… consensus, unlike voting, is not just a way of making
decisions. It’s a process. Coming to a decision is just the
final step. If one respects the process, the “spirit of
consensus” as some like to say, the exact form of that final
step is not all-important. .. I spent a lot of time trying to
understand what this “spirit of consensus” was really all about.
It was clearly not just about decision making. It wasn’t even
just about conduct during meetings. It was more an attempt —
inspired by reflections on the structure and flows of meetings –
to begin to imagine how people can live together, to begin –
however slowly, however painfully – to construct a genuinely
democratic way of life. How often does the average American
actually sit down, even with a group of four or five people, and
try to make a collective decision in which all have equal say?
True, children often do it while playing. But, for adults, the
experience of democracy is largely limited to decisions
involving food, or maybe movies. For the colleg