Cohousing-L Mailing List: not participating in consensus

[Leah (drsweetie]

Thank you everyone that responded to our conundrum of "consensus without 
everyone participating" I want to clarify one point. I wrongly assumed that 
everyone that uses consensus decision making does it the same as us. We sit in 
a circle and everyone can see everyone else's cards. There are 6 choices of 
cards that you can hold up indicating various stances on a particular issue, so 
anyone that wants to participate can indicate total support, total nonsupport, 
minor reservation, etc. In our consensus training Tree recommended using a 
reservation card when it is something that you have personal feelings against 
but does not directly affect you. She used the example of a vegetarian making a 
decision involving meat and the individual has no reason to want to stop others 
from eating meat. Although I cannot speak for the ones that did not 
participate, I think that they were frustrated with their own situations and 
preferred not to be part of a decision that allowed someone else to
 get something they could not get themselves.              

 
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