Resources
Systemic
Problems
Our society teaches us to climb social ladders and look down on and exploit those below and submit to those above. It ranks others based on factors like skin color, gender, and class. This dynamic is the root cause of our major social problems.
Our institutions, communities, families, cultures, social systems, and ourselves as individuals are woven together into a single self-perpetuating social system — the System. Society is afflicted with many systemic problems, such as racism, corruption, disinformation, monopolization, violence, elitism, and environmental degradation. These problems are all connected. Trying to fix one without dealing with the others just makes the System stronger and doesn't get to the deeper issue.
The System influences every part of our lives. It tells individuals, groups, organizations, and nations to chase after status, wealth, and power for their own benefit. The drive to dominate or submit is society’s central driving force. It makes people believe that if they work hard, they can get whatever they want. If they fail to prosper, it's their own fault. Everyone supposedly gets what they deserve.
With global trade and the spread of American ideas, the System has gone worldwide with interdependent elements. Elitism rules everywhere, though certain differences with regard to human rights are significant. Every nation helps to keep the System going, for instance, by buying each other's products and loaning each other money.
Top-level administrators, the “governing elites,” reinforce the System with divide-and-conquer tactics. They pit subjects against each other with racial and ethnic stereotypes. They blame the poor for their poverty. They use military campaigns to buttress the status quo, as people unite against enemies rather than those in power, who rationalize exploitation and scapegoating.
The System distorts the natural tendency to seek personal advancement. Winning is everything, The System justifies these drives with assumptions of essential superiority and inferiority. The results include extreme individualism and ruthless competition. Exclusive identities justify the domination of opponents, discount everyone’s common humanity, and deny essential equality. This Iundermines our ability to engage in effective, unified action.
The System dehumanizes. It reduces human beings to objects that can be used. Others are a cog in the Machine. On every level, those who hold more power use others to their own advantage. For instance, corporate heads shape company culture so workers hide their feelings to keep customers happy. And they teach working-class people to control their behavior in order to maximize productivity. In so doing, everyone often loses touch with their true self.
Activists are guilty of similar dehumanization. With their top-down definition of leadership, they manipulate and mobilize others to do what they, the leaders, want them to do. With this exaggerated outward perspective, they neglect their own self-reform, and fail to commit themselves and their organizations to provide mutual support for self-development.
Too much reliance on professionals has led to disabling paternalism in social and human services as well as grassroots organizing. Clients and members learn to rely on experts rather than engage in problem-solving partnerships that draw on humble expertise with a critical eye. Authorities train, teach, and coach clients, students, and members without facilitating them to engage in peer-to-peer mutual support, education, and inspiration.
Through laws, schools, churches, families, newspapers, television programs, advertising, movies, cultural norms, public discourse, sports, interpersonal interactions, and inner reflections, individuals reinforce the System with their daily actions. Buying cheap clothes manufactured in sweatshops is merely one blatant example.
The System is a whole. Each of the social sectors addressed in this site is equally important. Each one reinforces the System and is shaped by the System.
Without focused intervention, the System is self-perpetuating. No one individual or group controls it. Scapegoating “enemies” is misguided. We're all both victims and perpetrators.
People flip between fear and trust. The System stokes fear and anger , while rebellions build trust and compassion. It's a constant tug-of-war.
In opposition to top-down domination, America has affirmed bottom-up democracy, but these ideals have never been fully honored. The battle to fulfill them continues. The outcome is uncertain. If the elites prevail, they may destroy life as we know it. Unfortunately, rebels who resist oppression often undermine their effectiveness by betraying their values and reflecting the characteristics of their opponents.
Struggles to spread compassion, justice, and democracy proceed often seems to be two steps forward and one stap back. But activists are planting seeds for deeper, more lasting improvements, aiming to build just, democratic hierarchies that hold society together while nurturing compassionate self-governing communities.
Problems
Solutions
Actions
Knowledge Base
Comments
Michael Johnson:
Growing Democracy Project perspective on this section
Resisting oppression is a necessary action, but it is a secondary action. Making democracy work in everyday life needs to be the primary objective, and that is proactive. That involves making it work at all levels—within me, between us in our group, and between groups all the way up the scale. In our world we know this work runs into all kinds of resistance—from within me, between us in our group, and between groups all the way up the scale. All these forms of resistance are rooted in the domination/submission dynamic, which is systemic (as you describe the term) and pervasive. In this perspective we don’t betray principles so much as we betray each other. Our failure to live up to commitments should be 1) fully expected and 2) needs to be met with dispositions that beg—in the words of Cornel West—each one of us to try again, fail again, try again, then fail better, try again better, and so on.
Throughout this section I have two running responses. One, I agree with virtually all of your particular examples of the things that go badly. They are essentially antisocial (anti-cooperation, if you will) and are fully intertwined—that is systemic—and we must address them that way. Two, your “The System,” however, comes across as an alien evil force outside of us that we must struggle against. For me there is nothing alien about the drive to dominate. In a complex way it is as instinctive as cooperation. The lion eating the zebra and the shark eating the octopus are integral parts of their respective ecosystems. Chimps maintain social order primarily through domination because it’s the only way they can. We don’t need to eat each other to survive and, potentially, we don’t need domination to govern ourselves. The chimps don’t have enough biological capacity for cooperating nor a way in which they could develop such capacity. They have been pretty stuck for some millions of years.
