Chapter One:
Systemic
Growing a Compassion-Driven System
Society teaches:
“You can be whatever you want to be.”
“You can make it if you try.”
“Money is a way to keep score.”
“Anyone can move from rags to riches.”
“The poor are responsible for their poverty.”
“The rich deserve their wealth.”
“Greed is good.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Somebody's gotta win, and somebody's gotta lose.”
“Winning is everything.”
“Go along to get along.”
“Keep up with the Joneses.”
“Mom, I must have a smartphone because everyone has one.”
“Someone must be in charge.”
“My workplace is a dictatorship.”
“At least I can be boss at home.”
The political arena reflects this social conditioning:
Politicians use their offices to enrich themselves.
Big Money buys elections.
People demonize and fail to understand their opponents.
Activists resist compromise.
Winning the next election is primary.
Assumptions of moral superiority.
Interwoven materialism, militarism, and discrimination.
Toxic nationalism.
The dominant culture reinforces these beliefs:
Leadership is getting others to do what the leader wants.
Winning justifies unethical means.
Nations rationalize their domination of other nations.
Extreme selfishness is natural and inevitable.
If you win, I lose; if I win, you lose.
Systematic social conditioning teaches people to adopt habitual, often unconscious, ways of thinking and acting. With this conditioning, society socializes people to climb social ladders, look down on, dominate, and exploit those below, submit to those above, and conform to social pressure.
Society weaves together multiple social systems, institutions, cultures, and ourselves as individuals into a single self-perpetuating social system — the ego-driven System. This system is rooted in the pursuit of wealth, power, and status for personal gain. The selfish desire to dominate and the willingness to submit reinforce these patterns.
This dynamic is seen in interpersonal relationships, community organizations, corporations, and nations. People rank themselves and others according to their supposed human worth.
No one individual or group controls this ego-driven System. Top-level administrators who exercise arbitrary power are replaceable.
Everyone perpetuates the ego-driven System with their daily actions, such as buying products made in foreign sweatshops and voting in elections. Everyone’s a pawn in the game and a victim.
This system exalts wealth, power, and status regardless of how they’re gained. Simply doing the right thing is diminished or becomes irrelevant. People neglect positive-sum (win-win) solutions.
Society claims to be a meritocracy. The best supposedly rise the ranks and exercise power based on merit, equal opportunity, and a level playing field. In fact, however, elites have significant advantages, and they pass their privileges on to their children and allies.
Unresolved ego-driven power struggles weaken activist organizations, spiritual communities, social service providers, families, schools, workplaces, and other organizations. Disrespect, arrogance, elitism, dogmatism, weak mutual support, scapegoating, resentments, and interpersonal conflicts are widespread. This self-centeredness reinforces the ego-driven System.
Many individuals and organizations in the compassionate humanity community relieve and prevent suffering, and many movements promote compassion, justice, and democracy. However, these efforts are fragmented.
They generally concentrate on specific issues, individuals, or communities; activist campaigns fade after they peak and their issue is resolved. These projects reinforce the dominant social system because they treat problems in isolation, fail to connect the dots, and don’t address root causes.
This site adopts a different approach. Its focus is broader and deeper than politics and economics. It advocates reforming the entire society.
Society can properly justify domination and submission if they serve the common good. Parents protect children from traffic. Red lights are necessary. Force may be required to stop a bully. People yield to legitimate authority. However, in modern societies, wealth, power, and status are ends, not means to serve a higher goal.
This site advocates reforming the ego-driven System into a compassion-driven System. Pursuing this goal is admittedly very ambitious. Nevertheless, speaking the truth as you see it is critical. The more these seeds bloom, the better off we’ll be.
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Humanity is torn between fear and anger on the one hand and trust and love on the other. This polarity applies to individuals, groups, and societies. Each pole is valuable if not overblown. Ideally, the two poles are balanced and constrain each other.
Fear is helpful when threats are real and anger at injustice is justified. However, fear can be exaggerated, distorted, or imagined, and anger can be excessive, self-righteous, and judgmental.
Trust helps people relax and tap feelings of compassion. Economic security, public safety, and personal freedom allow love to flow freely. However, trust can be careless, and love can be sentimental, excusing inaction when action is needed to protect vulnerable people.
When the two poles — fear/anger and trust/love — are balanced, they constrain each other. This balance maximizes each pole's value. Trust helps to contain realistic fear, and compassion helps to channel legitimate anger.
Unfortunately, the ego-driven System inflames fear and anger and suppresses trust and love. This imbalance undermines individual and community empowerment, leading to a severe upward concentration of wealth, power, and status.
