What's Wrong With Consensus
Con-sen-sus
— 1 : group solidarity in sentiment and
belief 2 a : general agreement:
UNANIMITY b : collective opinion
(Webster's Seventh Collegiate Dictionary)
More and more people
are hearing the term "consensus" used. The foundation and purpose of
"consensus" follows.
Consensus is the
very essence of the Hegelian Principle.
The Hegelian Principle was formulated by Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), German philosopher. Hegel was greatly influenced by Immanuel
Kant, known as the "father of the romanticist movement." Kant's attack on reason, this world, and
man's happiness paved the way for future philosophers to reject the tenets of
reason and logic for subjectivism and relativism. Hegel was no exception. Born in Stuttgart, Germany, Hegel was a
philosophical idealist. He
maintained that the mind was the source of all reality; the individual mind to
be an estranged part of one universal Mind, that through the process of
rational dialectic that Mind would be restored to oneness. [1]
This "rational dialectic" is the
basis of the Hegelian Principle or Dialectic wherein "an entity passes
over into and is preserved and fulfilled by its opposite" [2] through a three
part process:
a.
thesis: "embodying a particular view or
position;"
b.
antithesis: "providing an opposing or
contrary position;" and
c.
synthesis: "which
reconciles the two previous positions and then becomes the basis of a new
thesis." [3]
In theory, this principle provides,
then, a pathway to continual evolution to Oneness of Mind, to "ultimate
wholeness achieved through freedom, reason and knowledge." [4]
After his death, in
1831, Hegel's followers split into two camps, the Old Hegelians and the Young
Hegelians. The Young Hegelians
rejected Hegel's basic premise of the mind as the source of all reality,
arguing that it is the
physical and material life of human beings that determines consciousness and
thought. [5]
This is the philosophy later adopted by
Karl Marx (1818-1883) and from which he developed his theory of alienation. Marx was born in Trier,
then the part of Prussia known as the German Rhineland, now located on the west
side of Germany. He attended the
University of Bonn and University of Berlin, majoring in philosophy. On graduation, he entered the field of
journalism, his thesis paper not having netted him the university position he
wanted. But having his journalistic
works rejected by the Prussian government, he moved to France where he struck a
life-long relationship with Friedrich Engels and
began writing for the German French annals. Displeased with the revolutionary
ideology of the paper, Prussia issued warrants for the arrest of the
editors. The job did not last and
Marx could not return to his homeland.
In 1847, he attended the first Congress of the Communist League in
England where he and Engels were commissioned to
write a simple declaration of the League's doctrine, resulting in the Communist
Manifesto, published in 1848.
In 1849, in disrepute in his homeland, France and Belgium, Marx settled
in London, England, where he lived the rest of his life.
True to the Young
Hegelians, Marx centered his philosophy in the belief that the physical and
material life determines consciousness and thought while holding to Hegel's
belief in Oneness of Mind. Marx
believed this would be achieved in the classless society in which the workers,
as a collective held in the government, own all means of production and
ownership of the land (communism).
He believed religion was a form of self-alienation in which man attributed
all goodness and wisdom capable to a remote God instead of recognizing goodness
and wisdom as essentially human capacities — coming from within. Marx's entire theory regarding social,
political and economic systems centered on eradicating "self-alienation." He believed this eradication would progress
naturally, not consciously, via the Hegelian Dialectic. This progression is known as dialectical
materialism. [6]
The process of dialectical materialism
is not, however, a natural process.
To achieve dialectical materialism, the process cannot be left to
chance. Thus the need for
facilitators — professional change agents, trained in group dynamics and
on the intricacies of how to move a group to a preset conclusion. And true to definition, each member of
the "consensus circle" is expected to abide, support, and accept
ownership of the "synthesis of opposing views." This obviously means that people must
change their existing belief systems in order to come to consensus — to
Oneness of Mind.
Consensus is the
very essence of the Hegelian Principle.
In a group setting, opposing views are formulated and synthesized into a
collective view which then becomes the new thesis. In theory, through natural progression,
Oneness of Mind evolves. This walks
hand in glove with dialectical materialism.
The Hegelian Principle is also the
basis of the organizing technique used by the Industrial Areas Foundation [7]. It is the process
1)
used by trained change agents
(facilitators) to facilitate planned change, to move groups to a preset
conclusion (the Delphi Technique);
2)
of outcome-based education/mastery learning...
a)
facilitated learning (teacher as
facilitator),
b)
conflict resolution/peer mediation,
c)
critical thinking programs,
d)
leadership building programs;
3)
of Total Quality Management (TQM),
4)
of the High Performance Work
Organization (HPWO),
5)
of Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), and
6)
of School-to-Work (STW).
There is also a host of other names
under which this process is known.
1. a diverse group
2. dialoging to consensus
3. over social issues (crises)
4. in a facilitated meeting
(controlled environment)
5. to a predetermined outcome
you have what is known as a soviet — the term used for the same process in the former Soviet
Union. [8] Anytime, in any setting, (and this
process of consensus building is being used everywhere and in every
setting), that this process is used, you have a soviet, moving people
from making decisions based on fact in which they are an active participant in
the decision-making process, to relationship building in which they become mere
puppets of a predetermined outcome.
Many meetings are being run by consensus. When one understands the purpose of
consensus, that it is intended to produce the Oneness of Mind necessary to
dialectical materialism, one understands why it stands counter to the best
interests of our country. In the
interests of preserving our freedom and sovereignty as a nation, we must return
to open public forum meetings run via Robert's Rules of Order.
Click here to learn how to
disrupt the Delphi Technique.
____________________
[1] Fifty Major
Philosophers; A
Reference Guide; Collinson, Diane; New York: Routledge; 1987; p 97. [Back]
[2] Webster's Seventh New Collegiate
Dictionary; 1970. [Back]
[3] Fifty Major
Philosophers; A
Reference Guide; Collinson, Diane; New York: Routledge; 1987; p 97. [Back]
[5] Fifty Major
Philosophers; A
Reference Guide; Collinson,
Diane; New York: Routledge; 1987; p 99. [Back]
[6] "Dialectical
materialism: a social and economic
theory, elaborated by Karl Marx and others, and held by Communists, which
maintains that social and economic evolution must inevitably proceed through
stages of conflict between economic classes, the dictatorship of the
proletariat, and the gradual atrophy of the state to the eventual emergence of
a classless society." (The Worldbook Encyclopedia Dictionary; Chicago: Double Day and
Co, Inc; 1965) [Back]
[7] Also the Washington
Rural Organizing Project (affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation) of
which Joe Chrastil is lead organizer and facilitator
for the Parent Organizing Project, also known as the Parent Involvement Project
and the Parent Involvement Committee in District 81 in Spokane, Nine Mile
Falls, and Mead School Districts. [Back]
[8] Dean Gotcher: Institution
For Authority Research [Back]
©
March 1996; Lynn M Stuter
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