Agreement—but what kind?

Movements and revolutions

A movement is an example of a community from below. It is made up of people who have somehow gotten beyond their differences, and have chosen a way to work together to solve an important problem that affects all of them. The solution they have chosen is to actively promote some agenda of changes for society, some program for society.

If the program is one that finds favor in elite circles, then the movement does not have a very difficult task. Politicians will rush forward in support of the agenda, hoping to gain the votes of the movement members. Those politicians will be likely to succeed in implementing significant portions of the program, since they would enjoy support in elite circles. This kind of movement is of little interest to our quest. It obviously does little to disturb the hierarchical regime. We are interested only in movements that are opposed by the regime.

In the face of elite opposition, a movement typically recruits as many members as possible, so as to increase its political leverage. If its program calls for major changes which compromise elite interests, then the movement must become a mass movement in order to have any hope of success. This is the kind of movement that is of interest to us on the quest.

The elite community would seek to discourage such a movement in order to avoid political interference with its interests. The regime might try to ignore the movement and hope it goes away. Or the regime might implement some changes of its own which appear to be similar to the movement’s program, and which might take some of the wind out of its sails. If such tactics succeed, then the movement is of little consequence.

But suppose the movement persists despite elite counter-moves, and suppose it becomes increasingly effective in gaining support for its program. In that case the regime must make a choice. It can either seek to suppress the movement, or it can accept the movement as a player in the game of competitive policy formation.

The American civil rights movement shows an example of being accepted as a player. Local Southern elites had tried suppression, but they were unable to stop the movement that way. When the suppression became too politically embarrassing to national elites, those higher-up elites stepped in and took over—using armed troops in some cases. The national elites decided that acceptance as a player was the overall best way to deal with the civil rights movement and the political headaches it was causing for the regime. An historic civil rights bill was passed, and the role of racial minorities in the adversarial American social hierarchy was to some degree shifted toward greater equality.

Such a movement is generally considered to be a success. At a program level it is. But such a movement does nothing to alter the hierarchical nature of society, nor does it challenge the hegemony of the elite community. Neither does it lead to the creation of a lasting community from below. What had been an empowered movement community transforms into yet another special interest group lobbying for advantage in the hierarchical power games.

If a movement is successfully suppressed, or if it is eventually accepted as a player in politics, then it is of no interest to our quest. In both of these cases the hierarchical, adversarial system continues essentially unchanged, and the elite community remains in control.

The only movements that might be of interest are those whose programs cannot be accepted by the regime— programs which include radical elements, which could only undermine the structure of elite control. If such a movement persists despite suppression, and if it gains sufficient following, then it will sooner or later find itself in direct confrontation with the elite community itself. The issue will no be longer the program, but rather who gets to decide.

If the movement persists effectively beyond this point, then it becomes a revolutionary movement. Among movements, only a revolutionary movement has any possibility of bringing about the kind of social transformation our quest is seeking.

And there have been revolutionary movements that have achieved victory. Whole populations have succeeded in achieving community as a movement. Such movements have by one means or another displaced powerful ruling elites. We the people came into existence and carried out a successful revolutionary project. Such an event gave birth to the USA, to the French Republic, to the Soviet Union, and there are many other examples.

But in all these cases we somehow ended up again with a hierarchical power structure, with an elite in charge—and for some reason we the people faded away. Why is this?

The problem with a revolutionary movement is the source of the binding energy of we the people as a community. The community comes together because everyone agrees that the radical program needs to be implemented. Later the agreement is expanded—the regime must be replaced. Out of that agreement, the community works together successfully to replace the regime and begin the implementation of their program.

The community has now completed its agreed task. Those who are so motivated can see to the further implementation of the program. The rest of we the people can go back home and get on with life. The achievement of victory leads automatically to the fading away of we the people.

Those who are motivated to complete the implementation are precisely the kind of people who seek power. The fading of we the people creates a power vacuum, and these power seekers soon create new hierarchical institutions and become a new ruling elite. That seems to be how it has always turned out, and there is no reason to see why it would happen differently in the future. A revolutionary movement cannot be the means of achieving the kind of social transformation we are seeking.