Fear fuels anger and self-centeredness.
Society promotes ruthless competition, callous selfishness, and hyper-individualism.
Individuals, organizations, businesses, and nations constantly seek more power, money, and status.
People value being dominant, want power over others to boost their ego, and often become bossy.
They submit to the more powerful when they need to and conform to social pressure when it’s convenient or gives meaning to their lives.
People manipulate others’ fear and anger for their own ends.
Assumptions of superiority and inferiority justify domination, submission, and conformity.
Losers feel inferior.
Material possessions reflect rank.
Disabling professional “people helpers” who guide people on predefined paths are paternalistic, patronizing, domineering, and condescending, which disempowers, fosters submissiveness, and undermines prospects for collective action.
Status anxiety undermines self-confidence.
Efforts to be in charge erode partnerships.
Widespread self-centeredness undermines collaboration as equals.
Politicians take extraordinary measures, including waging war, to stay in office.
America and other nation-states maximize their power over other nation-states with measures such as invasions, occupations, genocide, massacres, divide-and-conquer tactics, temporary interventions, and setting up “client states” — indirect imperialism.
This ego-driven System suppresses cooperation, leading to corruption and a fragile, top-heavy society.
One consequence is the harmful exploitation of the environment.
Other consequences include resentment, hostility, scapegoating, and division.
Hidden social structures aggravate and reinforce these patterns that inflame innate instincts. We can’t see these structures; we must deduce them from concrete data.
Many social, cultural, economic, environmental, and political problems are symptoms of this underlying root cause, the ego-driven System.
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Ideally, we’d use power, money, and status to nurture everyone’s empowerment.
Only justified domination and submission would operate.
We’d make judgments without being judgmental.
We’d do what we believe is right without being moralistic.
We’d challenge opponents while trying to understand them and remain open to negotiation, compromise, and reconciliation.
We’d nurture a balance between a healthy ego and a strong conscience.
We’d accept praise as “icing on the cake.”
Unlearning selfish dominate-and-submit conditioning would enhance progress and unity.
We’d learn to collaborate as equals.
Professional people helpers would work side-by-side on the front lines with fellow activists, all of whom would learn from each other while engaged in their communities as equals, which would be more liberating than relying only on training and teaching in separate schools and workshops from a position of superiority.
A humane society would build healthy social structures that organize our activities fruitfully.
Children would learn to integrate their thoughts and feelings.
Our families, schools, spiritual communities, workplaces, parks, political organizations, and cultural workers would inspire people to help each other realize their highest potential.
Compassion-minded people would counter established social systems with countervailing forces and alternative cultures. These efforts would make society more just, democratic, and cooperative while aiming to reform the ego-driven System into a compassion-driven System.
Pragmatic idealism focused on long-term goals and short-term objectives would grow holistic democracy. It would reform society from within and without, from the top down and bottom up, bit by bit.
Philip Woods defines holistic democracy as:
Holistic democracy is a way of working together which encourages individuals to grow and learn as whole people and facilitates co-responsibility, mutual empowerment, and fair participation of all in co-creating their social and organisational environment. Four dimensions of practice are at its core:
- holistic meaning: aspiring to as true an understanding as possible not only of technical and scientific matters but also the ‘big’ questions of enduring values, meaning, and purpose through development of all our human capabilities - from the intellectual to the spiritual
- power sharing: inclusive participation in shaping organisational operations, policy, direction and values, and autonomy to exercise initiative within the parameters of agreed values and responsibilities
- transforming dialogue: a climate where exchange of views and open debate are possible, and people co-operatively seek to enhance mutual understanding and reach beyond narrow perspectives and interests
- holistic well-being: sense of belonging, deep connectedness, inner knowing, feelings of empowerment, self-esteem, and independent-mindedness through democratic participation.
Many individuals and organizations are advancing these principles. People increasingly use the term holistic in health care, education, environmentalism, and politics.
Consistent with these efforts, this website advocates the development of holistic democracy — holistic as involving the whole person and the whole society and democracy as empowering people to have a voice in matters that affect them while respecting those who disagree.
We promote holistic and systemic reform dedicated to serving all humanity, the environment, and life itself.
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Ideally, a new multi-issue, diverse, nonviolent, global, grassroots movement independent of political parties will advance this reform — a movement similar to yet more powerful than the U.S. Populist, labor, civil rights, women’s, environmental, and gay movements.
