The Willingness to Submit

By Wade Lee Hudson

Conformity comes in many shapes, and often it’s rational. Unfortunately, society fosters irrational submission that undermines personal and collective empowerment. Determining if rebellion is justified can be tricky, but these decisions are essential, and engaging in effective resistance is critical.

Many people please their teacher to gain good grades and please their boss to get promoted. They self-censor and avoid expressing their views on controversial topics to minimize the risk of job loss or career opportunities. They work for dictatorial employers who regulate their speech, clothing, and manners and threaten to fire them for their political activities, diet, or almost anything bosses care to govern.

SocialWade Lee HudsonJanuary 1, 2024dominationComment

Why do we want to dominate or be subservient to another?, Krishnamurti

It is essential, is it not?, if one is to resolve any of these problems of our life, to tackle them oneself directly, to be in relationship with them, and not merely rely on specialists, experts, religious leaders, or political givers of panaceas. …

One of the problems, amongst others, which most of us have not very deeply and fundamentally faced, is the question of domination and submission. …Why is it that we dominate, consciously or unconsciously? …

PersonalWade Lee HudsonOctober 18, 2023dominationComment

Ezra Klein Interviews Fareed Zakaria

Transcript: March 4, 2022

Fareed Zakaria Has a Better Way to Handle Russia — and China

The case for thinking strategically, not ideologically, about great power conflict.

I’m Ezra Klein, and this is “The Ezra Klein Show.”

It is eerie knowing that you have lived through the end of an era and that you’re now witnessing the birth of another. For most of my life, foreign policy has not been dominated by great power conflict. And that is a defining characteristic of that period. There have been crises. There have been wars. There have been horrors. But America was too strong and other countries too weak to really worry about world wars or even cold wars, to see the world as this great power chessboard.

That’s changed….

politicalWade Lee HudsonMarch 7, 2022foreign policy, cooperation, dominationComment

Justified Domination

Individual liberty is valuable. Self-determination enables co-equal partnerships, nurtures cooperation, and helps build strong communities, which benefit individuals in a virtuous circle. Limits to individual freedom are essential, however. The classic example is a child running into traffic. How to define and enforce justified domination is not easy. Doing so can provide massive loopholes that undermine efforts to dissolve exploitative domination.

One example is “vulnerable adults” legislation that highlights the tension between elderly individuals who want the freedom to make their own decisions and others who consider them no longer competent to do so. There are known cases where children of the elderly get the government to make this designation to seize the assets of their parents. Striking a fair balance is a challenge.

Another example is the legal requirement for drivers to have car insurance, which protects the public from having to pay medical bills for injuries due to accidents. One impact of this policy is that some poor people who can’t afford insurance can’t legally drive though they may need to drive to hold down a job. Is this fair?

Who has the right and the wisdom to exercise justified domination? Who is competent to intervene interpersonally, write legislation, or administer well-intentioned legislation…

SystemicWade Lee HudsonAugust 10, 2021dominationComment

How Privilege and Capital Warped a Movement

By Talmon Joseph Smith

On a humid, windless night several years ago, I was driving my parents’ S.U.V. through the oak-covered back streets of my hometown with four teenage friends. At an empty intersection, I reflexively began turning left before spotting the no-left-turn sign on the traffic light above. I jerked the wheel right, crossed the intersection and headed for the U-turn lane.

Before my friend riding shotgun could even finish joking about my driving, we were surrounded by two blaring cop cars that had been waiting in the shadows nearby.

SocialWade Lee HudsonJuly 10, 2021racism, domination, powerComment

East Point Peace Academy: Close but Not Quite?

By Wade Lee Hudson

Thus far, the activist organization that comes closest to fulfilling Systemopedia’s vision is East Point Peace Academy. The progress they’ve made organizing a national network of like-minded small teams is particularly encouraging.

However, ambiguities in their website content raise two questions: 1) East Point, might you clarify your written commitments to more fully affirm everyone’s essential equality? 2) Might you invite your supporters to collaboratively plan and convene a workshop to explore how to advance your principles, with the understanding that the participants will be invited to plan and convene the next workshop?

The Human Crisis

SystemicWade Lee HudsonApril 22, 2020compassion, democracy, domination, moralityComment

Citizen University Sermons

Politics/Books

A review
Become America: Civic Sermons on Love, Responsibility, and Democracy
Eric Liu
Sasquatch Books, 2019, 302 pages

Citizen University Sermons
By Wade Lee Hudson

Eric Liu’s latest book, Become America: Civic Sermons on Love, Responsibility, and Democracy, is eloquent and inspiring. His exhortations to be engaged in civic activism, beyond voting, are compelling. In the end, however, he comes up short. He neglects the need for new, holistic structures that nurture an energizing cultural environment.

The book consists of “civic sermons” that Liu presented at various locations throughout the country as part of a series of “Civic Saturdays,” a project of the Seattle-based Citizen University, which is dedicated to “building a culture of powerful, responsible citizenship.” In the Preface to the book, Liu declares:

We are the counterculture now. In a culture of celebrity worship and consumerism, we stand for service and citizenship. And in the age of hyper-individualism, we practice collective action and common cause. In a time of sentimentalism and showy sanctimony, we stand for discernment and humility. In the smog of hypocrisy and situational ethics, we still live and breathe the universal timeless values and ideals of the Golden Rule, the Tao, the Declaration, and the Preamble of the Constitution. That is radical.

In the “A Divided Heart” chapter, Liu reports that a friend, Mark, who was a founder of the Tea Party, in so many words said, “Millions of Americans have felt left out and put down, told that they’re deplorable racists and bigots and sexists if they challenge the elites and insiders who are tolerant of everyone but them. They're tired of it, and with Trump, they found a way to say so.” Become America and the Citizen University aim to speak to these people.

Liu has concluded “Americans today lack the coherence and moral clarity and civic self-possession to resist a real Hitler, and that's one thing we’d better work on.”

politicalWade Lee HudsonSeptember 6, 2019power, domination, organizing, structuresComment