`Rotating Moderation / Dr. Chen Yehezkely / 2018

       I.            Introduction

This idea to write a presentation of the educational and group procedure dubbed herein as Rotating Moderation, proceeds from a suggestion to me on the part of Edna Nissim for which she has my thanks and praise, this missive filling a gap, as it does, that has persisted for more than four decades. The procedure, in simplified Parliamentary Rules of Order and variation upon the Dialectic of Socrates, is a method for group moderation, a workshop of sorts, an outreach no less than a portable instant democratic social institution, to be implemented in planning, problem solving, decision making, education, learning, study, and other group sessions. The procedure was developed by the painter and educator Chaim Rosenblatt, who is known amongst his friends and students as Chaimke, and to art enthusiasts as Meroz, by which name he signs his paintings.

The present article provides an account of said procedure. The chief features of the procedure are one, that it is wide open ended, two, that it is a minimum platform posing minimum requirements, and three that is maximally inclusive. By open ended is meant that there is no telling where it will take us, what will happen, and in what sequence. By minimum platform posing minimum requirements, is meant that it will be required of participants neither to put their trust in the teacher or leader, nor to recognize his authority as an expert, nor by authority of delegated powers, nor to adopt any idea or perspective, nor anything of the sort. And by inclusive is meant that there are no requirements of entry.

Many people have been impressed over the years by the power of Rotating Moderation to bring out the best in those who participate, and wondered: What is the secret of said power of Rotating Moderation? My personal view in this matter is that the answer lies in the open-ended character of Rotating Moderation, i.e. in the way that it affords people the benefits of doubt: Rotating Moderation is a minimal framework, coming, explicitly and transparently, with no guarantee of results. The opponents of the procedure regard this as a major, indeed deal-breaking disadvantage, because they demand guarantees enforced by every required effort. They are traditionalists and perfectionists. Outreach, planning, research, analysis, creativity, problem solving, decision making, and most especially: learning, study particularly as in formal education, are all too serious and crucial, say they, to allow for anything so haphazard and risky as experimentation. Whereas the adherents of Rotating Moderation, by contrast, boast of these very same characteristics as a major, indeed ground-breaking virtue. Outreach, planning, research, analysis, creativity, problem solving, decision making, and most especially: learning, study particularly as in formal education, are all too serious and crucial, say we, to pretend that experimentation is not what we are doing anyway. We need to avoid not experimentation as such, but irresponsibility and heedless irresponsible experimentation. Responsible experimentation begins by ceasing to demand, supply and consume false guarantees.

The current article comprises seven sections. The first section is this introduction. The second section reports upon the successful field trial implemented in Dora, Netanya, in Israel. The Rotating Moderation procedure itself is detailed in the third section, wherein I strive to remain as faithful as I can to the way in which Rosenblatt himself presents the procedure, with additions that seemed necessary to me, and which I hope do not deviate from the spirit of Rosenblatt’s presentation. The fourth section is dedicated to a brief discussion of the objections that Rotating Moderation provokes. And then the fifth section is an after word by Aaron Agassi, upon the prospect and practical challenges of adaptation and application of Rotating Moderation Online, particularly for asynchronous text communication on message posting forums and the like. Lastly, the sixth section relates the specific topic of this article to another distinct, different and involved problem, by touching upon the contribution of Rotating Moderation to the social engineering of more optimal social stimulus struggle.

     II.            SUCCESSFUL FIELD TRIALS

We only learn from mistakes. Alas, in all but the most progressive formal education, mistakes are judged adversely and penalized. Such aversive conditioning puts us all on the defensive, rendering agreement agreeable and disagreement disagreeable. In contrast thereto, and in accordance with the Popperian philosophy of faliblism or: non-justificationism, Rotating Moderation partakes in the practice of controversy with all due competitive fair play and honesty, wherein the adversarial process of controversy, criticism and dissent, is nevertheless celebrated as partnership in quest for truth, and even treasured as inherently friendly, highly desirable, along with vibrantly creative problem solving, modification and improvement of one another’s ideas. All being such great fun and tremendously productive, and all therefore to be taken in the spirit as intended, because, after all, there can be no progress in solution finding, course correction or helpful advice, without error detection and fault-finding problem statement to work from. Rotating Moderation, a format for deliberation and collaboration among equals, partakes in both Socratic Dialectic and the most rudimentary Parliamentary Procedure, both of which are run rough shod in typically authoritarian formal education.

