M ILDRED GORDON AND KAT KINKADE have each given a good deal of thought to systems of community government and, though agreeing on many issues, differ sharply on the question of strong central decision-making. Kat, co-founder of Twin Oaks, East Wind, and Acorn communities, with 23 years of cooperative government in her background and a strong commitment to egalitarian systems, admits to a wistful longing for some aspects of central decision-making. Mildred originated Feedback Learning and founded Ganas community. Herself a strong leader, Mildred finds much fault with egalitarianism, but holds that strong central leadership is ineffective in a cooperative community and potentially quite damaging.
Although their debate or, perhaps, "Socratic dialogue," took place in various forms, oral and written, over an eight-week period at Ganas, it is presented as one conversation.
In Part I, published in the Fall '95 issue, Kat proposed that "one capable, trusted, sensitive person takes the issue on, researches any technical information needed, publicizes all the relevant information for the whole community, talks to anyone who has input or opinion, makes intelligent guesses at the probable long and short run consequences of various decisions that could be made, and then decides. Of course the group would retain the power to overrule." She jokingly referred to this person as a "benevolent dictator."
Kat: Let's make sure we don't fall into the error of basing this discussion on the conventional picture of a dictatorial "leader" who overpowers, manipulates, or perhaps just goes mad. That's too feeble a straw man, easily blown away, and it's not my scenario. My central leader is a good guy.
Mildred: So is mine. But "good guys" can't replace good group interaction as a basic ingredient of good government. The fact is, we don't know how to interact well, and we'll just have to try to learn. There are lots of good reasons for the failures so far.
For example, since we haven't yet learned to dialogue, "good leaders" are usually deprived of intelligent, well-intentioned dissent. In the absence of thoughtful opposition, it is very easy to fall in love with illusions of personal infallibility, invincibility, or even immortality. One's own perception of reality can seem to be all there is. Lack of mental exercise creates a flabbiness that allows such absurdities to seem believable. Flabbiness easily leads to corruption, or just to well-meaning megalomania.
Unchecked authority breeds passive-aggression in devoted followers with alarming consistency. How many adoring, obedient, willing puppets does it take to weaken a leader? How many turn-arounds and backstabbing betrayals (when the leader stumbles a little) before even the best leaders learn to watch their backs, expect the worst, and know that such things go with the territory? How long before reality-based paranoia sets in? These things are just what happens without the safeguard of strong people and good group dialogue. There are simply too many people willing (even eager) to submit without reason; or oppose without understanding what they're against. For me it is just too hard to live with awareness of people surrendering their own adulthood to another--any other--without trying to do something abut it. I believe that it is simply not possible to surrender autonomy without creating too much dependence, too much destructive, competitive drive for the leader's approval, together with corresponding terror of disapproval or criticism. Perhaps these perverse things happen because relationships with leaders tend to hark back to the love/hate feelings for parents with whom we all have so much unfinished business. In any event, all this craziness easily frustrates the best-intentioned attempts to exchange the current information on which good problem solving rests.
Kat: So in this desirable interactive environment that you are promoting and hoping to make workable, is leadership either necessary or useful? What good are leaders, anyway?
Mildred: The constructive role of leadership, as I see it, is a purely coordinating function. The word "leader" is itself somewhat of a misnomer. People who lead other people where they are not eager to go (even for their own good) are bad leaders. Good leaders are followers who find out what people want, need, can and will do, and then help them use what they've got to get where they decide to go.
In fact I think leadership that doesn't follow those ostensibly being led is not possible for long without some kind of coercion. How many mistakes before followers doubt and won't follow without being forced or lost? Once this happens, what does a "good" leader call on? Divine authority? Guns? Threats of disapproval or rejection? Who gets to reject whom? Who gets kicked out--the good "leader" or the "rebellious" followers that won't follow?
For now, I assume that good governing needs clarity about who makes what decisions and how. Group process should be well facilitated; all activity should be well coordinated; and most decisions are best made by those responsible for their outcome. I believe all this can happen if we learn to interact with information, including feedback, in all its forms.
Kat: When you use the word "interactive," do you mean that everybody should talk to everybody else about all issues? If so, how would anybody find the time?
Mildred: I mean not only that everybody talks, but also that everyone actually hears everybody--no matter how long it takes.
How to find the time is less an issue than how to get past irrelevant competitions, debilitating power plays, and just plain not listening, so good group process can begin. Those are the things that take up the time. Once the group has identified the issues of concern, and the people are motivated to get the background information, productive discussion doesn't usually take long.
