They have not, in so-called Canada, made the space and way to redistribute power for the models that would enable various sovereignties to be respected within a colonial nation. These democratic models have not created the conditions for a healthy planet and human survival. Inequities and harms perpetuated in the names of every willing or unwilling participant of the system. The modes in which residents can participate in our liberal democracies have not brought adequate results to bear on addressing the inequities and harms perpetuated since colonization. And while it’s early years yet in the liberal democracy experiment, there’s no shortage of evidence that today’s model of representation is an indefensible status quo. Democracy is a process we must engage in continually, including how we practice it. Not if we continue to consider how to harness and expand different kinds of power in this equation. This need for caution stems from a belief that adding technology to any existing power dynamic, without a lot of care and intention, will generally accelerate the expansion of said power dynamic. Whether upvoting and downvoting ideas, or live-polling in a room full of people - it continues to be something to approach with significant caution. Given the status quo power imbalances evident in public engagement, adding technology to any democratic process - say, for example, for consensus seeking - seems dangerous. Beyond this, we should make efforts to address these problems, in the short, medium, and long-term. Alternatively, if a public process, or the use of technology within a public process, ignores or accelerates these problems, we should be able to identify and name how. This includes those of us working on technology designed for use in public processes. I’ll be forever honing this skill.Ĭalling consensus a myth provokes other thoughts: what isn’t being said or shared in a room or in a group of people engaging in political discussion? Why isn’t it being said? How do we honor the outliers in a conversation? The silences? How do we come to terms with the fact that unresolved disagreements are fundamental to democracy and to living together? How do we address the commonplace experiences of violence that influence our ability to speak in dissent, or to challenge authority? Who has the capacity to participate in political conversations, in the formal ways our democracy offers us? What does inequity in democratic franchise mean for integrity of the system? How can we expect a majority of people to take democracy seriously, given all of its flaws in regards to franchise, agency, and power?įor those of us working on or in public engagement, facilitation, and community self-governance, the above questions are a few prompts to consider when we design engagement processes. When meeting participants take their time to help correct me in my telling of the story, it’s a gift. I imagine each one of them reading my draft report and looking for themself and what they shared. I think about this idea when writing reports to capture what happened in a room full of strangers convened to have a political conversation. It’s a phrase that stuck, challenging me constantly to accurately retell events that I’m part of, or witness to. This idea was shared with me years ago, handed down through others that have worked for decades in public engagement and facilitation. Human(s) in the Loop, Humans are the LoopĬonsensus is a myth. Consensus Does Not Equal Political Legitimacy
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