Last week we started a six-part, online/video workshop with the organization, Sociocracy for All, designed to instill in us the delicate art of democratic self-governance. Sociocracy, a.k.a. Dynamic Governance,* is a set of protocols or procedures designed to improve on other forms of democratic decision-making, including consensus. It sounds complicated. And it is, sort of. It begins, innocently enough, with rounds. Theoretically, in a round, every member of the group has hi

Alice chased a rabbit. (And who wouldn’t chase a rabbit that muttered audibly to itself while pulling a watch from its waistcoat pocket?) Lately, it has seemed to me that we, too, are chasing rabbits. They’re less exotic than the one that caught Alice’s attention but each in its way is no less distracting. They represent worlds—legal, financial and others related to the business of putting up buildings—with which we’re mostly unfamiliar. They’re leading us, if not through the