But the only true education outreach for democracy remains the very practice of democracy. And representative democracy, necessary in vast modern nation states, takes that very experience out of our hands. And Rotating Moderation put real local democracy back in the hands of the beleaguered townsfolk of Dora, Netanya, in west-central Israel on the Mediterranean. And herein lies the tale:

Throughout the years the Rotating Moderation procedure has been implemented in a diversity of forums for a diversity of purposes, and in a diversity of settings. Each session was something to remember. But the one deployment, –for such it was – of which we were all the proudest, was the street summer camp we held in Dora, Netanya in June of 1978. There were about 60 of us, activist youth volunteers from kibbutzim all coordinated and orchestrated by Rosenblatt. It all started with a conversation between Rosenblatt and two of his friends, the Netanya chiefs of the juvenile division of the local police department, Uri Estline and Zvika Sela. They complained about crime rates in Dora, on account of which the police were forced to make arrests almost daily. And, inevitably, this created animosity which, in turn, only escalated the crime rates. But how to break this vicious cycle? Rosenblatt interrupted his friends and assured them: Say no more, I have just the thing.

And so, it came to pass that 60 or so activist kibbutzniks deployed to Dora, a neighborhood of the city of Netanya in west-central Israel on the sunny Mediterranean coast, for one week during summer vacation in June of 1978. We were all lodged in a school house and given access to the school facilities where we prepared and ate our meals. We were also provided mattresses to sleep on at night. In the first day Rosenblatt, myself, and about 4 others, introduced all the rest of our activist kibbutzniks to the Rotating Moderation procedure, trained them in conducting such workshops themselves, and discussed problems that might arise in outreach and implementation. The next day we all paired up and went out into the streets of Dora, looking for children and teenagers engaged in play or in doing whatever they do. The volunteers were briefed to ask of each such group for permission to join in and partake in whatever their activity. The volunteers were briefed then to pitch the Rotating Moderation procedure to the locals, and engage them in the process. The volunteers were also briefed how to negotiate with their newfound friends to meet again the next day and the next should all go well and proceed smoothly. There were no training documents, nor any other source of reference to fall back to: Paradoxically, this was the closest thing to anarchy we could imagine and yet, at the same time, completely orderly.

None of us had the slightest clue if any of this would possibly even work. To the best of our knowledge, nothing remotely similar had ever been attempted in Israel or indeed anywhere else. The entire process was so impromptu: no planning, no registration, and no time table for each activity, indeed, no knowing what the activities were going to be because, according to the Rotating Moderation procedure (to be expounded in further detail presently), each moderator in turn may initiate, in his term, whatever activity he or she chooses. Also, there was no authority in any sense of the word, no pretense of expertise, no sanctions and no external incentives. For all we knew, we were in for the fiasco of our lives.

The results astounded us all. At the closing of the first day we had several dozen local youngsters who expressed the wish to reconvene the next morning. On the next day the numbers grew even more. The groups met in the public parks, back yards, play grounds and parking lots. This went on for the entire duration of that week. When the week ended, people expressed the wish for continuation. Reports came in from the police department that during the time of our activity in Dora, crime rates dropped significantly. City hall expressed interest and national TV ran an article about us. Blue Bay, a major 4 star hotel on the other side of town, volunteered to host us all free of charge for another week if only we were willing to prolong our activity for that period. Before the second week was over, the activity included twice as many people as it did at the end of the first week. Amongst these people was a group of mothers who expressed the wish to meet in the evenings. Even after the end of the second week these women continued to meet for an entire year on a weekly basis, with Rosenblatt, practicing Rotating Moderation. The authorities agreed to fund a continued stay of a group of volunteers in the quarter, to carry on the work already underway.

Dora’s reputation as one of the country’s leading crime zones has since undergone a complete transformation. Today, nearly four decades later, Dora has twice the population and is considered one of the most desirable residential locations in the area. The rôle that our activity played in bringing about that change has never been explored.

