Social
The desire to dominate and the willingness to submit drive modern societies. Climbing social ladders, gaining more wealth, power, and status, and conforming to social pressures are paramount.
Many compassion-minded people counter these forces by developing egalitarian, cooperative projects that respect everyone’s equal worth, nurture mutual empowerment, relieve suffering, promote justice, and spread joy. These efforts serve as valuable models that others could adopt and adapt, but they fight uphill against powerful social conditioning.
Bearing in mind that these examples focus on the United States and are changing as a result of these counter forces, domination is reflected in the following patterns, though no one individual exhibits all of these behaviors, and there are many exceptions.
With informal small groups, one or two people do most of the talking.
When a man and woman get into a taxi, the man opens the door.
When the taxi driver asks the couple a question, the man answers.
When a man and woman ride a two-seated bicycle, the man steers.
When a man and woman ride in a car, the man drives.
Women do most of the housework.
Men who are tall hold more power due to their height.
People who are fast thinkers and fast talkers exercise more power than people who think and talk more slowly, even though they may be more logical and rational.
Tests of unconscious, implicit bias (a stereotype or prejudice) find that people automatically prefer abled over disabled, young over old, light skin over dark skin, straight over gay, deeper voices, certain names over others, graduates from certain universities, people with certain job titles, more “attractive” people.’
Women suffer discrimination in multiple areas. Compared to me, they are underrepresented in management roles, earn less than men for the same jobs, are more likely to have a low-wage job and live in poverty, and are more often the victim of sexual harassment and violence.
Men who work hard and obey orders they don’t like, come home tired and resentful and vent their frustrations on their family.
They take charge of the channel changer and dominate family decisions.
Their supervisors evaluate them, but they don’t evaluate their supervisors.
Workers form teams and solve some problems together, but their supervisors are quick to jump in and make decisions for them.
Women must quit their jobs because they can’t get enough paid maternity leave, and childcare is too expensive.
When children keep asking, “Why?” parents become exasperated and declare, “Because I said so.”
Parents tell children, “You can be whatever you want to be,” and urge them to get ahead of the competition.
Teachers give more attention to students who are “good-looking.”
“Teaching to the test” is the norm because admission to better colleges is greatly influenced by standardized test results.
People with more wealth, power, and status use these advantages to help their children succeed.
People who select job applicants base their decisions in part on subjective factors such as their college’s reputation, their family pedigree, how they dress, and how they talk.
College-educated people look down on those without degrees, who are self-conscious and feel inferior and resent condescending elites.
In general, people make harsh judgments about others, hold unconscious biases, and adopt stereotypes that often influence their behavior and lead them to assume an air of moral superiority.
People use money to keep score and evaluate their own worth.
Men are slightly more likely than women to support top-down hierarchy, but most women are also competitive and use their own methods of domination.
The mass media glorifies the rich and famous, reinforces fascination with particular clothing, and boosts hypercompetion with sporting events and reality show battles.
Coaches and parents who preach, “What really matters is how you play,” but practice, “Winning is everything.
Cheating in school and society at large has worsened, as the pressure to succeed intensifies.
Doctors who want patients to automatically accept their recommended treatment
Police officers who abuse their power.
Many countries believe that locking up large numbers of prisoners in overcrowded, punitive conditions serves to deter crime, and forced psychiatric treatment serves to relieve emotional problems.
People who give loyalty, or constant support, to another person or institution regardless of what they do.
Spiritual teachers, therapists, and others who seduce people into neer-ending dependency by convincing them they can achieve unachievable goals.
Advertisers who use subliminal techniques and other methods to induce people to become addicted or habituated to harmful products.
Examples of people submitting to those with more power and conforming to social pressure include:
People who keep quiet when they should speak or remain passive when they should act.
People who automatically support other family members, their political party and its leaders, their nation, or some other “tribe,” regardless of what they do.
Patients who automatically do what the doctor orders.
Workers who lie to their boss in order to get promoted.
People who automatically believe what they read, hear, or see without confirming that the source of information is reliable.
Businesses who believe “the customer is always right.”
People who “go along to get along” with the examples identified above in order to “get ahead” or “keep up with the Jones.”
counter this dynamic with efforts such as nurturing partnership, teamwork, collaborative leadership, and holistic democracy with people who respect each other’s equal worth as a human being. These efforts serve as useful models, but they’re in danger of being swamped by the meritocracy myth and growing authoritarianism.
Human Conditioning: Seeing Our Innate Susceptibility
https://www.conciliators-guild.org/media/blog/conditioning-seeing-our-innate-susceptibility
Modern societies promote a preoccupation with status, individuals’ relative social standing or rank (in addition to its obsession with wealth and power).
a human susceptibility to be conditioned
Respect for everyone’s equal worth is critical. We’re all members of the human family. Our differences pale in comparison to what we have in common. Human beings are social creatures with multiple identities, but none is more important than our human identity. Like it or not, the nations of the world are interconnected and interdependent. The imperative to develop more global cooperation is urgent. The more others thrive, the more you thrive, and vice versa. Self-empowerment, mutual empowerment, and community empowerment reinforce each other.
Interpersonal interactions shape the quality of everyone’s life. As stated in a National Institutes of Health article:
The phrase “it takes a village to raise a child” originates from an African proverb and conveys the message that it takes many people (“the village”) to provide a safe, healthy environment for children, where children are given the security they need to develop and flourish, and to be able to realize their hopes and dreams. This requires an environment where children's voices are taken seriously and where multiple people (the “villagers”), including parents, siblings, extended family members, neighbors, teachers, professionals, community members, and policymakers, care for a child. All these ‘villagers' may provide direct care to the children and/or support the parents in looking after their children.
