Meetings are an important part of Quaker culture and their method of decision-making (finding the sense of the meeting) has inspired many worldly groups (especially activists) to adopt similar methods (@m.brigham and @donncha.kavanagh have written about that and so has @Darcy_K_Leach).
This quick video shows the spiritual roots (or the spiritual core) of the Quaker method (I’m not sure Quakers would call it a method, though)
A sense of co-presence without the sustained common focus of attention.
I’m reminded of this article:
Here elders lie on the ground and talk simultaneously until they converge on a decision. A good article on consensus and a major exception to the one-speaker rule!
Thanks so much for posting this reference. I had seen this article years ago and didn’t realize its significance with regard to the one-speaker rule and later on, when I did, I couldn’t find it anymore.
I really hope that we will be able to attract people from this kind of non-western background to the forum in order to broaden our conception of meeting practices across cultures!
@wilbert, don’t you want to contribute something about the Dogon and their palaver huts?
A post was split to a new topic: How the Dogon people in West Africa promote self-constraint in meetings