“Community Mental Illness”

This is a phrase coined by Kevin Wolf of N Street Cohousing in Davis, California, who told me about their impressive form of consensus, described in my 1/5/09 entry, "Is Pure Consensus Right for your Group?"

Kevin believes that when someone in a community consistently blocks proposals that others support, they have a community-style mental illness. The person would certainly not be considered "mentally ill" in mainstream culture, they would function normally at work and among families and friends. But in a community context, Kevin says, if the person consistently cannot let go of what they personally want in favor of the greater good of the community — as defined by how the other members see the community’s mission and purpose (including its values, goals, and principles) — they are "mentally ill" in a community context.

“You can’t let ‘community-mentally ill’ people bring down the morale and functioning of the group,” he says.

But how does a group induce such a person to become “community sane?” I don’t think they can. People who are so un-self-aware and un-interested in the well-being of other people that they block consistently are not likely to change.

What a group can do, however, to ensure that the most number of people get the most of what they most want most of the time, is to adopt a form of decision-making that honors both those who support a proposal and those with dissenting views. This is what excites me most about N Street’s method.