Deliberative evangelism and recruitment
On the plane coming back from a project meeting in Sydney, I sat next to a woman who immediately engaged me in conversation. Tania noticed my textbook reading about research methods in political science and wondered what I did. She asked me a dozen knowledgeable questions allowing me to provide a broad explanation about what deliberative processes are all about. I spoke passionately about my endeavour.
Then Tania told me that she is a volunteer for (and I would venture to say, disciple of) the Art of Living movement. They are led by an Indian swami and believe that political and social change can occur through personal transformation. The Art of Living is an NGO that performs community development work. She made no secret that the organisation raises funds through courses about meditative practice. I was being tugged by a very loyal and skilled recruiter.
I learned from Tania that their meditative practice is intended to generate similar ideals to deliberative process: mutual respect, reciprocity, openness and commitment to the search for common ground. But they're approach is entirely prescriptive--it starts with a commitment to their personal way of thinking, literally. In providing aid to communities, they begin by delivering their course to them.
This led me to wonder about my own evangelistic zeal about deliberation. The ideals about civil conduct are little different, only the Art of Living prescribes personal transformation while deliberative practitioners seek social transformation through the uptake of productive conversation formats. Of course, they are related. But the approaches are differentiated by the locality and granularity of their intervention.
In pulling citizens into a conversation bubble that precludes competitive behaviour, are deliberationists just as prescriptive? How different is my repulse of the tug of psychological recruitment to the repulse of conservative pluralists to any group activity, which they may believe to be inherently coercive?
This returns me to my ongoing dilemma of finding a way to respect the autonomous individual perspective AND having them willingly include themselves in constructive, collaborative conversation.
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