We learn from these revolutions that whole populations are capable of becoming a community even in the face of elite opposition. And we learn that such a community can displace those elites from power. Those are very useful facts, and we can take courage from them. But we also learn that programs and taking power cannot be the unifying force for the community we would like to see. Those kinds of communities do not persist after victory, and therefore leave us right back where we started.

This puts us in a dilemma. Obviously you can’t get rid of elite rule unless you try to get rid of elite rule. And obviously, the way to try is to get everyone together and try as a community—as a movement that can displace the regime. Right? But we know this path cannot work. We cannot succeed without trying, and if we try we won’t succeed!

There is an escape from this dilemma. But before we try to unravel it there are other things we need to take a look at. We have been talking about Community vs. Hierarchy. Let us spend a few moments reviewing the history of that struggle.

Community vs. Hierarchy—an age-old struggle

Back before agriculture, community-tribal consensus was all there was. Hunter-gathering groups were relatively small, and everyone had to work together to survive. With perhaps rare exceptions all societies were egalitarian, consensus-governed, and autonomous from all other societies. That’s how it was for hundreds of thousands of years, as long as Homo sapiens existed and had language to talk about problems and choices.

Tribes typically had warriors, even though tribes didn’t have any reason to conquer one another. Just as antelopes defend their territories with antler rattling, so tribes maintained their territories (fixed or nomadic) by spear rattling and occasional raids. These raids were harmless to the tribes as a whole, though perhaps fatal to a few of the more heroic-minded warriors on either side.

When agriculture came along, all this changed. The more aggressive tribes with the more ferocious warriors now had a new mission for those warriors: Capture the neighboring tribe and make them till the soil for us from now on. Agriculture made systematic exploitation of other people economically feasible.

Perhaps only a few tribes chose the exploitation path at first, but a few was enough to begin a seemingly irreversible process. Every region with agriculture went the route of chiefs, kings, and emperors. And until relatively recent times there was always an absolute ruler at the top and a slave-class at the bottom.

A bit earlier we were looking at consensus as a tool that might help us build community. And community is the treasure that might help us overcome elite rule. It seems we are contemplating the revival of an age-old struggle—that between hierarchy on the one hand, and community consensus on the other.

Up until about 10,000 years ago consensus and community reigned supreme, unchallenged. Hierarchy then struck all at once like a lion on a defenseless lamb.

Ever since then the struggle has continued, and always hierarchy has won the lion’s share of battles. Rome called the struggle taming the barbarians. The British Empire called it civilizing the natives. The USA has called it spreading democracy, and the most recent hierarchy calls it bringing the benefits of the free market. Whole populations were annihilated in North America and Australia as part of this ongoing struggle, and today many peoples of the third world find themselves under similar threat.

Although the lion has grown ever stronger and more predatory through the centuries, we can nonetheless take some encouragement from these observations.

We know that humanity, community, and consensus are well suited to one another—the combination dominated 99% of humanity’s existence. During that time humanity lived for the most part in harmony with nature—and without devastating warfare. It is encouraging to know that in seeking community we are aspiring not to a strange and unfamiliar land, but instead are thinking about how we might return home to our roots—in a spiritual sense, not in the hunter-gatherer sense.

Let us return now to our dilemma. How can we overcome elite rule if trying to do so cannot succeed?

Zen—achieving without trying

In Zen the goal is to perceive directly the full scope of reality, an experience which is called enlightenment. Those who have taken the journey report that their experience cannot be communicated in words. And indeed the practice of Zen involves neither talking about reality, speculating about reality, nor even reporting on "reality experienced". The practice is to sit and do nothing.

It turns out that this practice—doing nothing persistently and regularly in a certain way—automatically generates certain kinds of mental activity and results. One might say the practice is about how to walk correctly. Those who learn to walk correctly are somehow always drawn toward the path they seek.

This teaches something about effort and results, and how they relate to one another. In our competitive modern societies we have a single paradigm about how to achieve goals. When we want to achieve a goal, we do so by focusing our thinking and our planning around that goal. It is obvious to us that you move toward something by trying to move toward it.

