Grow Compassion, Build Community, Change the System:

A Declaration for Action

By Wade Lee Hudson

Introduction

Countless individuals and organizations relieve suffering and promote justice. Unfortunately, this compassionate humanity community is fragmented and afflicted with selfish and competitive hyper-individualism. Members don’t support each other to undo or control divisive social conditioning, even though this mutual aid could increase their effectiveness, help them unite based on shared principles, adopt new ways of working together, cultivate caring cooperation throughout society, and grow a compassionate humanity movement to change the System.

Currently, gaining wealth, power, and status is primary. Money is a way to keep score. Political ambition is an addiction. Social recognition is an obsession. But these patterns aren’t inevitable.

Businesses can serve the public interest as well as earn profits. Politicians can be community organizers who help build people power. Everyone can welcome praise, if it comes, as icing on the cake rather than seek it. We can make wealth, power, and status means to a higher end: serving humanity, the environment, and life itself, the invisible creative force that energizes and stabilizes the universe and enables living objects to reproduce. 

The System

Our society weaves together our institutions, our cultures, and ourselves as individuals into a single self-perpetuating social system — the System. This system encourages people to climb social ladders, dominate those below, exploit the environment, and submit to those above. 

The System teaches people to assume they’re superior human beings, claim credit for their success, blame others for their situations, and punish them for offenses. It inflames feelings of inferiority, insecurity, envy, and worshiping “saviors,” leading to conformity, passivity, and submission. 

One survey asked people to describe the Gen Z generation (born between 1997 and 2012). Respondents said they’re “tech-savvy, materialistic, selfish, lazy, and arrogant.” The lowest-ranked characteristic was “ethical.” When they asked Gen Z-ers to describe themselves, “they came up with an almost identical list.”

Jean Twenge reports that Millenials (born from 1981 to 1996), compared to earlier generations, are more self-centered, fame-obsessed, and lazy, and “poor millennials have even higher rates of narcissism, materialism and technology addiction.” She also said they “want constant approval,” “embrace the system,” …“(and are) tinkerers more than dreamers, …cool and reserved and not all that passionate, …informed but inactive, …(and) pro-business.” She concluded, “In fact, a lot of what counts as typical millennial behavior is how rich kids have always behaved.”

Society embeds these deeply engrained, often unconscious or semi-conscious, attitudes within everyone. People dominate and submit. When they’re forced, pressured, or choose to submit in one arena, they dominate in another. Bob Dylan captured this dynamic in “Only a Pawn in Their Game”:

A South politician preaches to the poor white man
“You got more than the blacks, don’t complain
You’re better than them, you been born with white skin,” they explain.
And the Negro’s name
Is used it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game

This indoctrination affects everyone. Deep biases and tendencies shape behavior. Political actors focus on defeating “enemies.” Disrespect is pervasive. People vent frustrations by trashing others rather than accepting shared responsibility for suffering and injustice and working together to solve them.

Individuals learn they can be whatever they want and ignore the role luck plays and the advantages they inherit. This hyper-individualism divides organizations and overwhelms compassionate cooperation, the deep instinct that enabled societal formation. Humans are torn between trust and love on the one hand and fear and anger on the other. The System undermines trust and love and amplifies fear and anger. 

No one individual or group controls the System. Elected officials and top-level administrators are replaceable, and they respond when their voters or workers are united and express their will clearly and powerfully. Everyone is responsible, and everyone is a victim of their circumstances. Even wealthy elites are dehumanized and isolated in their bubbles, surrounded by puppets who don’t give them honest feedback.

Credit for moving forward or backward is shared. Scapegoating — blaming a person or group — confuses the issue and divides people. The primary problem is the System. Focusing on the System can unite forces for constructive change. We can address the whole person and improve the lives of everyone. “The 99% for the 100%” (Van Jones).

A Movement

Imagine this scenario. 

A compassionate humanity movement counters the System’s harmful training, spreads joy and mutual support, promotes safety and lifelong security for all, and supports everyone being all they can be. By uniting, these efforts synergistically reinforce each other in every conceivable way throughout society: cultural, social, personal, economic, environmental, and political.

