than voting and allows for deeper expression
> and deeper understanding.

I think consensus is the opposite of voting.  In voting, the whole
point is to do something anyway which you have just verified some
people don't want.

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> 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.

If you don't use thumbs or cards, you're still using some per-person
body-language signal for consent.  The facilitator is determining the
lack of objections *somehow*.

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> 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.

People are different, with different tastes.  I would expect there to
be a diversity of opinion on matters of taste, and for these
differences to be unresolvable.  Why is this a bad thing?

If you are choosing the method to repair the common sewer pipe
connection to the street, each alternative may exclude all the others.
The only workable approach may be to patiently negotiate an agreement
that everyone finds unobjectionable.

But if the situation allows the expression of multiple tastes at once,
this seems like a way to hear and value multiple voices.  Therefore, I
would say don't offer decisions to the consensus process at all unless
by the situation's nature there can be only one answer.

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> When every one is holding up cards at the same time, often only the
> facilitator can see the results

I can't picture that.  Is your group big enough that they can't all
face inward in concentric rings of seating?

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> 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.

That social give-and-take seems fair to me.  If you're the one person
out of fifty who wants the holiday cranberry sauce to be colored blue,
and you've already made your sales pitch and convinced no one, then
for you to have properly heard and valued 49 voices the subject ought
to be important enough to you look 49 people in the eye and say no.

But is this really a taste issue, anyway?  Does ALL of the sauce have
to be the same color?  If you're the only one who wants something
different, can't you bring your own personally customized allergy/
dietary/veggie/colorful meal to the table and enjoy your neighbors'
company anyway, even if they don't agree with you about everything?

                                                        Brian