What American Citizens Need to Know About Consensus and Facilitation

Your local newspaper publishes a notice that a meeting will be held one night next week to solicit input from the community regarding a proposed plan for community development. Being a civic minded individual, believing that community involvement is very important to the health of the community, you mark the date on your calendar and make a mental note to hold that night free of other commitments that you might attend this meeting to give your input. The next day you call the number noted in the announcement and ask to obtain a copy of the proposed plan for community development, that you might read it before the scheduled meeting date. You are told that the proposed plan is still at the printers but will be available at the door. On the prescribed night you arrive at the meeting, a little early as is your custom. You are greeted at the door by an individual who hands you an agenda and the proposed new plan for community development heretofore unavailable. You find the agenda rather odd; you were under the impression that this was a public meeting. What you envision is what has always been — a panel of individuals at the front of the room, with one or two microphones positioned in the aisles where individuals from the audience may voice their comments or opinions. As you enter the room, you are further amazed by the setup. There are no tables and chairs for the panel at the front of the room, there is but one microphone positioned beside a podium at the front of the room, lecture style. Further, the room is filled with tables — round tables, with six to eight chairs around each table. For an open public forum meeting, you find this rather odd and ask the greeter if this is really where you are supposed to be. Yes, you are assured, this is where the meeting is being held. Somewhat confused, you take a chair. Others file in, some you know, some you don't. You note that others, like you, find this new layout for a public forum meeting "different". Soon a speaker calls the meeting to order. After a short introductory speech the presenter asks for your cooperation in utilizing a new concept in decision making. Following a presentation regarding the new purposed plan, each table will participate in a discussion with the help of a facilitator. Each table will put on paper their thoughts and feelings about this new community plan — their likes and dislikes. A roundhouse discussion will ensue at each table from which will emerge a consensus of the group — a narrowing of the listed likes and dislikes to two or three that the group deems most important. These, you are told will be later synthesized. What is going on? You look around and note a look of bewilderment on several other faces. No explanation is offered; and you, feeling at quite a disadvantage but not wanting to look like a total ignoramus or fool, are hesitant to ask. You say nothing and go along. But the feeling of discomfort remains and continues to grow. What is going on?

A phrase heard a lot these days is paradigm shift. What is described above is part of that paradigm shift. Parents, community members, citizens, taxpayers have no idea what they are walking into when they suddenly, and without warning, find themselves participating in a whole new concept of a "public forum meeting". While the semantics may vary to some degree from meeting to meeting, the underlying framework of the process to which the people will be exposed does not.

Under the new paradigm, decision making is to be "decentralized" moving away from decisions being made solely by elected and/or public officials accountable to elected officials, moving to decision-making including the people. The "public forum" meeting and community participation process is the venue for that decentralized decision-making process.

The decentralized decision-making process is being sold to the people as a "move to empower the people," a way for people to have greater voice in their governance and in decisions made that will affect them. This is the rhetoric, this is not the reality. What people don't know, at the outset, is that the goal or outcome of the process is predetermined. This is made very clear in book after book on the facilitative process.

The decentralized decision-making process has three steps. The first step, unbeknownst to the people, is to assess the people as to "where they are now." This is accomplished by feeding people information relative to the issue at hand — be it education reform, land use planning, etc, then soliciting the feedback of the people relative to the information presented. The feedback solicited is put in writing, to be later analyzed, assessing the people, as a collective, as to "where they are now."

The second step is the process of moving the people from "where they are now" to "where we want them to be" — to acceptance of, ownership of, what is being advocated by the meeting planners relative to the issue at hand.

Step two has two phases. The first phase is to establish the framework for moving people "from where they are now" to "where we want them to be." To accomplish this, people must become "adaptable to change." People whose belief system is strongly grounded in absolutes, in Judeo-Christian principles, are not easily manipulated, are not easily "adaptable to change." That belief system must be changed in a greater number of people if the goal or goals are to be realized, if sufficient buy-in is to be realized to give the agenda the foreword momentum needed to achieve the goal. The facilitation process, utilizing up to nine basic steps, is intended to move people from a belief in absolutes — that right is right, wrong is wrong, to believing that right and wrong are situational, a matter of perception, from beliefs holding basis in Christian principle to beliefs holding basis in humanism (although this is never divulged). For those who refuse to become adaptable, concession "not to sabotage" or "openly oppose" augments the forward momentum of the agenda. In some school districts teachers are being required to sign a charter agreeing not to oppose education reform.

