Introduction
If compassion-minded activists unite behind a shared worldview, they could relieve suffering, promote justice, and spread joy. They could contribute to the transformation of the world into a compassionate community dedicated to serving humanity, the environment, and life itself. This goal will never be fulfilled completely, but every step in this direction will improve the world.
Society inflames fear and anger with sophisticated, often unconscious social conditioning. Undoing or controlling this programming requires honest, often painful self-examination. Peer support and verbalizing discoveries can help people tap into compassionate, cooperative instincts and solidify self-knowledge and purpose.
Personal growth often happens informally, naturally, and spontaneously. However, intentional, explicit, and organized mutual aid can strengthen these efforts, especially if they’re rooted in agreed-on core principles. Individuals can do personal work alone, but they also need each other. These routines can cultivate a shift from self-centeredness to other-centeredness and enhance personal and community development.
A network of small teams whose members affirm fundamental, comprehensive social reform, and support each other with their self-improvement, social service, and political action could contribute to this movement. This network could be the foundation for a global community whose members embrace the same principles and use this mutual support tool:
Open meetings with a moment of silence for meditation, relaxation, or prayer and report at least monthly on their recent self-improvement efforts.
This commitment could nurture a strong sense of community.
“The System”
The movement’s shared worldview could be rooted in an understanding of the tension between society’s dominant authoritarian social system and an emerging democratic system that’s reforming the dominant system while preserving its healthy aspects.
The Top-Down System is rooted in fear and hate. The Bottom-Up System is rooted in trust and love.
The Top-Down System encourages everyone to climb social ladders and look down on and exploit those below — and submit to those above. The Bottom-Up System empowers individuals and communities, cultivates cooperation, holds leaders accountable, and promotes holistic democracy.
This site urges compassion-minded activists to promote holistic and systemic change — holistic because it addresses the whole person and the whole society; systemic because it proposes a new primary purpose for our society and new structures to serve this purpose.
The selfish pursuit of power, status, and money fractures society. Hyper-individualism, ruthless competition, moral corruption, and mindless consumption are widespread as people try to “get ahead” of others as a way to boost their egos. Money is a way to keep score. People rank others based on their degree of schooling and social status.
Ego, arrogance, being judgmental, the desire to dominate, and the willingness to submit undermine effective collaboration and mutual empowerment. People place individuals on a pedestal and knock them off. Newcomers affirm the organization’s purpose and then aggressively, divisively try to change it. Members criticize hierarchies only to seek top-down power for themselves. Activists hurl divisive personal criticisms rather than discuss issues.
People define leadership as getting followers to do what the leader wants. This attitude is reflected in giving elected leaders more credit and more blame than they deserve.
Many people are isolated. Some have only one or two people with whom they discuss personal problems, and others have none. Americans are ever more lonely and less confident. Many individuals have no close friend who really wants to listen to them.
Economic hardship and insecurity are widespread.
Hyper-individualism is deeply embedded.
Society inflames divisive impulses.
People compete for seats at the table, but there aren’t enough seats.
When one person wins, another loses.
Hyper-partisanship leads people to join tribes whose main purpose is to defeat “enemies.”
People feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the world’s suffering. Anxiety paralyzes.
In 2022, almost 30% of Americans aged 12 and older battled a substance or alcohol use disorder.
People conform, keep quiet, hold back, and fail to assert themselves. They go along to get ahead. They submit and stay silent, not so much out of loyalty but more because of a sense of futility and fear of negative consequences.
As people calculate how to advance or protect their interests, they become overly concerned about what others think about them, making authenticity difficult.
Compassion-minded individuals fail to engage in critical self-examination and acknowledge their weaknesses and fears, and thereby become better people.
This drive to dominate manifests in nations, corporations, community organizations, politicians, and individuals. It led Joe Biden to declare, “I run the world,” as America tries to lead the world by getting others to do what it wants, which prioritizes America’s self-interest.
The Top-Down System integrates the many systems into a single self-perpetuating system. The social, personal, cultural, economic, environmental, and political sectors are equally important. They reinforce each other. No one individual or organization controls this system.
Throughout society, those with more power protect and justify their privileges with false propaganda, while less powerful people internalize their inferior status and blame themselves for their condition.
On the other hand, countless individuals and organizations relieve suffering, promote justice, spread joy, and affirm a compassionate worldview. Members of this compassionate humanity community — including those who identify as spiritual or religious and those who do not — empower the powerless, control the powerful, live in harmony with Nature, and inspire positive cultural change. They improve institutions, each other, and themselves.
These compassionate humanity community members could:
Affirm this site’s critique of the dominant Top-Down System and its affirmation of the emerging Bottom-Up System.
