Consent

In order to win you have to also feel safe in losing for losing is sometimes a better teacher than winning. When the kids were young and we played board games or card games losing was a hard lesson to teach them but just as important as wanting to win. No one wants to lose.

Being a "good sport" does not mean accepting the loss as a harbinger for future losses. Losing means that that one particular contest that didn't go your way is not a reflection upon your character. Mitt Romney was very gracious last night. He congratulated President Obama and emphasized his desire to see us all work together. President Obama also reached out to him.  i sincerely hope that Mitt and those in the House take the President up on his offer of cooperation.

In 2008 when Obama won i wrote a letter to him reminding him that half of the country would be unhappy. That their loss would grate on them and that we the winners should never forget that they also had to have a voice. That he had to listen to them for their concerns are our concerns.

i've written about this before but today is a good time to dredge it back up again. Anthropologists in Africa realized that one vote for one person had torn apart villages that had previously worked together. When the colonists arrived they instituted the vote by giving each villager a stone and asking them to place them in the bowls that represented the new tribal leaders. At the end of the voting process when the winner was declared those that had lost were left wanting. They were resentful, uncooperative and very angry.

The reason for their anger was that prior to the colonists changing their system leaders were elected by consent not voting. What this meant was that those wanting to lead had to get all the villagers to agree to have them lead. This took time but at the end the man chosen knew the entire village was behind him. The reason this worked out so well was that everyone in the village was considered equal and interdependent. They were able to reason together on an equal footing going over the pluses and minus of those wanting to lead until they reached a decision. They were part and parcel of the results and therefore supportive.

Our extremely emotional and highly partisan election process pits winners and losers against each other. It creates division. It doesn't build trust or understanding and leaves half the nation angry. The needs of those that lost is dismissed by the winners.

When i wrote the President in 2008 i tried to express my disdain for one man one vote. It doesn't reduce the friction between the parties it just intensifies it. The minority party losses its voice and is then chained to an adversarial position. It is sick.

As we all get more partisan and the country experiences gridlock what can we all do to change this?

How can we make a difference when so many are disenfranchised because this happens no matter which party wins? In the past all those going to Congress were winners, they had won their elections and were going to work for the nation regardless of which party it was. They could and did work together but that is no longer the case.

President Obama has a rough road ahead and i wish him well. Uniting the United States may be impossible under the circumstances of our electoral process and majority rule.

But there are alternatives...Consensus democracy, Deliberative democracy or Sociocracy are systems maybe we should consider as we move forward into the 21^st Century. Whether these would work in such a large country is questionable but consent is always better than what we are left with now.

I call her the White Pigeon of Peace she has moved in for awhile!

See ya next week.