Introduction
Countless individuals and organizations in the compassionate humanity community relieve suffering and promote justice. They empower the powerless, control the powerful, live in harmony with Mother Nature, and cultivate positive cultural change — inside institutions, within themselves, and with each other.
Unfortunately, this community is fragmented. They fail to unite, address root causes, support each other, and affirm how their efforts are interconnected. This site presents proposals for how to unify this community and reform our society into a compassionate community.
Ego, arrogance, the desire to dominate, and the willingness to submit get in the way. Bitter power struggles divide organizations. People define leadership as the ability to get followers to do what the leader wants, which undermines mutual empowerment.
I share this weakness. I know it's better to work with others to solve problems, but I struggle to live up to this ideal. I form strong opinions about the right plan of action and recruit people to support it. I’ve been too focused on proving myself and gaining recognition, and have become too vulnerable to hostility, criticism, and disappointment. I’m not alone.
Those of us who acknowledge these problems need to help each other overcome, undo, or control them.
Many people are isolated. Some have only one or two people with whom they discuss personal problems. Others have none. A compassion-minded movement must address these personal and social issues.
How can we be kinder and fairer? This constantly updated digital book explores this question.
The principal answer presented here is to promote positive reforms in every sector — social, personal, cultural, economic, environmental, and political. Changes that move in the same direction can reinforce each other in an upward spiral.
These efforts can coalesce into a new, powerful grassroots movement. One that unifies the many forces cultivating a more compassionate society — including civil rights, electoral reform, #MeToo, human rights, call-in, anti-war, environmental justice, climate action, union, living wage, police reform, holistic democracy, immigrant rights, gay liberation, human potential, and interfaith movements. A movement that gets into the streets and engages in nonviolent civil disobedience when needed.
This website envisions how this movement might emerge. It presents a framework that could help a strong organizing committee of community leaders launch it.
This movement would correct many root causes of personal and social problems. It would:
Promote fundamental reform throughout society.
Establish new structures and reform existing ones.
Enact compassionate public policies.
Nurture improvements in how people treat each other in their daily lives.
Encourage soulful conversations, self-examination, active listening, and mutual support for self-development.
Control or unlearn the desire to dominate and the willingness to submit for personal gain.
Unify everyone in the compassionate humanity community.
Most compassion-minded individuals focus on single issues, help people cope and thrive, spread humane values, and vote for candidates who support policies that enhance the common good. With explicit commitments, these people could support each other with their personal growth and join with others to engage in unified political action.
Activist campaigns fade when their issue is resolved. Activists must then build a new organization, which is time-consuming and costly. A unified force that moves from issue to issue could accomplish more together than its components can achieve alone.
These activists could complement their efforts with some simple, not terribly time-consuming, methods that would enhance their effectiveness and nurture a sense of unified community.
Whether or not this movement crystallizes, compassion-minded people can advance its goals. They can use the ideas presented here to enhance their efforts and plant seeds for cultural change.
What’s the primary problem we face? Society encourages everyone to climb social ladders and look down on, try to dominate, and exploit as much as possible those below — and submit to those above. Our institutions, our culture, and ourselves as individuals are woven together into this Top-Down System that’s rooted in rugged individualism and winner-take-all competition. This social system rewards divisiveness with financial incentives, and individuals reinforce it with their daily actions. Wealth, power, and status become ends, rather than means to higher goals.
This hyper-individualistic conditioning is deeply embedded, often unconsciously. People keep quiet, hold back, and fail to assert themselves in order to avoid negativity or boost their prospects for advancement. Especially if they lack self-confidence, they button up and conform. They submit.
People compete for seats at the table, but there aren’t enough seats for everyone. When one person wins, another loses. As people calculate how to advance or protect their interests, they become overly concerned about what others think about them. Collaboration and mutual empowerment become difficult. Society inflames divisive impulses.
Our fragmentation is rooted in this Top-Down System. Agreeing that our primary common problem is the Top-Down System could help unify the movement.
[You can suggest amendments or alternatives to this description on “Our Primary Problem.”]
What could be the unifying goal of this movement? My associates and I have crafted a one-sentence mission statement: to serve humanity, the environment, and life itself. This focus could unify a wide range of concerned individuals and organizations.
We can reform the Top-Down System into a Bottom-Up System that nurtures individual and community empowerment throughout society. We can’t know exactly what the future society will look like, but we can affirm basic values and specific methods.
[You can post suggested amendments or an alternative mission on “Our Mission.”]
What methods shall we use to achieve our mission? Societies need a stabilizing social system that holds them together. We can keep healthy traditions, improve society where we can, and create new structures to better achieve our mission step-by-step.
We can develop collaborative leadership and democratic hierarchies that enable workers and members to hold their leaders accountable to their commitments.
Reformers can establish new, more compassionate social structures and work within existing structures to make incremental gains and nurture individual and collective empowerment.
Radicals can agitate passionately to highlight neglected problems and push for needed changes not currently achievable by turning up the heat.
The desire to dominate and the willingness to submit for personal gain afflicts almost everyone. Unfortunately, however, few people who engage in compassionate action focus on overcoming these weaknesses.
I know of no organization that sets aside time for its members to provide mutual support to help each other unlearn this deep-seated, often unconscious dominate-and-submit indoctrination.
One key method is mutual support for self-development. Social and political activists can help each other become better human beings by controlling or unlearning impulses that fragment unity. Open confidential dialogue with trusted colleagues can be profoundly rewarding.
