Rules, Consensus & Cornerstones

[Fabio Cecin]

Rules are personal statements in a person's mind, a social declaration
by that person that they operate and abide by given logical
statements.

"The rules of a place", or simply "The Rules" are an overlap of a
certain kind of personal statements we call "rules" (expectations and
promises, or something like that). To an extent, the "substance" of a
group, at least the "conscious" part of that, is the overlap of
personal statements of all members of the group. Otherwise, a group is
just a bunch of people who give a name to their (initially empty)
togetherness.

What we call "The Rules" ARE that. The rules are not external. All the
rules that person X bitches about are IN person X. Person X let them
in, and manipulators want Person X playing the victim, because then
that person is powerless and can be used as a predictable, responsive
resource (a "robot"). "What can I do? It's THE RULES after all! Poor
me!"

A "cornerstone" Rule X happen when everyone holds Rule X, and when a
member doesn't, that member is not (e.g., no longer) in the group. The
cornersone has to be removed simultaneously from all members to avoid
membership churn.

You can declare your disbelief for a "rule" or any other "group"
(overlapping) statement before you declare you no longer operate by
it. Humans can do this, for a while. It is fine and we should stop the
absolutism that self-coercion and compliance don't exist. There are
myriad reasons why a person would *choose* to force themselves into a
role, and pretending this doesn't happen only makes things worse.
Everybody does "zombie" mode for a while, and people should not be
shunned for that. It is not a character flaw. If you are not happy
with the "performance" of someone, admit the problem is in your end --
you just don't want the gift.

Consensus IS lock-step to the speed of the most fearful person. That
is exactly when it is supposed to be used -- when everybody is afraid
of the same thing, and they want to use everyone as a detector for the
feared condition, in a way that a single "alarm" sounding is enough to
stop things from moving. It is probably the most conservative form of
collective thinking. For instance, a consensus is used when people are
afraid *something* (whatever) is being missed or avoided by everyone,
and everyone's hoping *someone* can put some sort of finger on it,
produce some sort of language to touch it.

Consensus is one way to modify and debate cornerstones. Consensus is
not for buying paper clips, unless people really fear overspending on
paper clips.

Consensus is not oppressive. In true consensus, anyone can get up and
leave and the whole thing is over, by definition. The only
"bureaucracy" that happens in a consensus circle is the bureaucracy
that everyone lets in themselves. By definition.

Any consensus can be relieved of deadlock by a smaller group ejecting
one or more people from the group by a smaller "consensus" circle.

If you start a company by yourself and lay down all the cornerstones,
you did consensus of one person.

The true cornerstone of an organization, to me, is a language. A
story. A meta-cornerstone. That's what generates and regenerates the
understanding of what the "organization" itself is.

My favorite type of story is one where the entire responsibility is
placed on the individual, not on an external "organization" object.
Where people own their actions completely and become fully responsible
for them. A story where self-blindness is the true enemy.

Organizations have piles of unexamined, nonsense rules because we are
ourselves piles of unexamined, nonsense rules. The "organization"
hurts when its rules are questioned because the organization doesn't
exist other than being an alias to a bunch of people who feel hurt and
threatened when "their" rules are questioned -- rules in their minds,
regardless of how they got there and how they stay there.

Fabio