Zen teaches us that some goals can only be approached in a more indirect way. Zen teaches us that sometimes it is necessary to focus elsewhere than your goal in order to move toward it. It also suggests that elsewhere does not mean anywhere. There may be a very specific right focus for a particular goal, and that right focus may be quite unrelated to the goal.

This observation offers us encouragement in the face of our dilemma. We saw that trying to overcome elite rule (movement or revolution) could not succeed at that goal. Evidently this goal can only be achieved in some other way. Zen shows us that other ways can sometimes be found.

We are looking for a practice that moves toward universal community, but which is energized by something other than struggling against the regime. We need to learn a way to walk that leads us to community and that will lead us on beyond that—helping us to use that community to build the kind of world we want and deserve. A world that connects us somehow back to the primordial consensus world we enjoyed before the lamb succumbed to the lion.

Let us now return to our examination of collaborative consensus sessions, and consider what kind of outcomes they might be capable of producing.

Collaborative consensus and personal transformation

We learned earlier that effective problem solving occurs in a session only after a collaborative community space has been established. In reaching the community space, every person in the room needs to get beyond their differences with everyone else. Not only that, but they go through the experience of accepting all the others as valid real people, whose ideas and concerns are worth listening to. And beyond that they go through the experience of collaborating effectively with those people and, finding solutions to problems—which at first seemed like win-lose adversarial quagmires.

Such an experience can only challenge many of the assumptions and paradigms of anyone raised in our adversarial societies. Consider, for example, the extent to which we blame other groups in society for the ills that afflict us. In the USA, conservatives are convinced that liberals control big government and the media, and that they use those to impose liberal values on everyone else. "Liberals are the cause of the problems and they are the enemy."

Liberals on the other hand see everything being controlled by conservatives and right-wingers. Neoliberal economics, hawks running foreign policy, all aided by a corporate-controlled media. "How right wing can you get? Conservatives and their voting choices are the problem and they are the enemy."

There are two points worth noting here. The first is that neither liberals nor conservatives would agree with the characterizations being made about them by the other side—and for good reason. The second is that both are really expressing the same concern—dissatisfaction with the loss of liberty and empowerment imposed on them by centralized, unresponsive institutions. Each side blames the other for the predicament, and each has over-simplified beliefs about the other which reinforce the blaming attitude.

Now let’s suppose that a session is held which includes liberals and conservatives among its participants. If the session is successful, then all the participants will get past their difference and learn to respect one another’s concerns. That’s how they get through to that community space where collaborative problem solving happens.

This experience—learning to respect the concerns of the enemy—can only undermine many of the assumptions and prejudices the various participants came in with. "Is that other really an enemy? If not, then who do I blame for society’s problems?"

Indeed one of the central paradigms of our society is called into question—that all things must be adversarial. We assume that when conflict is resolved, someone must win and someone else must lose. In the session, one learns that everyone can come out ahead. We assume that one side’s agenda or the other must be selected. In the session one learns that a more creative agenda that satisfies both sides may be attainable. The experience of the session expands the participants’ understanding of how problems can be solved, and how people can work together.

There are two kinds of mind changing that occur in one of these sessions. In the process of reaching agreement on a solution, people change their beliefs about what kind of solution is possible. And out of the collaborative, community experience they change their understanding of problem solving and working with others.

The first kind of mind changing is productive at the program level. The second kind of mind changing is transformational for the participant. With a new understanding, the functioning of the participant’s mind changes. He or she is learning to approach problems and other people from a new perspective, with new paradigms.

We may be in a position now to make sense of Quinn’s cryptic message, "The needed change will come from people with changed minds, not from people with new programs." By "changed minds", perhaps Quinn means minds that are changed in how they function, rather than minds with changed beliefs. That would be consistent with his dismissal of "programs", which happen at the level of changed beliefs.

Indeed, with "changed minds", Quinn may be thinking about precisely the kind of transformation that occurs in our sessions. When he says, "needed change" he is talking about ridding society of what he calls "the taker myth". That myth is equivalent, more or less, to the paradigms of hierarchy and competition that dominate our modern societies. Changed minds—minds that approach people and problems from a collaborative perspective—may indeed have the potential to make inroads against "the taker myth".

