Neither Passion Nor Power
Arguably the most critical element in deliberation is that the people involved
be motivated to deliberate. There are certain characteristics that define deliberation
as outlined in Gastil’s criteria, but an underlying question is what motivates people
to partake in deliberation? What sparks us to try to follow the criteria outlined by
Gastil? Reflecting on our recent deliberation attempt, I have concluded that in order
to feel motivated to deliberate people must have personal stakes in the issue at
hand. Following this logic, our recent sustainability forum would be categorized as
more of an intellectual discussion rather than an intense decision-making
deliberation. As students knowing this sustainability forum was an assignment, we
had little passion and felt no pressure that other people were critically depending
on our problem solving. We were students assigned an issue by a professor and
tended to embody simply that; in true deliberation, this is not the case and people
are coming together because they are passionate about the topic, or on the other
side they are deliberating under the pressure that it is their job is to come up with
the solution. Our consciousness that this forum was an assignment hindered any
concrete decision-making. We treated this as a deliberation simulation, lifting the
immediate pressure to problem solve and ironically leading to a lack of deliberation.
Our lack of emotional investment, or passion for the issue was demonstrated
on Day 1 when we went around the circle and described our “personal stake” in
sustainability. Most people responded along the lines of, “It is not usually something
I think about. I recycle sometimes”. The indifferent passive attitudes illustrated the
fact that we actually had very little internal motivation to solve this issue. I myself
admitted on the first day that sustainability was not often on the forefront of my
mind and I clutched my paper coffee cup as an example. We had no green
enthusiasts in the room to balance our passivity and foster enthusiasm, further
enabling us to accept and stick with our initial perspectives.
The overall complacency caused a limited information base. Weeks ahead of
time we were given the National Issues Forum pamphlet and told that we should
thoroughly read it, but we were welcome to bring in outside sources and opinions.
However, many of us did not go out of our way to gain a breadth of knowledge on
the issue. If we all had been passionate of the issue, I am sure we would have. In the
instances when people did take the initiative to expand their knowledge, others
became concerned that it was outside the guidelines of the assignment. For example
for stance two, I came in with information on the global LEAD initiative, leadership
for environment and development, suggesting we should consider the innovative
ways this program is promoting sustainability. However, I felt that I was
immediately questioned on whether bringing in that information was fitting to the
assignment because this was an opinion outside the pamphlet. This moment
provides evidence of our lack of deliberation due to our consciousness of our
assignment. In real deliberation there is no a limit to knowledge and we would not
be seeking approval for what we could and could not know. We would be searching
for every possible solution every chance we could.
The lack of urgency to make a solution comes directly from the majority’s
attitude that our decision did not matter. What would have happened if we had
come up with a solution? Would we have implemented it? We felt like we had no
power to make a change. This I think is key in deliberation: we must not only feel
passionate about the issue, but we must feel like we have some sense of control and
power to fix the issue. Because we were trying to come up with national and global
solutions, it felt so out of our reach that we lost hope and initiative. Looking back, we
should have focused on the potential to come with a solution for our personal
actions then maybe we could have made a difference. Again though this was not the
original intention of the deliberation, so we stuck to the agenda attempting to find a
national solution. During our wrap up day, I was the “closing representative” and to
be honest, I entered optimistically hoping we could come together to make a
decision. However within minutes I realized I was failing to inspire problem solving.
We left the final discussion without a concrete answer. I initially felt dissatisfied and
frustrated. However, importantly, after a few hours, my dissatisfaction subsided.
This fact alone is further evidence that I had little emotional investment in
succeeding in finding a solution. The lack of pressure or care to come up with a
solution
Having said that, a lack of solutions does not mean the entire sustainability
forum was unsuccessful for it illustrated a respectful intellectual discussion. We may
have failed to fully deliberate but we definitely listened to each other’s ideas and
that counts for something. After our first day, I even reflected on how I was
impressed with how cordial everyone was and how well we got along. There was no
fighting and little tension. We were able to bounce ideas off of each other. I
definitely learned a lot about sustainability and it was overall refreshing to have us
all thinking, discussing, and collaborating. We had a lot of potential and there was
no huge failures on our attempts to deliberate. There was just a lack of the
necessary passion and power to transition an intellectual discussion into an intense
deliberation.
If we were to compare this deliberation simulation, to real life democracy we
would be nowhere close to how it functions. For example those in congress have a
lot of passion and power when deliberating. They are elected to solve national
issues and feel the immediate responsibility and pressure to act accordingly.
Furthermore it is likely they chose this line of work because they are passionate
about the issues at hand. If they have an idea, they have the power to possibly make
it a form of law. Also they are required to read, learn, and know about their issues
before even considering discussing them. In contrast our deliberation involved a lot
of learning in the process of attempting to deliberate and we had little faith that we
would make an impact. For effective and successful future deliberation to take place
in the classroom, I believe it would need to stem from a place of passion within the
students, or intense pressure and responsibility from the outside world