Transforming the System
Transforming the System
By Wade Lee Hudson
Whether it’s called meritocracy, rankism, or simply the System, our institutions, our culture, and all of as individuals are woven into a self-perpetuating social system that encourages everyone to climb social ladders and look down on and dominate those below.
The system’s driving force is the pursuit of wealth, status, and power. Those with less power submit to those with more power. This submission leads to feelings of inferiority, envy, resentment, and powerlessness.
Though the culture is shifting, most Americans still spend most of their time dominating or submitting. Children submit to parents, students submit to teachers, workers submit to bosses, and wives submit to husbands. People assume someone must always be in charge.
However, personal, social, cultural, economic, and political changes are contributing to the positive transformation of this system. Self-empowerment, spiritual development, community support, cultural shifts, and political action are reinforcing each other. Community-based alliances are winning unexpected policy victories. Self-help, democratic management, and public-benefit corporation movements are examples of emerging transformative change. Evolutionary revolution is underway.
The formation of ongoing multi-issue alliances can help realize the blooming potential. Alliance members can briefly support one another at key moments while continuing to work on their primary issue. Together we can accomplish more than when we are fragmented. With greater unity, we can gain momentum. build critical mass, reform social structures, and make our society more democratic.
A systemic worldview that addresses root causes and clarifies how issues are interconnected can help build this unity. Affirming a new purpose for our society — such as, to serve all humanity, the environment, and life itself — will help nurture compassionate community and achieve holistic transformation. Achieving that mission will involve reforming existing institutions, our culture, and ourselves, and creating new institutions, to serve that purpose.
New ways of organizing political action can help with that effort. Activists tend to focus on getting others to do what they, the activists, want them to do. They rarely engage in critical self-examination, acknowledge mistakes, resolve not to repeat them, and support one another in self-improvement efforts. They focus on behavior, the outer world, and neglect inner experience. This approach undermines effectiveness.
A common problem is arrogance. People tend to resist activists telling them what to do. Activists receive training on how to talk to potential supporters, but rarely receive training on how to really talk with them.
There’s no need for anyone to dictate to others how they need to change. Self-development is most fruitful when individuals define their own goals. But providing mutual support for self-defined personal growth can enhance effectiveness.
Personal, social, cultural, economic, and political change are equally important. It’s not a matter of which comes first or which is most important. The more we change the world, the more we change ourselves. The more we change ourselves, the more we change the world. Each reinforces the other.
The development of communities based on explicit commitments to open-ended mutual support for self-improvement will hasten this transformation.
Widespread agreement on a systemic worldview can speed up change and help grow massive grassroots movements that push for compassionate changes in national policy backed by overwhelming majorities of the American people.
When we unite and fully activate our better angels, we will achieve systemic transformation. When that will happen can’t be predicted. All we can do is take the next step. But the wind is at our backs.
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