Outside Consensus

What're we doing here?

A typical definition of consensus is ‘a general agreement among a group of people’. Consensus is often considered a noble goal for any democratic group to aim for, implying that all voices have been heard, and some compromise has been reached that will allow the group to continue forward together.

There are, however, many problems with this idea of consensus. First of all, even in relatively small groups of people, it often in no way actually represents the wishes of the majority. Consider a group of friends, say 5 or 6 people, who are 4 pints deep at the pub. They’re debating whether to have another drink there, go somewhere else for another drink or whether it’s time to go for dinner. What this really means is that the hungry one of the group is going to bully, cajole and coerce the rest of them into an early dinner. The majority of the group, especially the latent alcoholics, would have been quite happy to sit there until closing time with the occasional packet of scampi fries or peanuts, but have folded to the wishes of the noisy and passionate minority.

As they get up to wobble to the nearest kebab shop it could be said that the group has reached consensus. But that disguises the damage that’s been done to longer term group relations. Maybe Skinny Dave doesn’t get invited to the next pub night to avoid the early and slumber inducing kebab? Maybe Skinny Dave doesn’t want to come to the next one because he’s tired of having to bully people into following his wishes?

Scale this crude dynamic up to a modern, diverse, western nation state of a few tens of millions and watch the issues surrounding consensus multiply. Now you’re not trying to build a general agreement between just the fatties and the alcoholics, but a hundred other categories of people all with some level of conflict in their interests and needs. So, consensus is now not only much harder to reach in the first place, but the vast majority of people are less than silent, less than tacit in their agreement because to consult them or take into account their opinions would be completely impractical. This means in the modern world there is apparent broad consensus on a wide range of issues, but the vast majority of people have had absolutely no say or impact on this consensus view, the view that informs the decision makers in our society who have enormous control over our lives.

But we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t because even if general agreement is reached in a group in a more democratic and representative way, groups of people can end up making decisions that no sane individual would. The madness of crowds, an aggregate of our individual stupidity that encourages us as a group into making even more stupid decisions.

The next major problem with consensus is its ponderous nature, inbuilt inertia and the way it favours the status quo. To revisit our pub scenario, even with just a handle of people it can be very difficult to reach a consensus for change. Whilst the hungry fella is trying to persuade everyone that they should leave the pub and head for grub, they’re going to stay sat in that pub and probably keep drinking whilst the debate rages. And what if Skinny Dave wasn’t arguing that the group should go and eat because of his own greed, but because it would be better for everyone if they all ate something? Too bad, until he convinces everyone that going to eat is in their best interests, the group won’t be moving.

I think the western world and the UK in particular has a fatally self-defeating consensus, both politically and culturally. It’s dominated by a balance between the opinions of the powerful and loud minority interest groups, it’s utterly lethargic and unable to make necessary changes to emerging issues and, step by reasonable step, it’s ended up holding the most batshit insane positions on those issues that could be imagined.

So here at Outside Consensus I will be focused like a poorly calibrated laser on how silly the establishment ‘general agreement’ is on so many pollical and foreign affairs issues for my own, and occasionally, for the readers general entertainment. Mainly though, these shorts rants are so that after a few more years of steady decline, I can point at them and tell people I know, ‘I told you so’.