  III.            THE rotating moderation procedure

The essence of Rotating Moderation, procedurally, is as already suggested in the very appellation. The rôle of the moderator or chairperson passes among the participants. This transfer is made subject to six rules: four mandatory rules, and two auxiliary rules. Rosenblatt tends to present these rules and to indicate, together with each rule, its rationale: the habit or character trait that it exercises. But one rule is never stated, being taken as a matter of course, as a meta-rule or principle, if you will. This, I believe, is a mistake: many things need to be stated even when taken as a matter of course, indeed, often as a precondition to taking them as a matter of course. In the interest of amending said omission, herein is presented the Rotating-Moderation meta-rule: the principle of the open door that anyone who wishes to join may join, and anyone who wishes to leave may leave. The rationale of this principle is the same as it is in the open society at large. The friends of the Open Society often say that the Open Society is the most exclusive society there is, exactly because of this very principle of self-selection: This also raises two immediate problems. First: Do you accept a person who was forced to participate in the workshop against his will, for example, as part of a compulsory school curriculum or court ordered probation? If so, this would undermine the liberal nature of the procedure. If not, it is a violation of the rule that whoever comes welcome. Second, should Rotating Moderation's workshop be given to a known saboteurs thereof? We, the adherents of Rotating Moderation, have often debated this very point amongst ourselves. These arguments, naturally, never reach a principled decision. This is because the very question belongs to a group of fundamental problems which in principle have no fundamental solutions. Once we had a few friends arguing about whether you would have accepted the Ayatollah Khomeini. One of us said yes because it is a basic principle of the Rotating Moderation. Another said no, because the ayatollah would blow up the workshop, because that's what violent fanatics do. So the first one said: You do not understand anything! By the very principle of self-selection, by the very decision to participate, he will be transformed, rational and peaceable. Of course, this is not necessarily true, and the argument remains unresolved and the point most salient.

The other rules – both the mandatory and the auxiliary – are as follows:

Mandatory rule number 1: self-time-limitation. Upon delegation as moderator, one must set time limits declaring in advance how long – in minutes – one undertakes to serve as moderator. The time is measured with any kind of mechanical or electronic timer by a participant volunteering as timekeeper. Anyone declining to serve as moderator at all, simply takes zero minutes. Or if the moderator is satisfied before their self-allocated time is up, he or she may relinquish whatever time remaining for the use of others. Or should the previous outgoing moderator need more time, then the outgoing moderator may request of the next incoming moderator to assign him or her some of their own time, which the next incoming moderator may do only after having declared his own self-time self-limitation.

Rationale: This rule exercises sovereignty since sovereignty begins with the declaration of boundaries.

Mandatory rule number 2: appointment of an heir. Each moderator in turn must pass the right to moderate on to the next, i.e., name in advance the next moderator, once his term is completed. There is no need to obtain the consent of said person, since one may decline by setting the timer to zero, and then choose someone else. And it is permitted though not required, to consider requests of anyone who asks to be the next appointed moderator.

Rationale: This rule exercises partnership because transition creates partnership. Another way to explain this is that the group distributes among its members the most valuable resource at its disposal: its common time. This indeed creates partnership.

Mandatory rule number 3: actual guidance. The moderator is required to moderate, i.e., manage the session, ask questions, decide whose turn it will be to speak, and otherwise make his wishes known.

Rationale: This rule exercises responsibility, because when I tell people what I ask of them I take responsibility for the fulfillment of my desires.

Mandatory rule number 4: The right not to cooperate. The moderator must remember at all times that each participant has the right to refuse to cooperate, thus ruling out any coercive measures on the part of the moderator, including all manners of pressure and manipulation.

Rationale: This rule exercises the freedom of choice among the participants and, in any case, the moderator's respect for this freedom of choice.

These are the four mandatory rules. To reiterate, sometimes are added two auxiliary rules, as follows:

Auxiliary rule number 1: Agenda. The agenda of the session is agreed upon in advance. Each moderator in turn is thus obliged to link his term to the agreed agenda.

Rationale: This rule exercises partnership yet again, or even more specifically: open-ended partnership. In the open society, agreeing to a common agenda is a paradigm of gentlemanly agreements, and a central pillar of openness in general.

Auxiliary rule number 2: Supervision. One of the participants is appointed supervisor. The supervisor has both an administrative and a defensive rôle. His administrative rôle is to be the watchdog of the protocol and the agenda. This includes declaring the moment of commencement, announcing closing time, stating the rules and the agenda, and calling the moderators to order whenever they deviate from the above. His defensive rôle is to call the moderators to order whenever they waste or abuse the group's time, and to protect the dignity of the procedure and the participants. It is important that other than that the supervisor has no rôle or mandate whatsoever.

Rationale: This rule exercises expediency. It so happens that we need supervision, and no ideal justifies denying ourselves said need.

