[WS:] I am surprised that you said that, Joanna. As someone born in Eastern Europe, you should have known that consensus often grows out of a barrel of a gun. Or out of silencing the voices of dissent. How much say did women or underclasses have in the most cultures throughout history that you mention? Sorry, but I do not buy the "noble savage" utopia manufactured by Western liberals.
I think a more accurate view is that while consensus has typically been the ideal of most societies, it has been typically achieved by silencing or otherwise excluding all voices that "did not count" for one reason or another. In the same vein, love and salvation of all souls were the x-tian ideals, which have been often achieved by torturing and slaughtering millions of people.
Do not get me wrong - I am not trying to dismiss the notion of consensus building. Au contraire. I firmly believe that we should strive to achieve it in most situations - certainly far more often that we actually do. But I am also aware of inherent limitations of this goal. What is more, I do not think that failure of achieving consensus is the end of the world - sometimes it does not matter that much, and sometimes it is a good thing (e.g. women's suffrage was breaking a consensus opinion.)
What I am trying to do is to dismiss anarchists and their childish I-centrism. "If I do not get what I want, I will take my toys and play in my own yard." Having read Graber's book "Direct Action" it is hard to escape a conclusion that a great deal of these folks are either hopelessly juvenile or suffering from affective disorders that impede their social functioning. That in itself is not the end of the world. there are plenty of dysfunctional people out there. The problem is when someone is trying to make an ideology of their dysfunction.
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."