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Consensus and Conflict

<![CDATA[I’ve been participating in the ongoing discussion over at the Online Social Networks Conference for the past week as we discuss the book, Extreme Democracy, that Jon Lebkowsky and I have co-edited. The conference, which is all online, costs $35 to join (though I think the resulting content will be free after it is over), […]

<![CDATA[I’ve been participating in the ongoing discussion over at the Online Social Networks Conference for the past week as we discuss the book, Extreme Democracy, that Jon Lebkowsky and I have co-edited. The conference, which is all online, costs $35 to join (though I think the resulting content will be free after it is over), but a couple postings deal with some things that I have been thinking about in relation to the battles raging over here this week. So, in the spirit of extending the conversation outside the conference, I’m sharing comments I’ve made there in this posting and the next…

Finally, a word about consensus and conflict….

Anyone who has visited my sitein the past few days has seen a small part of the daily flow of words there dedicated to a vicious fight with a group of neocons who decided they would not tolerate my opinions without giving me a good whooping. I stood up to them and gave their bullying a fight back. But I think I got at least one of these people to think a little bit. I felt it was important to go head-to-head precisely because I treated this group as, first, a specific instance of neocon hatred rather than a general example of what’s wrong with conservatives, and then as a group of individuals, some of whom have yet proved they were worth talking to and some who clearly were.

I think conflict is a useful basis for the growth of community, because it is through conflict—even uncivil conflict—that the recognition that we need to tolerate one another regardless of our differences is born. Society doesn’t happen without conflict.

Community arising only out of common interests and/or the creation of safe spaces for those interests is untested and weak; when individuals come into close quarters and find that, despite some differences, they can live together or collaborate, that’s when community takes root.

I think consensus is a wonderful phenomenon, but I don’t think it is consistently healthy or that it should be the singular goal of the political process, since it assumes a growing agreement amongst people that can lead to a mentality that values conformity over individuality (rather than the healthy agreeing to disagree while pursuing common goals). That is, I believe, why the right succeeds, because it has used new technology to extend control from the center through a campaign of cultural conformity. Extreme Democracy assumes the control is at the edges and being ceded to the center, which is the thing the contributing writers are most passionate about—we can all be in control. This has brought the ideas into conflict with conservative commentators, who dismiss it as a naive ideology.

I’d very much like to avoid building an ideology during my lifetime. A philosophy of individual value, however, would be a fine thing to help bring into being. It just seems to me that if you’re going to value the individual the first step in organizing—even before you start a project—is some conflict and resolution about what you agree to pursue together and what you’re going to leave on the side. This process (not ideology) would prevent a project from growing into an overarching demand on participants to conform across a wide range of ideas, beliefs and priorities, unless that kind of broad conensus is the explicit goal of the project or becomes the goal through the process of negotiated integration I discussed above.

Let me add that the key feature I see in many social networking services is the ability to find people with something in common. The most recent example is Jambo, a pretty wicked cool technology that helps people who share physical places, like conferences or crowded airports, find someone with something in common with them. I suppose if the thing in common is general, such as “politics” and not “how much I hate George Bush,” that it can be helpful, but it seems that when we’re feeling unsure of ourselves we tend to find the first easy thing to talk about and the result is often the much more specific option than the general one that may connect us with potential debate and not simply a lot of agreeing with one another. I’d rather meet someone who is conversant but differs with me; however, I’d pay for a bozo filter to avoid people who simply want to abuse people they disagree with. In fact, a tool that isolated the bozos would probably be a powerful influence on people to be civil, which might lead to a lot more small wins for sociable differences of opinion.]]>