This movement bases itself on a Network of Holistic Support Teams whose members affirm shared principles and, at least once a month, conduct a “holistic check-in” during which they briefly report on their efforts to unlearn (or control) society’s dominate-and-submit conditioning. Some participants also reflect on their efforts to become better human beings in other ways; each individual chooses their goals for themselves. 

This Network is the movement’s backbone. These small, face-to-face teams share a meal at least once a month, socialize informally, strengthen friendships, enjoy each other’s company, counter disinformation, and decide together on whether and how to do more in addition to this monthly gathering, either as a whole team or in smaller units. 

Some teams organize diverse additional activities, including volleyball games, picnics, hikes, film discussions, study groups, book clubs, public forums, precinct organizing, registering voters, getting out the vote, and political demonstrations. Some engage in nonviolence training in case the need for direct action emerges. Others engage in a diverse range of training, including nonviolent communication, interracial solidarity, and democratic management. In these and other ways, the Network helps members engage as equals in self-development, social service, and political action. 

Occasionally, teams send representatives to regional, national, and global gatherings to share reports on their activities, learn new methods, and grow a sense of community.

Existing groups and organizations join the Network, including social action committees in religious communities, book clubs, and committees in political organizations. Moreover, some members of extended families and informal groups of close friends affirm the movement’s principles, form a team, conduct a monthly holistic check-in, and join the Network.  

Movement members make a new world with these conscious efforts that strengthen each other. We can’t get there alone. We need help.

The movement is pragmatic. It focuses on winnable short-term objectives that move toward its long-term ideals. It recognizes that some domination is justified; red lights control traffic, for instance. Various social sectors need to fit together; stability is essential. 

Nevertheless, society’s driving force need not be self-aggrandizement. We can take care of ourselves so we can better care for others. We can avoid both self-sacrifice and selfishness. 

In the United States, even if one of the major political parties wins the White Hours and takes control of Congress, prospects for sufficient change are limited. Big money and powerful lobbyists undermine progress. Well-organized people power is essential. 

If one party assumes total dominance and tries to establish an autocratic regime by eroding minority rights, liberal democracy, and the rule of law, mobilizing grassroots people power will be even more urgent. We need a democratic movement similar to yet more potent than the labor, civil rights, and women’s movements. Electing compassionate representatives is necessary, but more is required. An exclusive focus on electoral democracy is a distraction that reinforces the System.

A Purple Alliance

One element of the compassionate humanity movement is the Purple Alliance. This coalition persuades Washington to enact humane legislation that most members of both political parties support, such as these 100 policies. 

Once a month, the Alliance mobilizes two million members — roughly one of every 100 registered voters — to communicate the same message concerning a top-priority bill to their Congressperson. They contact every House member. 

Alliance members endorse a declaration of principles that affirms a commitment to serve all humanity, the environment, and life itself. This statement calls on members to help each other undo or control oppressive dominate-and-submit social conditioning, be more respectful to each other, cultivate collaborative leadership and compassionate cooperation, and promote humane systemic reform.

They focus on measurable goals, such as gaining a certain number of co-sponsors on a particular bill by a deadline. Members make phone calls, send emails, write letters, visit their Congressperson’s offices, talk to them at a public meeting, or participate in a demonstration. 

They ask representatives who support their bill to do more, such as hosting fundraisers for the campaign or speaking at a forum or demonstration. 

Once their representative is on board, they communicate with people in districts with unsupportive Congresspersons and ask them to lobby their representative. 

Activist organizations urge their members to back the mobilization while continuing to work on their group’s issues for the rest of the month.

When Congress fails to enact the Alliance’s proposed legislation quickly, it gathers more support from individuals, organizations, community leaders, and local governments. It also organizes coalitions to advance the bill with measures such as demonstrations at the offices of resistant representatives, often including nonviolent sit-ins.

They also persuade Congresspersons to convene a Monthly Community Dialogue with constituents. These dialogues, moderated by a local journalist, are structured with time limits to ensure the Congressperson does not dominate them. Randomly selecting speakers gives participants equal opportunity to ask questions and make statements. Community organizations set up tables to distribute literature. 

Congresspersons convene these Dialogues at the same time each month and publicize them in their official (tax-supported) communications to constituents. When Congresspersons can’t participate, their chief of staff represents them. 

This regular pattern enables activist organizations to mobilize members to speak to the Congressperson. Many Purple Alliance members participate as a way to communicate their monthly message. 

