The Process of demotherapeia

With the general aim and conditions described, here is my proposal for the process of discourse deconstruction. It has six hopefully simple steps that bring participants together to talk, ask questions, reflect, and make commitments. I'll give a brief overview here, and then explore each part in more detail later.

1. Assembly

The first step is for people to gather together. There are lots of ways that this could be done, and the best way to do it might vary depending on the reason. For example, an exclusive group of people could get together, such as a relatively fixed community, such as a geographical one, or one based on an interest, speciality or hobby. Or the process could be open to everyone generally. It could be advertised and planned, hoping to give people a fair chance to participate, or it could be rather spontaneous.

An assembly could be regular, and happen at fixed intervals, or it could be called when there is a specific issue to solve. For example, a workplace could have a monthly assembly, or they could call an assembly when there is some particular policy, event or circumstance to discuss. Of course, they could do both, and have a regular assembly with some special assemblies as relevant.

There does need to be some consideration of "who" calls the assembly, how they decide the reason, and in what manner they conduct it, but I'll save these considerations for a more thorough examination.

2. Immersion

Once people have gathered, the next step is immersion. This is simply a step where people have time to talk, mingle, and become familiar with one another. They might simply want to feel comfortable in the space, they may wish to know the other participants better, or they may wish to scope out the opinions of the other participants in advance of the rest of the process. This step is relatively unstructured - people should go about engaging in the manner that they feel appropriate (including not engaging with anyone else at all, if they want). It could also be a nice time to have snacks.

If people do discuss their opinions - and especially if there is some particular matter that the assembly has been called for - they may wish to find people with positions that align with theirs and form a relatively informal group. This could be useful for the next step.

3. Truth-telling

The next two steps might take up the bulk of time and attention, and most of the process will be cycling between them. The first is truth-telling. In this step, people take turns making statements to the group. The statements can practically be about anything; the group will generally determine if they are on-topic or off-topic. What is important is that each participant has the chance to express themselves and be heard.

Participants who formed an informal group at the immersion stage might decide to choose one or two speakers to represent them all, or to use their numbers to coordinate statements that delve into more detail than a single person would be afforded in their time speaking. But they would also need to be aware of respecting the time of others - that is, that they will potentially be taken less amicably if they are repetitive or look like they are trying to monopolise the time.

There are likely various ways that participant speaking order could be arranged, including by lottery.

4. Questions

Once a participant has made their statement, time is allocated for the group to ask questions. In a modern democratic assembly, the function of questions is to gauge policy details, integrity and transparency, because the participants are generally people who hold or want to hold positions of power. For example, constituents might question candidates to understand how they might use their power in office, or parliamentary members might question ministers to hold them to account. In a demotherapeian assembly, the function of questions is to aid in reflective discourse deconstruction. For this reason, the nature of questions and answers is a bit different.

The first difference is that there is no obligation for a participant to answer questions. They, and the group, might find it useful if they do, but if the stress of answering might interrupt the process of reflection - and for a lot of people this is likely - not answering would be a more favourable approach. Just having the question asked can be useful for the speaker, and the fact that other people would be reflective of the answer can be enough to trigger reflection in the participant.

The second difference is that the questions should be limited in scope. While some political procedures are adversarial, adversarial procedures can motivate people to double down on positions rather than keep an authentically open mind. The scope of questions should facilitate discourse deconstruction, but not create an adversarial environment. As such, the questions should be limited to the following:

• can you tell me more about this part of your statement?
• how did you learn this information?
• is there a Self and Other in your thinking about this issue?
• who benefits from seeing things this way?
• who has power when things are seen this way?
• what acts are justified when things are seen this way?

More specific formulations of these questions (such as, "Is such-and-such an act justified when things are seen this way?") are useful as well.

The idea is not to attack the speaker, nor to aim to prove that some part of their statement is not true, but instead to cause the speaker to reflect on their statement.

Once a speaker has fielded questions, or decided to step away, a new participant can be selected for truth-telling.

5. Reflections

Once everyone has finished truth-telling and questions, or once some time limit for the session has been reached, the next step of reflections begins. This step is rather similar to immersion, where people can engage in a relatively unstructured manner to reflect about things they have heard, said or been asked. People can talk to each other, meet in groups, or take time for themselves. This can give a chance for people to reflect individually, but also for people to voluntarily meet and engage in conversation if they want to discuss a point, ask more follow-up questions, or offer ideas. Because of the voluntary and unstructured nature, people can decide not to engage on a selective basis, avoiding people they don't want to talk to and engaging with people that they do.

6. Personal commitments

The final step is where participants can make personal commitments based on their reflections. Personal commitments are public declarations to commit to some course of action. Participants are not required to make a personal commitment, and the commitments can be big and complicated or relatively small and simple.

For example, a person could commit to following a particular rule or principle to modify their behaviour based on some reflection about the impacts of their actions. Alternatively, a person might commit to finding out more information and nothing more. People can commit to reading books, discussing things with friends, encouraging people at work, advocating for change, or to organise a group to develop solutions.

Commitments can inspire others, and the step of reflection can motivate people to make coordinated commitments that produce some type of norm or standard. These norms would be emergent rather than imposed, and open to scrutiny and deconstruction at later assemblies.

People can also hold others to their commitments when they see them, or enquire about them at later assemblies. While the commitments are not binding in some legal sense, they are a way for members of the assembly to hold each other accountable, both during and between assemblies.

These are the six steps of the demotherapeia. They allow people to gather together, involve themselves in a process of sharing information and perspectives, gently challenging each other, motivating self-reflection through public statements, and reflective and responsive norm creation through personal commitments.