Note: The description of the supervisor’s defensive rôle remains in dispute between Rosenblatt and myself. Rosenblatt believes that there is no need for it and I claim that it is crucial, no less. His argument is that the need for protecting the dignity of the procedure and the participants will be catered to all on its own, holistically, organically, in free discourse. My argument is that this does not always happen so reliably, no more in free discourse than in free markets, and that even when it eventually does all by itself work out so neatly, it often takes quite some time, and in the interim, damage is done.

  IV.            success and failure of ROTATING MODERATION

Rotating Moderation evokes all the same objections as does democracy. The truth remains however, that, as Sir Winston Churchill put it, democracy is the worst form of government except for all others. The truth also remains that whatever flaws you find in democracy, these flaws are better dealt with democratically than at all howsoever otherwise. Thus pointing out the flaws of democracy as an argument against democracy is motivated not by rational considerations but something else. The same goes for the idea of minimum platform, the Dialectic debate, and the very notion of open-ended procedure. The same also goes for the objection to Rotating Moderation. The inspiration for all these comes, according to Walter Kauffmann, from the primal fear of choice, which he dubbed desidophobia. The hatred of democracy is rooted in this fear, no doubt, but also in another: the fear of other people having choice. Thus, it seems to be recognized as a distinct phenomenon that I suggest dubbing: democratophobia.

For some reason, unbeknownst to me, when I first began to conduct workshops in Rotating Moderation, I encountered almost no objections, but only great enthusiasm almost everywhere I was invited. I told Chaim Rosenblatt about this and he replied that he was happy for my success, but until I accumulated a certain number of failures, I had not truly begun. I wondered what he meant by this. I conjectured that he meant that failures were instrumental in building character, possibly also in creating resilience. Today I see another point here: failures – especially if they are many – afford the opportunity for taking stock in general and regarding priorities in particular. Over the years I have accumulated many failures. Today I look at every failure I ever experienced with great pride, because it brings to memory the aphorism of Socrates, how in striving at anything worthy, even failure is worthy. Thisa noble thought comes to mind whenever one of my more successful colleagues wonders why insist in continuing in my failing ways. I always find myself thinking, I’d rather have all my failures any day, than even one of my colleagues’ successes. But I never say this out loud, because I can only surmise that if he really needs to ask, then it would be wasted breath to respond.

The failures and the successes of Rotating Moderation are intertwined, of course: the greater the success the greater the objections. Alarmingly, these very objections are often expressed in the form of actual sabotage, hence the failures. But the question remains’ whence the success? Mainly, whence the success in bringing out the best in people? In my opening remarks I suggested that this comes from how the procedure affords us with the benefits of doubt. Here I wish to suggest another answer: the success of the Rotating Moderation procedure in bringing out the best in people stems from sheer self-fulfilling prophecy. This, after all, is an open secret: often, when we assume that humans have some quality, good or bad, we treat them in a way that inspires them to exhibit precisely that quality and live up (or down, as the case may be) to our expectations. This is one of the most important observations in education: prophecies tend to realize themselves, just as, so the saying goes, what goes around has the tendency to come back around. It is therefore perplexing and alarming that educators, whose work in the business in which this knowledge is both more vital and more obvious and palpable than in any other line of work, act as though they are completely oblivious thereto. Indeed, the educational literature passes over all of this in deafening silence. Teachers and educators often justify their attitude to children upon unflattering precepts of human nature, especially during childhood. Seldom if ever do they acknowledge how their own attitude and conduct is instrumental in bringing these very character defects to emerge in the first place. Such is the myopia of entranced tradition.

Possibly though, this explanation is no different from the first: treating people as independent (and/or rational, responsible, critical, etc.) as a means for helping them become so by way of a self-fulfilling prophecy, is exactly what it means to afford anyone the benefit of the doubt. This is the very central feature in the democratic outlook. The democratic outlook inspires practices premised upon the assumption that the person is intelligent, responsible, generous, tolerant, etc. They do so not because this assumption is true; but as a way of helping said assumption become so.

Affording people the benefit of the doubt can only take place when we are free of the demand for guaranteeing success. As I said in the opening remarks of the present essay, Rotating Moderation comes, explicitly and transparently, with no guarantee of results. The opponents of the procedure regard this as a major, indeed deal-breaking disadvantage.  