Celebrate unique identities while seeing themselves as members of the human family.
Use pragmatic idealism focused on concrete needs.
Work together as global citizens.
Protect the environment.
Appreciate the invisible spirit that energizes life.
Improvement in one sector impacts the others. If reform efforts were to affirm everyone’s essential equality and establish structures to nurture mutual empowerment, they could reinforce each other in a positive upward spiral and help replace the authoritarian Top-Down System with a democratic Bottom-Up System.
+++++
This website:
Presents a unique worldview that affirms holistic democracy throughout society
Includes resources to document its arguments
Suggests methods to advance its mission
Invites readers to share resources and proposals
The site reports on a quiet revolution that is cultivating personal fulfillment, compassionate action, and egalitarian structures under the radar.
Good Samaritans help strangers on the street with random acts of kindness.
People risk their lives rescuing victims during disasters.
An ESL teacher reports, “In my encounters with immigrants, I often suggest a listening exercise, which is one of our most important roles: listening to each other.”
Compassionate humanity members promote civil rights, police accountability, criminal justice reform, Native American empowerment, wise immigration, gun control, and reproductive freedom. They oppose selfish exploitation of the environment, advocate a partnership with Nature, and advance progress on other pressing issues
In the United Kingdom, holistic schools “encourage students to grow and learn as whole people and facilitate co-responsibility, mutual empowerment and the fair participation of all in co-creating their social and organizational environment.”
Nashville’s Valor Academy teaches students to enhance their social-emotional learning. They say, “Our dream has been to turn circle facilitation over to the kids as they get into high school. We all know that students are much more impacted by each other than by adults, so having them lead the practice is more meaningful.”
The Self-Directed Support Global Network. whose members identify as people with disabilities, researchers, and providers, define and improve best self-directed support practices.
Married couples form co-equal partnerships and empower their children.
Projects such as the Implicit Association Test enable individuals to learn about their biases to control them better.
Authors such as Baratunde and Valarie Kaur present writing exercises that enable individuals to strengthen citizen practice.
The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness by Rhonda Magee includes exercises to help readers control bias and respond to conflict and division.
Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity provides self-help tools to readers, including those who aren’t “spiritual.”
Humanists, atheists, and other non-believers practice compassion because it’s the right thing to do.
Mother Nature inspires awe and appreciation for the mysterious life force some call God, Allah, or the Creator.
Many people engage in mindful practices or other forms of meditation and appreciate the inner qualities of human experience.
Artists prompt wonder, curiosity, and compassionate action, often by awakening subconscious awareness.
Movies, music, novels, and other arts introduce patrons to stories of people from different places and times, helping them see the world, themselves, and others more clearly, respectfully, and deeply.
Tenants buy their buildings, and workers form co-ops, which empowers members.
Unions enable workers to gain better compensation and more power over working conditions.
Increasingly, companies use democratic teams in collaborative problem-solving, aiming for consensus when possible.
More people learn that win-win (positive-sum) relationships can benefit everyone.
Numerous deliberative democracy projects, such as the Irish Citizens' Assembly, demonstrate that randomly selected citizens can formulate solid recommendations to help shape legislation.
The Office of Energy Justice and Equity requires private sector developers who receive federal financing to fund or furnish community benefits, such as contributions to economic trust funds and local workforce training.
American neopopulism overcomes hyper-partisanship, leading to bipartisan agreements that fulfill the desires of the majority.
These and other compassionate efforts in every sector — social, personal, cultural, economic, environmental, and political — contribute to the growth of holistic democracy throughout society, even when activists don’t see their work in these terms.
+++++
Compassionate humanity community members could be more effective if they:
Afirm how their efforts are interconnected
identify as members of the same community with a shared commitment
Unite and support each other more frequently
Repair root causes
More fully integrate the personal and the political
Address personal weaknesses
+++++
There’s growing agreement about the need to change “the system.” For instance, a May 2024 Times/Siena poll found that 69 percent of the respondents said “the political and economic system” needs significant changes or should be torn down entirely. However, this focus on politics and economics is too narrow.
Our Top-Down System weaves together all of our systems and ourselves as individuals into a single, self-perpetuating system that encourages everyone, for personal gain, to climb social ladders, look down on, exploit, and dominate those below, and submit to those above. This integration enables stability.
The players change, but the game remains the same. Everyone’s a pawn, no individual or group is in control, and everyone’s responsible.
Society implants hyper-individualistic, materialistic beliefs deep within people’s hearts and minds. Unconscious socialization inflames innate dominate-and-submit instincts and suppresses compassionate instincts.