Twelve-step support groups and many other projects have demonstrated that peer support can help people reach personal goals and thrive more fully. The Valor Collegiate Academies use a “Circle” to nurture social and emotional growth. Social service and political activists can learn from these efforts. This website explores how.
Self-development can serve a greater end. We can care for ourselves so we can better care for others. We can find a balance between being self-centered and other-centered. We can build strong communities and strong individuals. We can find solutions where everyone wins. We can prevent suffering by correcting root causes.
Unfortunately, however, honest self-examination often hurts. Self-exposure can be embarrassing. Even worse, others can use your admissions against you. The reluctance to pay the price required to grow more deeply is understandable. A commitment to confidentiality can address these issues.
To drop your mask, pause your routines, look below the surface, and consider how to better nurture your self-development is difficult and complicated. It’s tempting to stay on auto-pilot, go with the flow, conform to established norms, submit to expectations, and suppress your instincts and your desire to engage in right action. It’s easy to just seek comfort, enjoy life, deal with daily struggles, care for yourself and your family, do a little bit here and there to help people and vote for your preferred candidate.
However, the need for holistic and systemic reform is compelling. The selfish pursuit of power and the willingness to submit to power, as promoted by the Top-Down System, weakens organizations. Dealing with these personal issues that affect interpersonal dynamics is essential if we are to reform our society fundamentally and prevent more authoritarianism. Society is reflected in its individuals, and individuals reflect their society.
You can nurture personal growth alone, by yourself, in the privacy of your mind. You can discuss these issues with your significant other. You can discuss them with a therapist, counselor, or spiritual leader. However, it’s also helpful to engage with peers.
Peer support is powerful and important. In fact, we may learn more from our peers than from parents and teachers. Mutual aid is usually informal, but formal structures, such as study, support, and prayer groups, can also help. Discretion is advised. Total honesty might be foolish. Nevertheless, Small confidential teams composed of compassion-minded people can help with this effort.
This site suggests many ways people can organize intentional activities to enhance personal and collective growth. A compassionate grassroots movement could use these methods to strengthen its activities, promote fairness, compassion, and democracy throughout society, and mobilize powerful political action. My associates and I have experimented with some of these tools.
Based on these experiments, my primary suggestion at the moment is that at least once a month, movement members 1) open small team meetings with a moment of silence and 2) confidentially report on their recent efforts to undo or control the desire to dominate and the willingness to submit for personal gain. This shared experience could nurture a sense of community among those teams who use these tools.
[You can suggest an alternative primary method with a comment on “The Primary Method.”[
What shall we call this movement? My inclination is to call it the “holistic reform movement.” Other options include the systemic reform movement, the pro-democracy movement, and the compassion movement. However. “holistic reform” seems to capture the distinctive, unique thrust of this proposal.
[You can comment on “The Name.”]
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The movement envisioned here could unify the compassionate humanity community. Change in each arena is equally important. Improvement in one impacts the others. If these changes move in the same direction, they reinforce each other and integrate the outer and inner realms.
Compassion-minded individuals can celebrate their unique identities while also seeing themselves as members of the human family. As global citizens, we can work together for our shared interests, live in harmony with nature, appreciate the invisible spirit that animates life, and promote holistic and systemic reform — reform that is holistic because it addresses the whole person and the whole society and systemic because it addresses the Top-Down System. We can grow a kinder and fairer society. We must.
This site suggests some concrete methods. The organizers of a new movement would presumably modify them, or start from scratch. In the meantime, I welcome suggested improvements in these proposals as I regularly edit them. You can comment on the posts (some are blog posts; others are Google Docs) or email me.
The Site
The homepage presents a proposed mission:
Reform the Top-Down System into a Bottom-Up System.
Serve humanity, the environment, and life itself.
Undo oppressive domination and blind submission.
It also presents proposed methods:
Support each other with unlearning dominate-and-submit conditioning.
Address the whole person and the whole society.
Promote synergistic, mutually reinforcing change throughout society.
We’ve experimented with and confirmed the effectiveness of many methods to cultivate this shift toward a more compassionate, egalitarian society. Many of these practical, easy-to-use tools are posted on the site in the Actions sections.
Each link on the Contents drop-down menu leads to these chapters:
Each chapter opens with an overview, an Actions link to actions already underway as well as proposed actions to advance progress in this arena, and a Knowledge Base that links to relevant resources including:
Activists
Advocates/Services
Articles/Essays/Op-ed
Books
Film
Video
Podcasts
Quotes
The homepage also presents diagrams that illustrate the nature of our top-down social system and our proposed alternative: a bottom-up system.
Scrolling down the homepage takes you to Our Worldview. The “Learn More” link under each image goes to the overview that introduces each chapter. On 1/20/24. these summaries and highlighted actions were compiled in the Growing a Systemic Reform Movement: A Call for Action blog post.
Daily Reflections on the homepage presents brief items that attract my interest. A log of all entries is here.
Problem-solving Dialogues presents a log of some Action-oriented Dialogues and Philosophical Dialogues I’ve conducted with readers.
Over the years, many associates have made important contributions to this project. The Advisory Board has been particularly helpful. As the site’s editor, I’ve served as lead author on most of the content.
I’d greatly appreciate your suggestions for changes or additions to the site, your questions concerning issues that concern you, your participation in dialogues, and your words of support. You can Insert/Comment on the Google Docs, use the Comment forms at the bottom of blog posts, use the Contact form to communicate, and subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Mutual Empowerment, the weekly FromWade list, or the daily Wade’s Wire.
Wade Lee Hudson
3/4/24