The second phase is to facilitate people into ownership of the preset outcome. The process of facilitation is intended to produce consensus which means "solidarity of belief". In other words, through a facilitated process, oneness of mind theoretically occurs. Consensus holds basis in the Hegelian Dialectic of thesis — a belief or supposition; antithesis — the opposite belief or supposition; and synthesis — the synthesizing (bringing together) of thesis and antithesis to form a new thesis. The process then begins again and through continual evolution, oneness of mind theoretically occurs. Consensus, however, left to its own devices, cannot be controlled. As such, a manipulative form of consensus, utilizing facilitators highly trained in group dynamics, is used to ensure the outcome. While the facilitators are billed as neutral to the facilitated process of consensus, they are anything but neutral; they are key to the group reaching the preset outcome. And, if facilitated properly, the people emerge believing the decision made — the outcome — was their idea; unaware that they were facilitated in a certain direction. This, then, sets the stage for the third step. (Click here to learn more about what is commonly referred to as the Delphi Technique, and Click here to learn how to disrupt it.)

The third step is accountability. First, the outcome of the facilitation process is decided; second, the people are facilitated into acceptance of, and ownership of, the preset outcome; third, authorship of the preset outcome is given to the people. The people, then, as a collective, become accountable for the decision made. This is why, when people have objected to being governed by consensus decisions, they have heard, "but we had the input of the people." What this does, very effectively, is two-fold — it gives the bureaucracy license to do whatever it wants under the guise of "doing what the people authorized us, via their decision, to do;" and second, it makes the people, not the bureaucracy, accountable for decisions made. The people become at once the scapegoat and the victim.

Most people have no idea, when they become involved in consensus circles, what their purpose is in the larger picture, that they are being assessed, that their belief system is being targeted, that they are being used.

What is established, via the consensus process, is covert authority — the same authority that under girds socialist/communist regimes that justify their existence and governance structure in the collective authority of the people. In the Soviet Union, a consensus circle is known as a soviet.

The religion of socialist/communist regimes is humanism. Humanism is a man-centered religion, believing that man is devoid of spirituality or self-determinism, that man must, therefore, be conditioned to his environment — whatever that environment is decided to be. B F Skinner gave this "conditioning" a name — operant conditioning — a practice used pervasively in classrooms across America, especially under outcome-based education. Humanism is a pagan, occult, satanic religion. This is why socialism and communism are oppressive governments; why they lead people into darkness, into hopelessness, into bondage. Humanism is what is undergirding the paradigm shift in America, not only in education but in all facets of the restructuring of the American society.

America was established on Judeo-Christian principles. This was not by accident, this was by design. Our Founding Fathers knew that there was only one religion under which any nation had ever prospered; under which man would ever know freedom. That religion was Christianity. The American government was established on the principles of Biblical law — a government of laws, not a democracy (a government of men, humanism) which by its very nature is arbitrary and capricious.

The contrast between Christianity and humanism is the difference between individuality and collectivism, freedom and bondage, prosperity and adversity, light and darkness.

What can people do? First people must educate themselves. When participating in public meetings, insist the meeting be conducted under Roberts Rules of Order — no consensus circles. It is the elected officials and those accountable to the elected officials who should be held accountable for decisions made. Pressure legislators to dispense with appointed commissions, councils, and agencies that are not accountable to the people and that are, via legislation, not accountable to the Legislature. Pressure legislators to return to the limited form of government established by our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Such a government limits itself to addressing those structures over which it is given specific authority. Push for judicial reform that removes from the judiciary the right to legislate via interpretations of law that hold no basis in the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson stated, in 1823,

On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it conform to the probable one in which it was passed.

To be able to do that, however, one must have a strong foundation in Western culture and history — something very few Americans have today.

If we are to save our nation, we must become involved in the governance of our nation — whether local, state, or national. We can no longer sit back and abrogate our duties as American citizens. We must become informed and involved. The price of freedom is vigilance. Vigilance has been want for too long.

© January 1997; Lynn M Stuter

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