This Top-Down System claims to be based on merit, equality, and a level playing field, but in fact, it exalts wealth, power, and status, however gained. Moreover, those with more advantages pass them on to their children.
The desire to dominate and the willingness to submit serve to divide and conquer and smother compassionate egalitarianism.
Many forms of oppression are symptoms of this root cause.
Activist campaigns fade when their issue is resolved. Activists must then build a new organization, which is time-consuming and costly. A unified force that moves from issue to issue could accomplish more than its components can achieve alone.
Those who acknowledge personal problems can help each other overcome, undo, and manage them. If we unite, we can erode society’s self-centered, authoritarian social system.
How to build this movement is unclear. The Compassionate Humanity Community website offers some suggestions, but people wiser than we could formulate a better action plan.
Nevertheless, for the sake of discussion, the following, suggests a positive direction, written in the present tense.
+++++
A holistic democracy movement accepts justified domination and rational submission while dissolving unjustified domination and blind submission with a focus on pragmatic objectives. Members keep solid traditions and improve society where they can.
We affirm a new mission for society: relieve suffering, promote justice, and spread joy by reforming the Top-Down System into a Bottom-Up System. We create new structures to better achieve this mission step-by-step.
We care for ourselves so we can better care for others. We strengthen our bodies to enrich our souls. Self-improvement serves a greater end beyond the self. We find a balance between selfishness and self-sacrifice. We build strong communities and strong individuals.
We find solutions where everyone wins.
We prevent suffering by correcting root causes.
We shift from society’s self-centered focus to other-centeredness.
Greater awareness about common ground cultivates a profound sense of community and enhances compassionate, egalitarian, holistic reform.
The many forces working on single issues occasionally support each other while continuing to work on their issues.
We enjoy cultural presentations, share meals, socialize informally, sing and dance together, and develop close, supportive friendships.
We develop collaborative leadership and democratic hierarchies that enable workers and members to hold their leaders accountable to their commitments.
We work within existing structures to make incremental gains that nurture individual and collective empowerment and establish new, more democratic social structures.
We mobilize a “purple alliance” to pressure the government to respect the people's will, adopt policies with super-majority backing, and persist until their issue is resolved, using civil disobedience if needed.
In the United States, local Democratic Party members conduct year-round precinct organizing, address unmet personal and social needs in their neighborhoods, and nurture supportive communities, as advanced by the Rural Organizing & Engagement Toolkit for Precinct Captains.
Americans persuade their government to
Join the International Criminal Court
Ratify global treaties it had refused to back
Practice collaborative leadership globally
Help negotiate compromises
Work closely with the U.N. General Assembly and the Global South to regulate tax havens, impose a global tax on corporations, and establish fiscal democracy
America drops its efforts to control the world, rejects torture, and acknowledges its history of human rights abuse when commenting on other countries’ policies.
This broad-based project advances reform in every arena — social, personal, cultural, economic, environmental, and political. These reforms reinforce each other in a positive upward spiral.
Members affirm the movement’s mission and join with two or more allies in small teams to advance this mission and support each other with personal growth, social service, and political action.
Teams join a network of small teams, report on their activities, brainstorm and evaluate possibilities, help evaluate news and social media messages, inspire each other, and send representatives to regional, national, and global meetings to make formal decisions about how to promote and develop the network.
Initially, the teams develop and adopt two specific methods:
They open meetings with silence (for reflection, meditation, or prayer);
At least monthly, they conduct a “holistic check-in” during which members report on their recent self-improvement efforts (which may include a focus on how to undo or control oppressive dominate-and-submit impulses). .
Sharing the same methods nurtures a sense of community across the network.
In these ways, these teams
Promote fundamental reform throughout society
Establish new structures and reform existing ones
Enact compassionate public policies
Nurture improvements in how people treat each other in their daily lives
Encourage soulful conversations, self-examination, active listening, and mutual support for self-development
Control or unlearn the desire to dominate and the willingness to submit for personal gain
Unify everyone in the compassionate humanity community
Eventually, a diverse organizing committee convenes a national or global founding convention to launch the movement. Thereafter, members gather at regional, national, and international conferences to share best practices, inspire each other, and update policies.
+++++
This scenario is not a blueprint. Presumably, the organizers and members would modify the movement’s suggested name, mission, and methods, or start from scratch.
This dream is impossible to realize as envisioned. Nevertheless, society needs a massive, new grassroots movement that’s similar to yet more powerful than the union, civil rights, and women’s movements. We can improve the world with each step in this direction.
Every compassionate act contributes to holistic, systemic, democratic reform even if the actor doesn’t know it. Accordingly, this site includes compassionate resources that don’t explicitly affirm such reform.