Eventually, the Alliance persuades Congress to enact legislation to establish a National Community Dialogue Day, during which all Congresspersons, Senators, and the President convene Dialogues simultaneously each month. 

The Alliance sends members monthly reports on the campaign’s progress and asks them to communicate again to their Congressperson, either thanking them for their support or urging them to back the bill.

If the bill has not become law and momentum is building, the Alliance may call for a nationwide one-day work stoppage to dramatize the campaign. If that fails, it may call for a two-day work stoppage. If support continues to grow, the Alliance may call for more extended work stoppages until the bill passes. During these work stoppages, the Alliance convenes social, cultural, educational, and political events that cultivate joy and solidarity.

When the Alliance persuades the House to pass its bill, it celebrates its victory with local and national events that feature music and shifts its focus to the Senate or the President as needed. 

If it becomes clear that Washington will not enact the legislation soon, the Alliance reflects on how it has strengthened its capacity and educated the public — and switches to a new demand.

Before primary and general elections, the Alliance selects key vulnerable representatives who’ve refused to support its campaigns and backs opposing candidates who pledge support. Victories in these elections help gain more backing in the future. 

The growing strength of the Alliance encourages partisan legislators to sidestep partisan loyalties and support bipartisan measures supported by a majority of their party’s members.

Each victory expands the horizons of what’s possible. Many activists who’ve pushed reforms without majority support now get more backing for their proposals. In these ways, the Alliance builds power, improves living conditions, and relieves suffering.

Comprehensive Reform

The compassionate humanity movement is planting seeds and blooming in every social arena. Many independent, self-directed projects contribute to synergistic personal, social, cultural, economic, environmental, and political reform.

Married couples form co-equal partnerships, serving as laboratories for holistic and systemic reform.

Inspiring, insightful books and other writing nurture this growth. 

The racial justice movement promotes controlling unconscious bias, minimizing microaggressions, and establishing fundamental criminal justice reform.

Immigration advocates push for comprehensive reform.

The #MeToo movement promotes new laws and structures to deal with sexual harassment and exploitation.

The gay movement promotes human rights and social acceptance.

Students, parents, and teachers promote self-directed peer learning rather than “teaching to the test.”

The public-benefit corporation movement promotes businesses that serve the community, their workers, and the bottom line.

The labor movement promotes workers’ right to organize, have a voice in operations, and have representation on governing boards.

The cooperative movement promotes worker-owned and -controlled businesses.

The anti-war movement promotes greater international problem-solving.

The environmental movement promotes green energy jobs to ensure the means to a decent life.

The pro-democracy movement promotes making voting easy for everyone.

The public health movement promotes measures to prevent illness.

The mutual aid movement promotes people reaching out to needy neighbors.

The spiritual activist movement calls on believers to correct root causes of preventable suffering as well as work on their spiritual development.

The nonviolence community calls everyone to practice nonviolence as a way of life.

Self-help and personal growth communities encourage people to love themselves and their neighbors.

Conclusion

These efforts are gaining strength, but they rarely identify as members of the same movement. Moreover, they don’t affirm shared principles and neglect self-development to undo or control social conditioning that foments division.

They focus on changing others and fail to focus on changing themselves and each other. They only aim to impact others’ opinions and actions. They talk more than they listen. They assume they have the answer. They disrespect those who hold different views. They organize, teach, train, mobilize, and activate, but their egos become too highly invested in these top-down relationships. Many targets of their efforts don’t appreciate this disrespect and react negatively.

Organizers also assume attitudes of superiority to each other. They care too much about their relative rank and engage in debilitating internal power struggles.

Moreover, organizations compete with each other, resulting in unnecessary fragmentation. If they cultivated greater unity and supported each other with projects such as the Purple Alliance, they could accomplish more together than fragmented.

If activists engage in self-examination, support each other in overcoming their arrogance and other weaknesses, and resolve to avoid their mistakes, we could steadily improve living conditions.

We cannot predict the new world's exact shape or the transition's timing. But eventually, the character and structure of our society may be qualitatively improved — grounded in a commitment to what is best for all humanity, the environment, and life itself. Society may look, feel, and be new — transformed.

NOTE: Steve Gerritson and Mary Hudson contributed greatly to this essay.