We have not choice in these times but to start with the obvious which easily get overlooked, especially as power corrupts.

“If you can stand with me in the year 2020 and celebrate how well we are living with all living things, can you look back and tell me the baby steps it took to get here?”

~RuthAnn

On the other hand, when it’s time to hire a contractor, any one of us could block the decision, according to our bylaws, yet the ones that didn’t make any phone calls to set up appointments to get bids are the same ones that aren’t living in the units with no kitchens, they don’t feel that it would be right to exercise that option even though the bids seem too high.

And on the third hand, when it’s time to adjust some of the definitions we use in our formulas to calculate monthly payments and ultimate determine a sales price for a share when someone leaves, and one person is uncomfortable approving for reasons unclear to us all, probably even him, if it’s not an emergency, we simply don’t waste time with it. We let him sit with it. If he read it, perhaps he could fix it. And when it’s really, really needed, he’ll either figure out what’s wrong and help us help him, or he’ll simply approve along with the rest of us.

So I guess my sense of all of this is, voting is not needed (as if anyone was suggesting it was, ha!), and consensus is only needed when it’s really needed. Do the work you can. Ask others for help. When you need group resources, make an invitation that respects the whole group. Consensus just happens.

it was quickly and easily agreed to come to the next meeting and bring one thing you loved. we went around and told our stories, one at a time. then we naturally began noticing the common theme(s). marvelling really.

so the next month we “checked in” about what seemed important. and then marvelled again at the variations we were living on common theme(s). we went on like that for 2+ years. nobody ever missed a single monthly meeting. and then we had a last meeting, rather unannounced, unplanned, but obvious, as well. and it was done.

it was in that time that i learned to recognize what seemed like local, personal movements, shifts, challenges, etc as common, simultaneous, universal. we several times considered taking up some “action” and also considered expanding the group, doing something with what we’d discovered, but always successfully avoided any of that. to the good, i think.

we all remember that group, which did nothing that any of us can point to, as one of the more remarkable groups any of us have ever been part of. in some ways all we ever did was propose and notice consensus, and then go out and apply it in our individual work/lives.

which reminds me… it’s not consensus from many, e pluribus unum, that is the hard part… it’s achieving that state in a meeting that then results in everyone leaving still an individual, and knowing what to do when they get back out in the world by themselves. action is individual. even when it’s “group action” it takes individual actions and commitments for the group to appear at the appointed time.

and that is how i think consensus wastes time. it says to everyone: “don’t DO anything, until we all agree.” it hold individuality and action captive to the one, true, yet to be decided, ever elusive, way. stops the breathing. consensus: how a group holds it’s breath as ransom, while demanding a future that can’t be achieved without (aerobic) activity.