At 07:12 AM 3/2/2006, Jan Kok wrote: >Does it make sense for an FA to include people from opposite or widely >differing viewpoints on an issue of major concern to the FA? For >example, would it make sense to have an FA with pro-choice and >pro-life people in it, to discuss reproductive issues? What could >such an association accomplish?
A great deal, though much of this will depend on the exact organizational structure. With traditional structures, not very much at all, indeed, a great deal of time might be wasted. But Delegable Proxy creates an organizational hierarchy with default caucuses which form around individual proxies, who can and will carry on communication within their caucus, independently of the central organizational traffic. So we will answer the question within the FA/DP context, not the more general FA context. It is quite possible that there could be other organizational technologies that would be as efficient, effective, and safe as DP, and for some FAs, something simpler may be adequate. However, DP is itself quite simple and can remain dormant when not needed. DP does not really add any significant organizational overhead. The example in the question is a good one. What could a general purpose political FA accomplish by including both sides (more accurately, *all* sides) of a very controversial issue. Consider the implications of inclusion as distinct from exclusion. If an organization is exclusive, it must have an exclusion definition, formal or otherwise. A lot of energy can be wasted trying to define who are and who are not the true believers in the cause, and this keeps organizations weak. On the other hand, if the organization is inclusive, there is the potential for deliberation and negotiation leading to a consensus. With a highly polarized issue, complete consensus may be quite unlikely. However, people can agree to disagree on certain issues while discovering that they can cooperate on others. In present political structures, what are really separate issues tend to get linked to each other, making it next to impossible to find and actually implement potential consensus positions and decisions. I have a good friend who is politically progressive, in nearly everything. But she's an Orthodox Christian, which may be related to the fact that she is opposed to abortion. It is not my purpose here to explore all the reasoning involved, but this woman is faced with difficult compromises if she steps into the political arena. She thinks that abortion is murder, but she also thinks that the public face of "Right to Life" is thoroughly hypocritical in trying to save prenatal lifes but showing astonishing unconcern about, say, Iraqi lives or Afghani lives. *There are a lot of people like that.* Now, what consensus is possible between the non-fanatics within the two major camps, Right-to-Life and Right-to-Choose? For starters, contraception. Even further, it is not impossible for Right-to-Lifers, for example, to come to recognize a difference in degree, such that "murder" of a fetus, while perhaps a terrible sin, is not the same as, say, the murder of a young child. (This is, in fact, the general Islamic position, that abortion is a sin which increases in seriousness with gestational age, until at birth it becomes identical to normal murder. Contraception is not a sin at all.) It ought to be possible to act politically in furtherance of your beliefs about something like abortion without it being linked with other issues. FA/DP organizations could make this possible. Within a general political FA, there would form many ad-hoc caucuses, and some formal ones as well. But even within a caucus, say a Right-to-Choose caucus, there would be benefit in allowing the participation of those who opposed abortion. It is crucial to know the other side to be effective politically. You need to know how to give the other side enough of what they want that they will stand aside, at least, from preventing you to get what you want. The truth is that it will be *difficult* to get an RtL believer to participate in a pure RtC caucus. But there will exist many caucuses on many different issues, so there will be people coming together who generally agree with each other but who differ on this particular issue. And it will be these people who will be highly motivated and in a good position to find consensus. Can an FA have an organizational position, as, say, "We are opposed to abortion"? Not a pure FA, but an organization can be non-FA in one aspect and FA in every other aspect. It will be well advised, however, to associate itself through membership cross-linking with an overarching pure FA. Because of the freedom from ideology of a pure FA, there is no cost to this, and by doing it, they would not be aiding the opposite side in anything except, hopefully, success through finding a consensus. When a consensus has not been found, both sides will be relatively weak, since their energy and strength will be pulling in opposite directions; they will cancel each other out. FA-facilitated activity will only become strong when a consensus has been found. And this is exactly as it should be. Pure FAs attempt to remain in this dogma-free position. But this freedom from dogma is not something that is enforced by, for example, expelling dogmatic people! FAs don't expel anyone, though meetings may act to protect their freedom to meet. "Meetings" may exclude people by general agreement of the meeting, but this does not exclude the person from the FA, and whatever general rights members of the FA have, such as the right to name a proxy, would remain. So an excluded member might still, for example, have a vote at the meeting, exercised remotely or through a proxy. But what if a group of opponents of a meeting's consensus tried to bring down this meeting by packing it? The freedom of Free Associations includes the freedom *not* to associate. Meetings can set their own rules; it is just that a meeting following the FA traditions will not do so absent necessity. And there is nothing to stop the excluded person from associating with other members in other contexts. Quite simply, there is no way to pack the DP structure in a Free Association, just as there is no way to exclude someone unless *everyone* agrees to exclude him. He can simply meet with those who don't exclude him. ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
