Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Objections in Consensus [was: principle vs preference / Formal Consensus

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Mar 29, 2007, at 8:39 AM, Sharon Villines wrote:

> The group decides if the objection is valid. The facilitator would 
> propose that an objection was either not paramount or not something 
> that could be corrected by rejecting this proposal. The group would 
> then do a consent round in which the objector would not participate.

I need to correct this statement. The facilitator or the group could 
only proceed over someone's objection if that person refused to 
participate in an effort to resolve their objection -- which was the 
context of the original question about blocking.

In sociocracy, objections are required to be "argued and paramount." 
There are no blocks or stand asides.

The person decides if the objection is paramount but must participate 
in figuring out a resolution to their objection. If I object to the 
conversion of team files to a wiki (for example), I must be able to 
explain or allow the group or facilitator to help me explain why I 
object to this. Otherwise the group cannot resolve my objection and I 
am in effect blocking. In this case the facilitator could go on with 
the consent process, ignoring my objection.

But neither the facilitator nor the group can decide that my objection 
is not paramount to me. They can only move on because it is not argued 
in a way that they can deal with.

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