However, the village, in many countries today, is dissipated and fragmented and individuals are increasingly isolated and are not eager to ask for or provide help to others. Family breakdown, economic pressures, long working hours, and increased mobility have all contributed to families feeling less connected to extended family members and others around them.
In the world today, however, power is an aphrodisiac, status is paramount, and money is a way to keep score. Efforts to preserve the unequal concentration of wealth, power, and status characterize every developed society.
Gaining social status is a way to prove yourself — to others and yourself. Individuals rank others based on arbitrary characteristics — such as “attractiveness,” profession, level of education, accent, skin color, gender, clothing style, mannerisms, and accents — and discriminate based on that rank.
The result is widespread hyper-individualism, hyper-competition, corruption, decadence, selfishness, elitism, and arrogance. Oppressive top-down power suppresses natural human kindness, which finds expression in limited ways, especially in families and communities that counter the dominant society’s pressures.
Society encourages everyone to climb social ladders and look down on, exploit, and dominate those below for their own self-interest, submit to those above, and conform to social pressures. People constantly feel either superior or inferior. Many communities become exclusive; belonging to one community makes it difficult to belong to another, much less identify strongly as a human.
As Jill Lepore reports, social media platforms apply “the science of psychological warfare to the affairs of ordinary life, a machine that manipulates opinion, exploits attention, commodifies information, divides voters, atomizes communities, alienates individuals, and undermines democracy.”
Even those who strive to relieve suffering or decrease social inequality often operate in paternalistic ways. They assume an air of superiority and fail to nurture mutual empowerment. Parents, teachers, trainers, organizers, bosses, spiritual leaders, social workers, and others don’t fully facilitate the empowerment of their subordinates. Their egos become too invested in their own superiority and roles. They aim to teach people to be like them. By the power of their examples, they suggest to others that gaining a higher rank is key to personal fulfillment. They fail to facilitate people providing mutual support as equals for their self-development.
Communities reinforce fear and anger, cultivate conformity, and nurture domination and submission. As a result, grounded on brittle foundations, communities become tribes that scapegoat and try to dominate other tribes.
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New approaches, many already manifest, as are these resources, can erode oppressive structures and beliefs.
Nonviolent communication can enable people to identify specific offensive or irritating actions and report how they reacted. In this way, they avoid demeaning labels.
“Calling in” with compassion can be an alternative to harsh, judgmental “calling ou,.” as Loretta Ross advocates.
Activists can confess more and profess less, as Van Jones recommended.
Collaborative leadership can replace authoritarian leadership.
Institutions can maximize peer learning, mutual support, client empowerment, and self-development, for the self is prior to and apart from the social conditions that shape it.
In “What Mutual Aid Can Do During a Pandemic,” Jia Tolentino reports that Nancy L. Rosenbaum aruges in Good Neighbors: The Democracy of Everyday Life in America that both grassroots mobilization and top-down actions are needed. And Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell author, believes mutual-aid projects can have a lasting effect on consciousness after crises pass and projects close down.
Social institutions such as schools, faith communities, residential centers, treatment and rehab programs, and community centers can maximize peer learning, mutual support, client empowerment, self-development, and community engagement.
With strong partnerships on all levels, staff at programs with a regular client base can provide neutral assistance to help members/clients organize democratic teams that establish collaboration with and provide input to staff concerning their agencies’ operations — and organize their own independent activities.
This self- and community empowerment advances the holistic and systemic transformation of the entire society.
While learning from authorities, students can question them and form their own conclusions. Schools can incorporate family members and administrators into their community decision-making. Society can ensure all schools are more or less equally good. America can boost its financial commitment to public schools and substantially increase teacher salaries.
When regular classes are not in session at night and on weekends, schools can be vibrant community centers whose activities include life-long learning for adults.
Voluntary, attractive mental health and substance abuse programs that rely heavily on volunteer peer support can be readily available to those who want them.
Public meetings with concerned stakeholders, such as Roundtables focused on specific issues, can be run in a way that multiple sides of a situation are carefully listened to and anyone in the audience can ask respectful, clarifying questions.
Human beings want to live in communities with others who share core values and steadily push for greater democracy and mutual respect. This commitment to solidarity, cooperation, fair competition, and compassion has led Americans to “promote the general welfare” and move toward “a more perfect union.”
This worldview can lead to the establishment of democratic hierarchies that enable subordinates to hold accountable those in positions of power. Many unions, for instance, regulate management and members of some organizations elect their leaders, as Jo Freeman recommended in “The Tyranny of Structurelessness. “
Those with more status and power can support the formation of structures that nurture peer learning, collaborative problem-solving, and natural human friendships.
There’s no irreconcilable conflict between the individual and the community. The more others thrive, the more we thrive. The more we thrive, the more they thrive.
We can maintain a balance between self-centeredness and compassion. We can care for ourselves so we can better care for others. As is often the case, it’s not either/or but both/and.
Egalitarian relationships involve trust, compassion, and mutual respect. Parties give and receive more or less equally. They listen carefully and reveal themselves. When they disagree, they ask questions to better understand the other’s perspective. Conversations are dialogs, not a series of monologues. In group conversations, those who talk more step back and give space to those who talk less. Individuals learn from each other, support each other’s empowerment, and nurture supportive communities. Mutual relationships rooted in deep compassion contribute to widespread, fundamental transformation.
A network of such support groups could be the foundation for a holistic democracy movement.
The above linked resources support the arguments presented in this chapter.
The above linked tools, some tested and others untested, present methods that compassion-minded people can use to advance a holistic democracy movement, whether or not they identify with this movement and explicitly commit to mutual support for self-improvement.
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