However, if people did see their work as part of a holistic democracy movement and talked about it, they could advance this transformation. Service providers, advocates, and activists could support such a movement in many ways, some subtle, brief, and occasional.
With greater solidarity, members could aid and learn from each other, foster unity, engage in collective action, and enhance global cooperation. A holistic democracy movement could adopt humane policies, establish democratic structures, overcome efforts to dominate and submit for personal gain and enable everyone to be all they can be.
Compassion-minded individuals could grow a kinder and fairer society because we are morally obligated to do our best. With mutual support for self-development activists could help each other become better human beings by controlling or unlearning impulses that fracture unity. Open confidential communications with trusted colleagues are profoundly rewarding.
To drop your mask, pause your routines, look below the surface, and consider how to better nurture your self-development is difficult and complicated. It’s tempting to stay on auto-pilot, go with the flow, conform to established norms, submit to expectations, and suppress your instincts and your desire to engage in right action. It’s easy to just seek comfort, enjoy life, deal with daily struggles, care for yourself and your family, do a little bit here and there to help people, and vote for your preferred candidate. Nevertheless, more is possible.
You can nurture personal growth alone, by yourself, in the privacy of your mind and discuss these issues with your significant other, a therapist, counselor, or spiritual leader, and peers.
Peer support is powerful and important. We learn more from our peers than from parents and teachers. Mutual aid is usually informal, but formal structures, such as study groups, can also help. A holistic support group could also be beneficial.
This site suggests many ways people could organize intentional activities to enhance personal and collective growth. A grassroots movement could use these methods to strengthen its activities, promote fairness and democracy throughout society, and mobilize powerful political action.
This movement could correct many root causes of personal and social problems, undo oppressive domination and automatic submission, and nurture mutual empowerment.
Through these actions, this movement might eventually trigger synergistic social change and transform the Top-Down System into a Bottom-Up System — like a chrysalis morphing into a caterpillar and then into a butterfly. Regardless, the effort would bear fruit. This site suggests concrete methods for moving in this direction.
The Site
The homepage presents a proposed mission and methods for advancing it. The Preface reviews why I’m editing this site and my credentials. Each link on the Contents drop-down menu leads to these chapters:
The Systemic chapter considers how each social sector is interwoven with the others into our dominant social system, the Top-Down System, and proposes holistic democracy as a way to replace it with a Bottom-Up System.
The Social chapter addresses how people dominate and submit in interpersonal relationships and how to develop cooperative alternatives.
The Personal chapter explores how Increased self-awareness, self-examination, and self-discipline (which some see as spiritual development) can lead to positive changes that impact others constructively.
The Cultural chapter argues that a common worldview (including attitudes, values, morals, goals, and customs) stabilizes a society, which calls for enhancing cultural works that inspire wonder, curiosity, and compassionate action.
The Economic chapter envisions democratic approaches to organizing the economy that go beyond unfettered capitalism and state socialism and traditional liberal and conservative paradigms with a moral commitment to promote the public good.
The Political chapter recommends the development of holistic democracy based on small teams that select representatives to higher-level bodies and advance compassionate public policies, relying on deliberative democracy with randomly selected participants.
Each chapter opens with an overview essay. Each chapter links to Resources that support the content. Many reference have summaries of the resource. Practical, easy-to-use tools are posted on the site in the Actions sections.
Readers are welcome to use the Comment form to suggest improvements, additions, and deletions. If you want to edit and update a particular section, please let me know.
The resources include:
Activists
Advocates/Services
Articles/Essays/Op-ed
Books
Film
Video
Podcasts
Quotes
The homepage presents diagrams that illustrate the nature of our top-down social system and our proposed alternative: a bottom-up system.
Scrolling down the homepage takes you to Our Worldview. The “Learn More” link under each image goes to the overview that introduces each chapter.
Problem-solving Dialogues presents a log of some Action-oriented Dialogues and Philosophical Dialogues I’ve conducted with readers.
Over the years, many associates have made important contributions to this project. The Advisory Board has been particularly helpful. As the site’s editor, I’ve served as lead author on most of the content.
This volunteer-based project is a business registered in my name. I work pro bono. We may hire part-time staff occasionally. A financial statement is posted here.
I’d greatly appreciate your
Suggestions for changes or additions to the site
Questions concerning issues that concern you
Participation in dialogues
Words of support and donations
Subscribing to our monthly newsletter, Mutual Empowerment
You can use the Comment forms or the Contact form to communicate.
—Wade Lee Hudson
7/18/24
NEXT: Systemic