I’m intrigued by the question of whether rounds “came from” native traditions into current sociocracy through the quakers.
On that note, it’s always been curious to me that rounds are the first thing people adopt from sociocracy but it’s not technically one of the main points of sociocracy. (The official main points in the Sociocratic Circle Method, SCM, are: consent decision-making, selections by consent, nested circles, double linking.) I’ve often wondered why that is/was. Are rounds not unique enough to make it into the list? I really wish we could get answers on that to close some of the gaps in even the later history.
On the main point of this thread, there are two thoughts for me.
- Worry that we try to put roots into sociocracy to make it seem less europe-centric than it might be. It might well be that the native influence can never be “proven” or that it simply didn’t exist. Would that be uncomfortable? Yes. But I also don’t want to go into wishful thinking. And cultural appropriation might then be just around the corner.
- The other question is what we do given where we are now. What are the gaps in sociocracy that we want to fill? What are blind spots to be addressed? Where can sociocracy learn from others? How can we improve what there is now to make it more “whole”? That’s why I’ve been circling around other frameworks that click into place. How can we distill the essence that we want to keep while expanding and staying flexible?