In any case, the mind changing that occurs in these sessions increases people’s ability to participate in a collaborative community space, and it awakens them to the potential benefits of such a space. Let us continue with our investigation of collaborative consensus and see if there may be some way to create community spaces for these changed minds to participate in.

Collaborative consensus and community empowerment

Let us now apply collaborative consensus to physical communities, the kind that have a geographical location and are made up of neighborhoods. Let us consider sessions where all the participants come from the same community, and where the problem being solved is of importance to the whole community. Let us see what additional outcomes might be expected from such a session. Consider this scenario:

At level 1, the program level, the session agrees on a solution—and in these kinds of sessions, that solution is likely to be one that makes a good deal of sense. This is an important outcome. It improves the community, and it helps spread an appreciation for the value of our session process.

At level 2, the personal level, each participant goes through a transformation, of one degree or another, leaving them more capable of participating in community spaces in the future.

At level 3, the community level, something very important begins to happen. Let’s re-frame our scenario as a community experience:

After such an episode, the people in the community deserve to feel proud of themselves. Here was a problem that civic officials and the institutional world were not able to deal with. The community itself dealt with it instead, with very little bother and overhead.

Now suppose a community were to go through this experience two or three times, with different problems. What is likely to emerge is a sense of community empowerment—a sense of community existing and community as actor. We the people begins to awake, at least at the local level.

Such a process would be very likely to snowball. As a sense of community develops, there would be increased enthusiasm for tackling additional problems, and more difficult problems. And the more successful the program outcomes of the sessions, the more demand would be created for further sessions.

Before community exists, the non-program, transformational outcomes are all-important. Once community emerges, then what that community does is what matters. By choosing which problems to solve, and by finding consensus solutions, the community is able to develop a community sense of priorities, and a community vision of how the community might be improved. The program outcomes are now all-important.

As this community sense and vision grows solid, we are seeing the emergence of a fully awake we the people, at the local level. The community is now aware of itself, it knows how to deal collectively with problems, and it is developing a sense of direction, an agenda. We, as a local community, are ready to become a player in society. Let us next consider what this player might do, and what kind of obstacles might be encountered.

Empowered community and the transformation of society

Any attempt to deal with local problems on a regular basis would soon run into obstacles that are beyond the control of the community. Perhaps a major factory is closing down, a river is polluted, or local government is frustrating the effectiveness of the emerging community. We could expect neighboring communities to begin talking to one another and thinking about how they might collaborate in addressing problems that affect all of them.

And for this kind of regional "talking" and "thinking" a collaborative consensus session is the ideal vehicle. A few participants, or delegates, can be chosen from each of the communities involved. Conflicts and disagreements would arise, out of differences in interests and perspectives among the communities. In the course of a successful session these would be overcome, and creative opportunities for collaboration would be identified that all the communities could support with enthusiasm.

We can think of a region as being a community of communities. It seems only natural that we would apply our consensus tool to this larger community, in the same way it was applied to the smaller communities. And again we can expect the emergence of community identity, now on a wider scale. And after that would emerge a sense of priorities and direction, again on a wider scale.

It seems that small community breeds larger community, at least in the presence of consensus as a catalyst. A transformed rhyme suggests itself: "Little community breeds big community, and the people does enlighten. Big community breeds bigger community, and so ad infinitum." By employing the same consensus process, to larger and larger scale communities, we can see how society as community might become attainable. We the people—on the scale of a whole society—is not beyond the realm of possibility by means of this practice.

Let’s suppose that a society-wide community does begin to emerge. It would not take us long to realize that our greatest shared problem is the elite regime itself. There is little we could do as a society to solve our biggest problems, as long as the regime continues to run things for its own narrow benefit. Inevitably, the emerging we the people would begin thinking about how this obstacle might be overcome.

