Posts in systemic
America’s Refusal to Address the Roots of Violence

By Khalil Gibran Muhammad

As I thought about writing this review, I imagined an opening paragraph summarizing the events of this summer’s nationwide protests against police violence. How observers and participants parsed the civil unrest along the familiar lines of peaceful protesters, rioters and looters, drawing competing moral distinctions between nonviolence and violence. How the police deployed official violence to punish and intimidate activists. How heavily armed, self-deputized white men threatened and used vigilante violence against demonstrators. How President Trump called for state violence against human beings to protect property. And how the residents of many cities committed acts of violence against their intimate partners, neighbors and fellow citizens, including small children.

And then, after finishing Elliott Currie’s “A Peculiar Indifference: The Neglected Toll of Violence on Black America,” a smart, timely, deeply disturbing and essential book by a veteran scholar and leading expert on the criminal legal system, I realized that the details of every precious life harmed or lost this summer reveal a bigger truth about the nation….

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systemicWade Lee Hudsonracism, political, criminal justiceComment
Valarie Kaur with Baratunde on "How to Citizen"
Valarie Kaur with Baratunde on "How to Citizen"

On the opening episode of this “How to Citizen” podcast, Baratunde conducts a remarkable interview with Valarie Kaur, author of See No Stranger,. Kaur clearly articulates the spirit that drives the Systemopedia with her holistic worldview and her affirmation of mutual support for self-development..

With her Revolutionary Love Project, Kaur’s addresses our relationships with ourselves as well as our relationship with others. She examines internal changes we must make to our minds and hearts as well as institutional reforms. In response to whether we are experiencing the darkness of the womb or the darkness of the tomb, she replies, “It’s both” because we see the “dying of the nation we thought we were” as well as the emergence of transformation. Large numbers of whites joining in Black Lives Matter demonstrations was particularly encouraging.

External work such as getting to know our neighbors with an open heart is critical. The founder of the Sikh faith affirmed “I see no enemy.”

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systemicWade Lee Hudsonbeloved community, deep nonviolence, eolutionary revolution, racism, self-centeredness, spirituality, structures, white privilegeComment
On Human Nature

By Wade Lee Hudson

Assumptions about human nature shape beliefs about the potential for change. Reflections on human history and child development indicate that compassion and the desire to cooperate are more primal, stronger, and deeper than hate and the desire to dominate. Which instinct prevails depends on many factors, including training, social conditions, and personal decisions. As Sitting Bull said, “Inside of me there are two dogs. One is mean and evil and the other is good and they fight each other all the time. When asked which one wins I answer, the one I feed the most.”

When people feel secure, they’re more likely to be loving and cooperative. But when they’re insecure, they’re more likely to be hateful and domineering — and willing to submit. Insecurity hardens the tendency to form ingroups and outgroups. Healthy competition becomes vicious. The hope to improve your material condition becomes all-consuming.

Society can encourage one pole or the other — domination or cooperation — or it can nurture a balance.

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systemicWade Lee Hudsoncompassion, economic insecurityComment
Ezra Klein on “the Machine”
Ezra Klein on “the Machine”

Systemic

An Interview

The February 5, 2020 episode of the Ezra Klein Show, “Jill Lepore on what I get wrong,” consists of Jill Lepore’s interview of Klein concerning his just-released book, Why We’re Polarized. Lepore is a Harvard historian and New Yorker contributor. The interview includes the following exchange:

JL: In some big structural way in the book there’s a quite notable absence of villains. I wonder if you could talk about that as the explanation you came to, as a narrative choice. Why no villains?EK: … I want to understand people and people in general as following incentives. And this is very deep in me. It is tempermental. It goes way beyond this book. I don’t trust people’s stories of why they do things almost at all. 

I’m not a huge believer in individual agency. Not in a narrow sense. Obviously if Donald Trump had not run for President American history would have been different. If Barack Obama had not given a speech in 2004, American political history would have been different. But I don’t think that if Mitch McConnell was beaten in Kentucky a couple of years ago that the current Republican leadership would be dramatically different. I don’t think if Newt Gingrich hadn’t appeared…. I’m very skeptical about the Newt Gingrichification of polarization literature, which is like, this one guy came from Georgia and he came up with all these new…. Maybe it would have happened a couple of years after him, but people were playing out the incentives of the system in a reasonably clear way that I think was going to happen in one way or another. 

So there are obviously people I think of as villains in the sense that even as they are following their incentives their values are values that I find toxic. They are racist or they are willing to abandon the poor to no health insurance and so on. So there are people whose values I find quite grotesque. 

Even so what I wanted to try to do here, the kind of book I’m writing, and I say this at the beginning, is I’m trying to tell you how a machine works.

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systemicWade Lee HudsondemocracyComment
George Lakey and How We Win
George Lakey and How We Win

A review
How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning
George Lakey
Melville House Publishing, 2018, 221 pages

George Lakey and How We Win
By Wade Lee Hudson

George Lakey understands internalized oppression. If anyone would support mutual support for self-improvement, you’d think he would. But his new book, How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning, primarily relies on top-down training. 

Though the book presents many valuable recommendations concerning tactical nonviolence, as well as a compelling overview of Lakey’s rich, long history as an activist and nonviolence trainer, it does not propose intentional, open-ended, peer-to-peer support as a way to unlearn negative conditioning and become more fully human. 

How We Win includes some material about personal issues. It affirms the need to “avoid competition” between activist groups and to “establish productive relationships” between activists. …

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systemicWade Lee Hudsonpersonal, social, cultural, political, systemic, transformation, booksComment
An Argument for the Declaration
An Argument for the Declaration

Activists undermine progress. Deep-seated tendencies reinforce fragmentation and drive away potential recruits. These divisive impulses, rooted in biological instincts inflamed by our hyper-competitive society, weaken our power.

Not everyone suffers from the same weaknesses, but most are burdened with many. “Americans for Humanity: A Declaration” aims to help overcome these barriers to personal, social, and political growth.

These personal problems include:

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systemicWade Lee Hudsonpersonal, social, cutural, political, transformationComment
A Holistic Masterpiece
A Holistic Masterpiece

A tour de force by Asoka Bandarage, Sustainability and Well-Being: The Middle Path to Environment, Society and the Economy is more in sync with my thinking than any book I’ve read. This excellent, well-written work presents a holistic framework that addresses both the whole person and the whole world. Published in 2013 with 68 pages of text and 17 pages of notes, this comprehensive essay, as described by its publisher, Palgrave Macmillan UK, offers:

An integrated analysis of the twin challenges of environmental sustainability and human well-being by investigating them as interconnected phenomena requiring a paradigmatic psychosocial transformation. She presents an incisive social science analysis and an alternative philosophical perspective on the needed transition from a worldview of domination to one of partnership.

The chapters are titled:

  • Environmental, Social, and Economic Collapse

  • Evolution of the Domination Paradigm

  • Ecological and Social Justice Movements

  • Ethical Path to Sustainability and Well-Being.

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systemicWade Lee Hudsonspirituality, systemic analysis, compassion Comment