As envisioned here, this movement would advance cultural, social, personal, economic, environmental, and political reforms. It would reform institutions by establishing new structures. These changes would be radical because they’d address root causes while retaining positive traditions. We’ll never fully achieve this ideal world, but it could be our North Star as we move in this direction.
Unifying the compassionate humanity community would be extremely difficult, but merely envisioning possibilities can bear fruit. So, consider the following thought experiment.
Imagine, in the United States:
With conscious, intentional effort and mutual support, holistic democracy movement members affirm shared principles, unite, respect everyone’s humanity and equal worth, nurture self-improvement and egalitarian community, construct democratic hierarchies with accountable leaders, cultivate mutual empowerment, support each other in their self-development, counter oppressive socialization, and nurture compassion throughout society.
This unified, diverse movement relieves suffering, promotes justice, spreads joy, serves humanity, the environment, and life itself, and creates a more harmonious society in every sector. This holistic democracy movement aims to reform the ego-driven System into a compassion-driven System. Their gains are seen in every arena.
With private and public sector measures, society ensures everyone can get a good living wage job, adequate retirement income, and affordable housing, childcare, and health insurance. A public-service-employment trust fund enables federal revenue sharing to local and state governments to hire people to provide vital services, including in-home support services for the elderly, childcare and environmental cleanup. Increased taxes on the wealthy, cracking down on offshore tax havens, reducing wasteful military spending, and donations from private charities and philanthropists finance this trust fund.
Voluntary drug and alcohol rehab centers and mental health crisis centers provide quality services on demand, relying heavily on peer counselers funded by the federal public-service-employment program.
The federal government increases the minimum wage to a level sufficient for a single person to make ends meet and indexes it to inflation. It increases the earned-income tax credit to ensure families can avoid poverty.
The federal government reduces subsidies to large corporate farms and uses that money to support family farms. Consumers help family farms by shopping at farmers’ markets. More public investment in green energy is leading to more good jobs. These measures boost rural economies.
We accept justifiable domination, protect children from traffic, use red lights, and hold people accountable for harmful actions and violations of others’ rights. Police walk their beats and develop relationships with residents and businesses, which enhances public safety. When we put people in jail, we do so without dehumanizing or brutalizing them.
This foundation of economic security and public safety enables everyone to live well, care for themselves and their family, improve their situation if they so choose, be creative, contribute to their communities, and leave the world a better place when they pass on. People no longer fear becoming destitute or homeless because they live paycheck to paycheck.
The President leads consumer boycotts against businesses that engage in price gounging, which helps to control the inflation that results from a full-employment economy.
This security enables many to engage in artistic, social, and political activities rather than working longer hours. Their life is good enough. Those who seek to gain more income pursue these ambitions ethically and avoid cutthroat competition motivated by the egoistic urge to dominate.
Couples form co-equal partnerships, deciding together how to distribute their domestic responsibilities. Whenever feasible, families involve children in making decisions about collective activities. Schools maximize students' decisions about the focus of their study and their work.
Increasingly, corporations adopt public-benefit charters that obligate them to serve the public interest while making a profit. The federal government has amended laws that impeded workers from forming unions. As a result, more workers belong to unions, which gives them more voice over working conditions and wages. Workers also gain seats on corporate boards and help strengthen those bodies’ community obligations. Workers regularly evaluate supervisors and vice versa.
In families, schools, workplaces, and organizations, many people:
Open meetings with a moment of silence for meditation, reflection, relaxation, or prayer.
Conduct a “check-in” for members to briefly report their feelings.
Convene a “process group” that enables people to report on how they’re feeling about how they are interacting with each other. During these sessions, members share appreciations or resentments, if any, and report on instances when they felt others were being too bossy or domineering or when they themselves acted on a desire to dominate, submit, or conform for personal gain. These issues may not be resolved in these sessions; members may choose to address them later.
Movement members:
Affirm both their membership in the human family and their individual identities, such as those based on religion, race, and gender.
Help each other undo or control the oppressive social conditioning and unconscious biases deep within.
Pause for rest and recreation, take care of themselves so they can better care for others, and organize activities that cultivate holistic democracy.
Practice active listening.
Respect everyone’s essential equality as well as their distinctive qualities.
Avoid both selfishness and self-sacrifice.
Recognize they reinforce the ego-driven System, which they inherited, and commit to help reform it.
Engage in honest self-examination, avoid chronic denial and excessive distractions, and acknowledge their weaknesses.
They set their own personal growth goals, which, for some, involve spiritual development while recognizing that perfection is impossible.
Balance legitimate fear and anger with realistic love and security.