Perhaps the regime could be displaced simply through the ballot box. If the whole society were to vote for an agreed slate of candidates, then government would be overnight transformed. The same institutions would be there, but there would now be a voice of the people for them to listen to, and elected officials who took listening seriously. The role of government would be to administer those programs that we the people have agreed on. On paper, that’s precisely what our constitutions promise, but it has never been achieved because we the people have not been around to participate.

Perhaps the engagement with the elite regime would be more difficult. We do know however, from the experience of revolutions, that when whole populations achieve community, established regimes can be displaced.

When a revolutionary movement achieves victory, a fatal power vacuum always flaws the outcome. In our case however, no such vacuum emerges. We the people have not completed our mission—we have simply removed a major obstacle from our path.

Imagine the breakthroughs that would occur when a self-aware society is able to apply its problem-solving capacity to fundamental issues like sustainability, transport systems, health care, economics, and world peace. We cannot even imagine the vistas that would open. The scale of the cultural renaissance would be awesome.

We have reached the end of our quest. We have arrived at the fabled end of the rainbow. If events were to unfold as we have imagined, society would be totally transformed and humanity would be on the road to achieving its full potential—a potential beyond our imagining.

We cannot be certain that these things will happen. We do not know that the widespread use of consensus sessions can produce results along these lines. What the quest has shown us is that there may be a path out of our predicament, and the quest tells us what walk we need to learn if we hope to follow that path. We have little to lose by trying this walk, and possibly a world to gain. Let’s now take a final look at the walk—the Zen-like practice.

Global transformation as a Zen practice

In Zen there is the practice and there is the goal. The practice is dead simple and the goal cannot even be described. If you try to reach the goal directly, you do not make progress. If you simply do the practice, persistently, you are very likely to reach the goal. Your proper focus of attention is the practice. The attainment of the goal happens automatically. You have no control over what the goal turns out to be. It will be whatever it is.

According to what we’ve learned on our quest, the practice appropriate for social transformation is the carrying out of collaborative consensus sessions dealing with divisive problems in communities. The goal is somewhere in the direction of an empowered global society, but it cannot be described. Zen’s goal cannot be described because it is ineffable—it cannot be expressed in words. The nature of transformed society cannot be described because the outcome is in the future. It remains to be experienced, and it will certainly bring surprises with it.

In the end this quest has only one thing to suggest. Somehow arrange for these sessions to happen regularly and persistently. That is the practice. That is walking correctly.

The people who do the arranging and who participate do not need to have any particular vision of the future. They do not need to know about this quest story. Indeed, I need not have gone on this quest nor told its story. Those who carry out the practice may call it by another name and may have their own visions and theories about what’s going on. None of that matters. The only important thing is doing the practice—doing the sessions. It doesn’t matter what problems are being solved, and it doesn’t matter what the facilitators believe. If the practice happens, persistently, we may be able to go where we are capable of going. Hopefully, the feeling along the way will be one of going home, of returning to our roots.

I’ll see you there, some sunny day.

May the practice begin.

About the author

Don Juan taught Castenada that a warrior leaves his personal history behind. In that same spirit, Nasrudin prefers not to elaborate on his own personal history. He tells us this much... most of his life was spent working for the hierarchies, exchanging his time and talents for the currency of the realm. He left all that late in life, and began his quest. His efforts to find a path to transformation were focused always on "agreement" and on "programs". No matter how hard he tried, no matter how clever his programs, agreement remained always elusive—like the end of a rainbow. But by persisting in those efforts, he was led through the different lessons that make up the quest story.

One day, as he was pursuing his usual objectives, all those separate lessons suddenly came together. A new understanding emerged that was greater than the sum of its parts. Nasrudin found himself with a changed mind, and that changed mind knows that Nasrudin must shift his own personal path. Where that will lead he has yet to discover. Sharing this quest story has been the first step.

Acknowledgements

The cover design is by Theis Eljas.

Rosa Zubizarreta contributed extensively to the material on Dynamic Facilitation.

Diana Morley improved the text considerably as copy-editor.

Janet McFarland inspired the book by asking just the right questions, at just the right time.

Daniel Quinn helped the author to see humanity in a new light.

Jim Fadiman taught the author to persevere in the quest.