Kat: Those are pretty stringent conditions, and getting a group to such a state of readiness itself would take a good bit of time.
Group thinking makes me nervous, because I don't have a lot of confidence in any group's willingness to consider the long term. Immediate agenda interferes. The central leader, on the other hand, embodies a vision that transcends the present, giving weight to the needs of future members, as well as those currently present. I don't have confidence that this long view would come out of the information exchange that you recommend.
Mildred: Of course I share your concern. Long-term goals are not usually held in good focus for very long. Short-term greed and a desire to cater to anxious insecurity certainly do prevail a lot of the time, and most really important issues don't get much energy. The way things are now, self-centered nonsense easily dominates the decision-making process. What's worse, even people with very good intentions are likely to be misinformed or under-informed and just not trained to solve problems either alone or interactively. I know very well that my proposals won't work until we care for each other and for our vision much more than we now do. I also know that learning to do better will take "a good bit of time" and work. The thing is, I don't think there is much else to be done but give it whatever it takes.
It all makes sense to me when I ask myself: What is community? Is it people? A place? A vision? What is the group's best interest (or long-term good), and how are the criteria for "good" to be determined? Is it longevity, prosperity, principles to be lived, dreams to be actualized? Are there any individual needs that are not the business of the group? Are these things pre-determined, unchanging? Or are they fluid, to be made up as we go along? Does each influx of new leader-type members impose new visions, better ideas of the "long term good" as they see it? I see community as people who determine their objectives and choose their options together, and change them whenever they decide to.
Kat: I suspect your questions are rhetorical, but let me give my answers anyway. I see community as most of the above. It is not only people. It is also a place and a vision (probably several visions). While I am deeply impressed by the deep and permanent commitment you Ganas people have to one another, I don't think that's the only way to define community. In my experience, community members become warmly attached to the land they live on, the structures they helped build, the ideals they struggle for there, and even the systems they invent to help them. I don't think there's anything wrong with this broader idea of what community is. It says that the community may sometimes be more than the particular current group, and therefore the question about determining the good of future members still stands.
Mildred: Clearly, we both doubt most people's ability to know their own long-term good, let alone the group's. Still, I think that if we refuse each other or ourselves the right to be wrong, we might be denying ourselves the chance to become thinking adult individuals who can do better. I believe that good learning process, as well as good problem solving,depends on opportunity to experience trial and error in dialogue, with error okay enough to consider each others' point of view seriously. We need to make our own mistakes, both individually and collectively, with commitment to changing minds and cleaning up messes. It seems to me the only efficient way to go, however long it turns out to take.
I believe that we (the Ganas extended core group) have commitment to each other, and to our future together--and I think that we are indeed putting in the time it takes to try to make it work. What we are not committed to yet is the well-being of others who might join our project at some future time. Right now our work is purely experimental, and our findings are not anywhere near conclusive enough to project very far ahead. What we've accomplished so far is that we dialogue about issues before decisions are finalized. We don't do it very well, and our process takes too long, but we're trying. If our experiment works, and we know how we did it, perhaps then our process will become a model for export. If not, we'll decide what to do next together.
An important difference between the two of us is that you are willing to try to build what can be built, with the people available to do it, and I think it is impossible to create anything that is much better than what already exists all over our world without committing to substantial change, both in ourselves as individuals and in the way we interact. Building better worlds will just have to wait until we learn how to do it. I have a strong hunch that awareness, love, intelligent interaction, and really good government are contingent on each other.
You seem to believe that good leaders and good social norms are enough, and obviously I don't agree. Therefore, I participated in creating a living research laboratory, while you helped create ongoing institutions. I think I'm a good coordinator and a fine problem solver, and I believe we have good social norms at Ganas. Yet it is very evident here that all these things are just not enough to produce consistently good governing.
Kat: No, I don't think that "good leaders and good social norms are enough," though I have found satisfaction in seeing the increase of both those things in the communities I've lived in. I don't think anything is ever really good enough, and for me the greatest source of excitement in community is to work on its problems and processes in order to improve them, a little at a time. I certainly do think that community living is generally better than "whatever already exists all over the world." But I suppose there is no great harm done if each of us feels enthusiasm and hope about the work we have personally done. Where we agree is that there is plenty of room for improvement and that Ganas is conducting an extremely interesting experiment in human behavior change.