What is so transformative about our species is that we are primates who got on a biological path for ultra-cooperation over 500,000 years ago, and that path is now biocultural. We have gotten to this point, however, in a very paradoxical way: our drive to dominate has been persistently and expansively quelled by more cooperative groups outcompeting less cooperative groups. We are not by our nature simply loving, cooperative beings who are victimized by a “System.” For sure, even absolutely for sure, our dominative ways of living and relating are pervasive and systemic. So is cooperation. There would be no us here if our capacity to cooperate was not, overall, more dominant than the capacity of our drive to dominate. At this point in my journey I see democracy as a major transformative leap on our path toward becoming ultra-cooperative. Obviously, we are far from that now. In fact, there is a multitude of signs that we are on a razor’s edge of wiping out either all of what we have created as a species or substantial portion of it.
In spite of this, I find two hopeful notes in our immediate situation. One, we have been experimenting with democracy on a large, complex scale for only 250 years. That’s 1/ 2,000th of our 500,000-year-old journey. Further, through the power of culture we are now evolving exponentially faster. Two, there has been a burgeoning of new knowledge, both theoretical and practical, from a) scientific focus on understanding how we became who and what we are, how we do our living and relating across all sectors of human life, as well as how these two are interactive with each other; and b) development of transformative ways of combining that knowledge with our ancient systems of wisdom to live and relate more effectively.
I agree that our culture teaches dominative ways of relating and living. Our culture also transmits cooperative (prosocial) ideas, beliefs, practices and dispositions. What’s in-here in us is out-there in our ways of living and relating, and what’s out-there is in-here. We are embattled and the battle is everywhere (systemic).
Re hyper-individualism: Yes, domination is driven by and furthers domination and destroys the group’s cohesion. This is very much something that we do.
100 % agreement with, “Absent focused intervention, the System is self-perpetuating.”
For me, one sentence in the paragraph about “The System” dehumanizing stands out: “In so doing, both classes often lose touch with their true self.” Two comments on it: 1) Yes, we are all in the boat together. This idea would be better served by a phrase like “all of us” rather than “both classes.” 2) A parallel paragraph could be written describing how society ‘cooperatizes’ all of us as well. This is essential strategic knowledge for transformative change. Letting the dominative impact stand alone in this paragraph gives an unbalanced and inaccurate picture of how socialization (embedding/embodying) works. If I see you as other than me, I will tend to dehumanize you and make you an enemy. If I see us as in the same boat but with different interests, I am in a better place to see you either as 1) an opponent I can negotiate with, or 2) as someone whose behavior is not acceptable. I can go from there to do all I can to stop that behavior, but, at the same time, keeping in my mind and heart that we are both precious creatures. I don’t see any other way to attack the problems and remain loving.
Beautifully put, your paragraph about activists being guilty of dehumanizing others. However, a comment on the word “guilty.” From my perspective we should banish the notions of guilt and shame. Both are inextricably tied up with punishment and self-punishment, both very dominative. Unfortunately and paradoxically our evolutionary process into becoming the ultra-cooperative species that we both are and are becoming has relied strongly on blame, shame, guilt and punishment. As such they are visceral reactions. We have a long way to go to get beyond needing them to sustain being prosocial. This points to the importance of developing a pragmatic understanding of how co-evolution works.
Re professionalization: Again, beautifully put, especially, “humble expertise with a critical eye.” All of us learning how to develop that humble expertise and using each other’s critical eye in order to better see ourselves.
Re the last two paragraphs: I embrace all of it except the use of “the System.” For me the term makes it so easy for me to disown responsibility for my failings, and then find someone or something to blame. This is a major way that I—and others—stay stuck in our dominative patterns of living and relating. I talk of culture as an embedding/embodying process. Out-there embeds culture in me, but I embody some but not all of what comes in. And what I embody I do in utterly unique ways. So, I am responsible for what I embody and make into me, and that responsibility is empowering. If I see me as being active in becoming acculturated/socialized rather than just a passive victim, then I have greater access to my agency, my power. With this disposition loving creativity becomes more likely, submission more unlikely, and our grasping the true nature of power is more enhanced.
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Wade Lee Hudson
Michael, As I see it, “the System” is not an alien force outside of us. On the Overview page, the primary definition is: “Established institutions, the dominant culture, and ourselves as individuals are woven together into a single interconnected, interdependent, self-perpetuating social system — the System.” I should review this Problems statement and if and when a passage suggests that the System is an alien force, I should amend it to clarify that that is not the case, for the reasons you express so well. Thanks for the heads-up.
Rather than saying “There would be no us here if our capacity to cooperate was not, overall, more dominant than the capacity of our drive to dominate.” I would say that these two co-equal instincts have been in tension. I suspect that hunter-gatherers developed our DNA by cooperating more than dominating. And surely cooperation has continued to be a strong feature of human societies. But since the development of centralized agriculture domination and submission have been at least as powerful, if not more powerful, than cooperation. Look at our largest nations, India and China, and the erosion of democracy elsewhere, including here.
I agree there has been a burgeoning of new knowledge with regard to social psychology, but there has also been a growth in knowledge about oppressive and/or dangerous technology. Witness the metaverse on the horizon: people lying around with virtual reality headsets interacting with digital images.
I substituted “everyone” for “both classes.” Thanks.
Concerning “a parallel paragraph could be written describing how society ‘cooperatizes’ all of us as well,” I wanted this section to focus on problems, while the next section deals with solutions, but maybe some “teasers” can be added. Thanks for the nudge. I’ll try to explore that later.
Concerning guilt and punishment, I think the problem is with harsh, judgmental assertions of guilt and cruel, inhumane punishment. Compassionate judgments and humane punishment are feasible. Not all domination is oppressive, as with red lights.
Great dialog, Michael. I really appreciate it.