Promote compassionate cooperation and collaborative leadership.
Focus on short-term objectives that move toward their long-term ideals.
Aim to help change hearts and minds as well as social structures.
Spread joy, meet needs in their community, help humanize institutions, and engage in pragmatic political action.
Movement members also:
Form small teams whose members support each other in becoming better human beings, including undoing or controlling oppressive social conditioning. These teams form a Network of Holistic Teams. Book clubs, study groups, activist committees, spiritual and religious bodies, and others join this Network, occasionally convening gatherings to share reports on their work and brainstorm possibilities.
Convene National Grand Juries with randomly selected members that meet for one year to craft recommended public policies concerning pressing unresolved issues. People experienced with deliberative democracy methods lead these sessions. Donors provide enough funding to compensate the participants for their time.
Persuade the Congress to fund a national Citizens’ Assembly with randomly selected participants to adopt recommended policies on critical issues.
Persuade elected officials, including Senators and the President, to hold carefully structured monthly Community Dialogues with constituents to hear input and answer questions. Speakers are randomly selected if need be. Large districts use Zoom to conduct these forums.
Help to organize a Purple Alliance that constantly mobilizes public pressure to enact compassionate laws backed by a substantial majority of Americans to improve lives, using civil disobedience if needed, rooted in a willingness to negotiate and compromise while seeking reconciliation and mutual respect.
Help build a national political party that’s controlled bottom-up, works with the Purple Alliance, and engages in year-round precinct organizing based on local teams whose members enjoy social activities and support each other with their personal growth, community service, and political action.
The movement persuades the federal government to apologize for its past unjust wars and military interventions that were designed to reinforce American domination of other countries, engage in a cooperative foreign policy, join the International Criminal Court, sign many of the widely supported global treaties it had refused to sign, support reforming the United Nations Security Council to give voice to more countries, pledge to give serious consideration to backing General Assembly resolutions and increase support for developing countries whose people face pressures to migrate.
The movement cultivates national communities in multiple countries in a network of autonomous local teams that model an egalitarian society grounded in mutual aid. It occasionally convenes global gatherings to enhance mutual support.
Cultural, social, personal, economic, environmental, and political changes, all moving in the same direction toward democratic equality, produce a synergistic ripple effect throughout society with a positive upward spiral. Successful efforts demonstrate models for others to adopt, adapt, and scale up. Mutually reinforcing improvements contribute to the fundamental reform of the entire society.
These reforms weave together social structures that reduce exploitative domination and automatic submission and increase personal and community empowerment. They overcome exploitative domination, establish democratic hierarchies, and institutionalize compassion.
Affirming that the System is our primary problem unifies the movement, reduces divisive scapegoating, humanizes communities, cultures, workplaces, governments, and ourselves, restructures society, and establishes harmony with Mother Nature. In so doing, members broaden and deepen their understanding and nurture a commitment to holistic change. They see their actions as a step in the right direction, a never-ending movement that gains steady progress without claiming it will achieve perfection.
In a positive upward spiral, this movement is local and global, personal and political, materialistic and moral, bottom-up and top-down, inside and out. It cultivates mutually reinforcing social, personal, cultural, economic, environmental, and political reforms that make society kinder, fairer, and more egalitarian. Based on the principle that people deserve equal rights and opportunities throughout their lives, not just at “the starting gate,” the movement addresses divisive habits, overcomes fragmentation, and reforms the world into a better, more compassionate community.
A strong, diverse organizing committee composed of community leaders helped to build this movement by convening a conference to launch it. Members occasionally modify the movement’s strategies while retaining the commitment to holistic, systemic reform.
This vision is food for thought, not a blueprint. Past reform movements made progress on specific metrics, such as voting rights, but it’s unclear whether there’s been moral advancement. Many problems, such as unjust wars and famine, persist. Society may be on a downward or upward spiral, or it may be treading water. The need for major reform is urgent — cultural, social, personal, economic, environmental, and political.
It remains to be seen how successfully radical reform efforts can strengthen compassion and justice and move toward a balance between fear/anger and trust/love. Hyper-individualism, materialism, militarism, and the dominate-and-submit paradigm are deeply embedded, and we can’t rely on political parties to save us. (Politicians are almost always highly motivated by their self-interest.)
A new independent movement may need a frame other than “holistic democracy.” Presumably, the organizers and initial members of any such effort would evaluate options concerning how to shape it. As I conduct more research and reflection, receive more feedback, and engage in more dialogue with my advisors and collaborators, I’ll edit this statement, perhaps substantially.