For several weeks I have been observing and also participating in the group gatherings that take place daily at Ganas. In my opinion this "information exchange" functions admirably in this environment. It is quite clear, however, that you are the leader, that the other members of the group (certainly including me) credit you with good judgment, are inspired by your goals and your message, are excited by their own growth under your challenging guidance, pretty much do what you advise, and frankly love you deeply, as you do them. I cannot doubt the sincerity of your passionate attachment to interactive governing, but it seems to me that your living example validates my point more than it does yours. Can you comment on that?
Mildred: Unfortunately, you're probably right, but not for long, I hope. The idea is not to replace me with another leader, no matter how good, but to replace my role with good dialogue. Feedback learning is the process of becoming available to receive information of all kinds. Learning to express and accept feelings, as well as thoughts, accepting public disclosure of almost anything, and responding truthfully but not aggressively--these are all part of the feedback learning process. With these skills, coordination of the community's affairs should be easy; good problem solving could be a daily, fun experience; and centralized leadership should become an obsolete, unpleasant job. I know such visions border on grandiosity. Still, sometimes for short spans, we really do work together so well that it feels as though we're almost there.
In the meantime, my leadership role serves many purposes. Perhaps the most important of these is that it grants me authority to keep status battles in check so that the learning can continue. For now it is my job to collect and redistribute information and opinions that relate not only to policies and projects but also to preferences, prejudices, and fears. I try to get important issues onto our very loose agendas and keep irrelevancies and distractions to a minimum. Together with the others, I try to get people's non-verbal, as well as verbal contributions expressed and understood, and I help the group relate to whatever personal problems come up. I serve as facilitator, and also function as a full participant in most interactions. That means I propose projects, help develop plans, offer descriptions of whatever I think is going on, give individual feedback when I deem it appropriate, and decide when it is necessary to shift from the issues to considerations of how the issues are being discussed.
My managerial line jobs also give me considerable authority in many very major areas. Luckily, at this point, I've been able to find and help train good people for most of my jobs, and they're all doing well. I think my best talent is for spotting people's strengths and helping them to develop new skills and upgrade old ones. I'm happy to say that a lot of my actual function, at this point, is training, consulting, and coordinating.
Still, the fact is that,no matter how you look at it, we have a chief executive officer, and I am it. All of my activities are, or should be, in everyone's domain, but for the most part that just doesn't happen. I don't have nearly as much authority as some people imagine, but it is much more than any individual should have. The point is, I have what authority I do have mainly by default. I can't prevent anyone from deferring to my judgment when they haven't formed their own. People are just too easily persuaded, or worse, they aren't willing to consider any idea but their own, once they do have one. Fear of defeat, or the ill will that might result from pushing an unpopular point of view, are still deterrents to meaningful participation here, as it is everywhere.
There is too much interest in status, and too little interest in the issues or in the needs of those served. It is easier to hear and memorize slogans than to think about complex ideas. It is not hard to convert words that sound reasonable into politically correct dogma that can be easily used in place of thought. Feelings of "belonging" are too quickly acquired by calling up the latest version of an approved "party line" and hoping it covers the territory. It is just too tempting to over-simplify everything and imagine that truth is now in our collective pockets. Such self-deception is simply too appealing to resist.
The horror is that the words turned to dogma are often mine, sometimes misquoted and almost always out of context. The truth is that I have nothing much to offer, except an invitation to think about it (whatever it is), talk about it, and see what we come up with this time. I do always have an opinion, but I change my mind very easily, and the only thing I ever know for sure is that we can't be sure of anything, and probably never will be. That's got to be good enough, because it's the best that we have.
But even though I have become a strong "good guy" leader, I can't agree with your statement that people here pretty much "do what I advise." The fact that people seldom express their opposition in no way means that they don't act it out. In fact, it would be nice if more people did follow some of my advice once in a while. For example, I consistently urge people to lower their bad feelings about negative feedback and give more importance to hearing and understanding than to being heard and understood. This advice is pretty consistently ignored. But it's probably better that way, because such things should not happen until the motivation for them no longer comes from the desire for approval, or the fear of disapproval--mine or anyone else's.
So what do I conclude? I think that my personal development and my skills are the result of interactive dialogue and feedback learning. However, neither my example nor Ganas' group process has yet demonstrated conclusively that our successes (such as they are) are not the result of my leadership, or that what we've accomplished necessarily has much to do with either feedback learning or interactive governing, no matter what my subjective reasons for believing that it does.
Kat: So with that extraordinarily honest statement I think we'd better end this dialogue. Shall we go down to dinner?
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