Copyright Dr. Chen Yehezkeli 2018

    V.            Rotating Moderation Online and asynchronous text communication?

                           An after word by Aaron Agassi

Everything that we do is in order to modify subjective experience thereby altering consciousness. And because happy people talk more seriously, Rotating Moderation may be found instrumental towards the optimization of social stimulus struggle, the perpetual striving of all social beings, to regulate, to obtain and maintain, the optimum kind and degree of stimulation and arousal from the surrounding social environment.

As both record keeping of deliberation and collaborative co-authorship of documents are each crucial to collaboration both in creative writing and innovative new venture creation, each figuring so prominently in the optimization of social stimulus struggle as strategized in the proposal Creativity Should be Social here on FoolQuest.com, asynchronous text communication remains indispensable either thereto.

Asynchronous text communication is communication by text, written language, not in Real Time. Messages are first composed, and only then made available to be read at any later time for response in kind. Asynchronous text communication such as in email and electronic message posting forums and groups, with such quick turnaround, has brought the unprecedented advent of correspondence as a convenient vehicle of actual dialogue, internationally. Hither to, before the advent of the computer revolution, with traditional postal delivery, or: “snail mail,” correspondence as a vehicle of actual dialogue was impractical and counterintuitive because of the far longer turn around.

The Rotating Moderation procedure, in simplified Parliamentary Rules of Order and variation upon the Dialectic of Socrates, is a method for group moderation, a workshop of sorts, an outreach no less than a portable instant democratic social institution, to be implemented in planning, problem solving, decision making, education, learning, study, and other group sessions. But Rotating Moderation as we know it, remains a process implemented only In Real Life - IRL, for short – in physical reality, face to face, in Real Time. But it might be readily adaptable to any kind of electronic conferencing, also, in Real Time.

But what about asynchronous text communication? Asynchronous text communication widely serves as a medium for planning, collaboration, research, analysis, creativity, problem solving, decision making, consultation, knowledge work, study, learning and more. As of yet, however, no known attempt has been made to adapt Rotating Moderation to asynchronous text communication via email, in news groups or on electronic message posting forums Online. In asynchronous text communication, the allocation of collective time, the most crucial tangible purpose of any mode of any Parliamentary Process, even such as Rotating Moderation, becomes entirely moot. But individual agenda setting for collective discourse and even collaboration among equals, remains all the more salient on the World Wide Web. However, although allocation of communal time becomes moot, investment of individual time, effort and focus, become the more crucial. All that is required is concerted participation, substantive and timely response, even to long and involved messages. Of course, editing one’s posts to be clear and concise is crucially important, but substance expands in ongoing discourse, and this is desirable work product. For many, exactly such aspects of computer literacy have become second nature by acculturation. There is even long customary text formatting etiquette for the interjection of one's own comments, point by point, into the body of another's text to which one replies, to be answered likewise in turn, even Dialectically, ever expanding, especially in sheer volume. This method or practice is referred to as threading, a legacy of the venerable Usenet Posting Conventions. But it all fails for unserious impatience and short attention span typical of real time texting and Social Media culture, let alone chronic suspicion and hostility, alas all too common.

Yes: What is all too often still missing in the nebulous reaches of cyberspace, is any call to order that is neither wishy-washy nor heavy-handed.. In the words of Simone Weil: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Attention is a scarcity and we live in an attention economy, an often failing exchange. It has been said that trying to sample the internet is like trying to take a sip off a high pressure fire hose, and that trying to reach out Online, is like trying to shout out one’s window, to passersby on a roller coaster! Amid all such noncommittal anarchy so typical of the Internet, the salient function of Rotating Moderation may be all the more, the opportunity for individual agenda setting and objectives for collective discourse and even ongoing collaboration among equals in autonomy.

Typically, bloggers convert IRL relationships into support and participation Online. Perhaps local IRL Rotating Moderation might similarly transition, evolve and blossom internationally Online. As there will be all manner of desirable application to precisely such crossover, this presents a worthy promotional, strategic and design challenge. A possibly helpful application of Rotating Moderation rules of procedure to asynchronous text communication for online message posting forums, might be some code of practice of acknowledgement as moderator, whoever begins a topic thread and proposes even tentative agenda thereof, to focus discourse upon clarifying and developing and then pursuing said agenda. Developers might even program a feature affording moderator powers within a thread, to the initial poster.

    VI.            The contribution of Rotating Moderation to

                                                            the social engineering of more Optimal SOCIAL STIMULUS STRUGGLE 

Copyright Aaron Agassi 2018 -2021