The heart of democracy is a respectful and peaceful sharing of power. A sharing that is not possible without meaningful relationships that provide unexpected diverse and dialectical connections to others and the world. Respectful and validating dialogues that bring you to a mentally healthy place where you can see a world beyond yourself. You don’t have to like it or agree with it, but you see it: a world beyond yourself as valid and deserving of respect and existence. Absent such inspiring, challenging and authentic relationships, the result is isolation.
Isolation can be physical, mental or social. It is living with a view of uniformity and not connecting outside your comfort zone of familiarity (your tribe). Isolation ignores or avoids the diversity of life. One of the biggest drawbacks of living in isolation is that you stop seeing other people, pets, animals or environments as having value that deserve validation or respect.
In isolation, nurturing and dialectical connections are discarded as nothing more than mere tools to manipulate and invalidate a perceived opposition. From an isolated perspective, dehumanizing others outside your comfort level makes sense. Ultimately, the unexamined fears when isolated often lead to engaging in a violent power struggle to grab a forceful ability to control and use others. It creates an environment of intolerance that leads to a breakdown of humanity and mental health. It creates environmental and global mental health issues and concerns.
To use a metaphor, democracy is like a sporting or competitive event where teams or opponents face against each other on a battlefield. They may dislike or hate each other and battle against each other for domination, but they agree to basic rules of engagement that exist and are honoured by both sides. There is a certain amount of justice and validation in their struggles to dominate.
As a mental health therapist, I have often noticed that the focus of most mental health problems is how a client struggles to interact with another individual, family, relatives, friends, group or peers. It is a micro-to-micro view with interactions between individuals. But that isn’t always the case, and sometimes the challenges expand to a macro-to-micro view where interactions are between an individual and an organization, policy or the world. In those situations, I struggle to fully understand and deal with how a written inorganic organization, policy or culture interacts and impacts an individual’s mental health and relationships. It’s a challenge.
To use the sports metaphor above, a macro-to-micro view is when the rules of engagement become unfair, disrespectful and invalidating because the battlefield unilaterally changes the rules and picks one side over another. There is no longer a democratic practice of shared justice, validation or respect, but instead an isolated fascist or autocrat individual or group that define the rules to their benefit, which are often injustice, invalidating and disrespectful. Whoever controls the battlefield wins because that is their rule.
In politics there is a saying, “If you are not at the table, you are on the menu.” That is, if you are not in power and in control, you are powerless and will be used and exploited. In a very real sense, the meaning and intent behind this horrible principle and practice is that you essentially rape and exploit everything and everyone or they will rape and exploit you. The fear is overwhelming. Power is all that keeps you safe from a horrible fate. Nobody matters but you. And when you look closer, you’ll discover that not even you matter because nobody cares about you, just your power they can use. Without power, you are insignificant and alone. Cooperation or consideration doesn’t exist. Living in isolation truly creates hell on Earth.
This isolating perspective and the eventual results are exemplified in the Dr Seuss book, The Lorax when the Once’Ler’s starts chopping down all of the Truffula Trees for their own selfish needs without regard to anyone or anything else. To break through the Once’ler’s exploitive isolation, the Lorax shows up and states, “I speak for the trees, because the trees have no tongues.” Needless to say, the Lorax and trees are not at the table, but are on the menu.
Before moving forward, I want to explicitly state that I am using “democracy” in the sense of how families, organizations, cultures or nations agree to share power. I am focusing on how that shared power impacts your beliefs, values and mental health. I am not advocating for one form of shared power over another, anymore than I would advocate that there is one right choice for mental health. I also realize that there are times and places where share power is not an option, such as a war’s battlefield or during medical surgery. In those situations, power and control are not shared. I am talking democracy related to how we live our shared lives, not the hell of war or the risks of surgery. I am talking shared powers versus isolating forces.
One more thing, before moving forward, I am using “era of isolation” in the sense of how individually and socially we see, validate and connect technologically to the world, including choice of leadership and social direction. We are leaving an “era of ignorance”, where we did not know the full extent that technology impacted our lives. Before that, we lived in an “Era of Illiteracy”, where we were not even aware or understood what technology actually is. It took millenniums to evolve technologically after the invention of the wheel and fire. It took centuries to advance technologically through harnessing electricity, fossil fuels and other energies. And now, it takes at most decades, and sometimes months, to technologically speed through computing and communications. We are moving so fast, that our technology isolation won’t last long, as we eventually choose to move forward into an “Era of Integration” or “Era of Incineration”.
In describing each Era, I intentionally selected to start with the letter “I”. Mostly for the fun of it. And also, because there is no I in team, but there is an “I” in everything or nothing. Teams share power, and the world is our ultimate team. And, so are family, community and culture.
The strength of democracy over autocracy is the difference between power versus force; trust versus mistrust; justice versus injustice, and shared empowering relationships versus isolating abusive control. Sharing power is a freeing and connecting experience.
Freedoms are for everyone. And if freedoms aren’t for everyone, then it is a privilege. And, the price of privilege is isolating. The more power and privilege, the more isolating. That’s how the power of privilege is balanced out by the connections of equivalency. When you share power, you have strength in numbers. When you seize power, you have strength by isolating control. You can’t have it both ways (all the power and all the connections) there is balance.
The concept that power can be an isolating factor intuitively makes sense if you consider the depth, diversity and quality of connections of the richest among us or everyone else.
This intuitive idea of a relationship between power, privilege and isolation is supported by research that reveals how socioeconomic level impacts interactions and connections. It states, “The most consistent finding across physiological, behavioural, and self-report measures was that people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds were more responsive to their discussion partners. Their physiological responses were closely linked to those of their partner and suggested they were paying more attention to how their partner was feeling or reacting. This was true regardless of whether they were paired with someone of similar or different status.”
Learning how to connect with and be responsive to others begins at home. The paths toward democracy or isolation being with family, and start with parenting. With how parents or adults shares their powers with children and interacts with society and the environment.
One key aspect of positive parenting is sharing power responsibly based on age, abilities, environment and responsibilities. If a child is given too much power, they struggle with developing validating connections and learning skills to realistically negotiate. With too little power, they embrace a sense of powerlessness and victimhood. Then, when the child grows up, they either shift to embrace the isolating dysfunctional role of their domineering parent(s) or continue in their passive childhood roles. That is, they grab a place at the table or remain on the menu. In contrast, with shared power, there is a continuous validated dialogue between the powerful parent and powerless child that shifts and grows dynamically throughout their life. With shared power, everyone has a place at the table, and no person is on the menu.
Democratically sharing power maximises empowerment for everyone. Yes, some have more power than others, but nobody is voiceless or powerless. In contrast, living in isolation, there are those who shout the loudest, but really, nobody is listening beyond evaluating the strength of its force or how that voice can serve their needs. Just to listen is the biggest challenge of democracy in an era of isolation. And listening or not will lead us forward to integration or incineration.
I hope you can you hear that.
Dane Jorento, MSW, LICSW is a speaker available for keynotes, seminars, and workshops on mental health, emotional well-being, trauma, ADHD, self-esteem, relationships, and sexual health. His expertise includes BCA Holistic Therapy, EMDR, and DBT approaches.