Consensus: Manipulation or Magic?
The consensus process strips away all the extraneous issues and allows people to speak to each other. Most of the time, people learn that the other side is not as “wrong” as they initially thought.
– Karl Ohs, late Montana Lieutenant Governor and chair of the Montana Republican Party 2005-2006
Social process may be conceived either as the opposing and battle of desires with the victory of one over the other, or as the confronting and integrating of desires. The former means non-freedom for both sides, the defeated bound to the victor, the victor bound to the false situation thus created—both bound. The latter means a freeing for both sides and increased total power or increased capacity in the world.
– Mary Parker Follett, author of THE NEW STATE (1918)
When I first began exploring the power of dialogue and deliberation in a democracy, I was quite surprised to find that some people regard consensus and even deliberation as oppressive processes. They feel that any effort to reach agreement necessarily involves suppressing differences.
I had not realized that consensus had negative connotations for so many people. In my teen years in Quaker meetings and then in activist groups and intentional communities, I learned about “consensus process” (co-intelligence.org/P-consensus.html). This term loosely referred to the idea that a group would not act on any decision until everyone agreed on what the group should do.
Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Reflections on Consensus — from Ugly to Beautiful”
