> Thiago Oppermann wrote:
>
>> But if the group decides, then are vetos involved in that? Or do they decide
>> by a method other than consensus?
>
> If the group decided that a block in invalid or scurrilous, they
> continue with the agenda.
I expressed myself poorly. I meant to ask if the decision to move on with the agenda was undertaken by consensus. I just sense that the notion of a scurrilous veto has to be cashed in non-consensus terms, or by defining certain behaviour as unacceptable, and I don't see how that can be done by consensus.
The behaviour you don't like is not giving reasons. But in some situations - not far fetched ones, but ones that I have witnessed - people have good reasons but do not want to share them in a big public group. Openness and transparency can be terrifying to people, and can be themselves the tools by which people exert power. That's what my comment about wanting decisions, not confessionals is about.
It is true that I don't have the stereotypical spokescouncil in mind. I am thinking of running workplaces by consensus, union meetings, arranging production (ah, 1936!, Catalonia!) and deciding on laws.
Consensus meetings, with the rules and definitions you yourself have provided us, are human made things and we can change them if we don't like them. (They are, I think, fairly artificial. If you look at how consensus is reached in, say, Big Man politics in the highlands, it ain't anything like the games we play.) If people don't want to be part of such processes, that's their choice. I think it is condescending to suggest that such opting out would be due to lack of political education, and hence the process is a way of enhancing people's capacity for democratic action. It may be that, and it often is, but it also may be self-perpetuating, and it often is that too.
I should say that I think that consensus processes are worth trying out, if only to shake the bats out of the tree. No one knows how to do democracy, everything is worth trying out, and practically anything is better than farcical representation - but that also includes non-farcical representation.
¡¡¡No methods!!!
Thiago Oppermann