KEVIN CLEMENTS says we need a paradigm shift to a politics of compassion to save the world from domineering and authoritarian power.

The world is confronted by many challenges that cannot be resolved within states alone. Climate change, negative globalisation, economic vulnerability, social and environmental precarity, war, refugees, political corruption and high levels of alienation from political processes and institutions are driving state dysfunction and rising levels of political extremism all around the world.

Destructive Global Trends

The challenges of our time are global, and they are having a profoundly pathological impact on state systems and democratic politics everywhere.

In the first instance, they reflect and are producing deeply divided societies. For example, there have been few clear winners in many recent elections (UK, USA, Germany, New Zealand, Austria were all largely divided down the middle).

Second, there has been a deliberate cultivation of existential fear and anxiety by opportunistic leaders and their media allies. This has been used to justify the expansion of dominatory and authoritarian politics. (“Dominatory” refers to exchanges that result in the intentional or unintentional subordination of others and the development of persistent hierarchies based on age, race, gender or class.)

Third, against the social democratic trends of the late 20th century, a permissive environment has been created for the promotion of a politics of inequality and greed. The richest one per cent of the world’s population, for example, has seen its share of global wealth increase from 44 per cent in 2009 to 48 per cent in 2014 and more than 50 per cent in 2016.

Fourth, the protection of this global wealth has resulted in an expanded use of coercive diplomacy and military intervention with disastrous consequences for all the countries concerned.

So far, resistance to these trends has been reactive rather than pro-active and not well rooted in dynamics capable of challenging arbitrary and authoritarian rule. Because Left-Right politics have lost their traction since the end of the Cold War, many democracies have been caught in the politics of a paralysing present.

This is why it is critical to articulate social and communitarian spaces to generate forms of public imagination that are progressive, emancipatory and effective against ruthless power and dominatory politics.

To do this effectively requires an embrace of diversity, ambiguity and some degree of disorder. This is a critical counterpoint to the authoritarian imagination that prioritises political order and hierarchy in vain attempts to control a chaotic world. Authoritarian regimes are incapable of resolving complex transnational problems in an interdependent world because their intent is domination.

We need a fundamental paradigm shift.

Rationale for Change

The first step is to develop a rationale for ensuring that political imaginaries focus attention on how we can move from dominatory to collaborative power. If we are to generate a genuine paradigm shift from a notion of sovereignty based on “power over” others to one based on “power with” others, we must embrace value and normative systems capable of sustaining egalitarian, relatively non-coercive and integrative sensibilities. This means concentrating more attention on social rather than political sources of continuity, change, predictability and order.

Develop Reciprocity

The second step is to focus attention on what currently delivers unity, stability and harmony.

Reciprocity has been systematically isolated and marginalised from the realm of the political by those who want to argue the primacy of the state, yet it is the norm of reciprocity that holds most communities and societies together through time. Without it states would have to depend almost completely on their monopoly of force. Predictable social relationships are much more important than “imposed” political order.

Reciprocity is the glue that governs the millions of social exchanges that take place every day, most of which have nothing to do with the realm of politics.

The norm of reciprocity generates altruism among kin and non-kin groups; it limits selfishness and challenges freeloaders and dominators; it creates the sociological and social psychological basis for equality, integration and harmony and is capable of providing a critical frame for anti-authoritarian resistive politics. We need to link this fundamental social rule to what I call the politics of compassion.

Introducing Compassion

I believe compassion has the capacity to be a new political paradigm for an interdependent world.

It starts with compassionate citizens, who elect compassionate politicians capable of utilising political mechanisms toward more compassionate societies.

Its radicalism hinges on insisting that social (rather than economic and political) criteria be the major foci of political decision making.

It is inclusive rather than exclusive, egalitarian rather than hierarchical and it rests on sociation and relationships instead of domination.

It aims at resolving problems nonviolently, collaboratively, empathetically and altruistically.

Developing Compassionate Citizens

Compassionate citizens do not occur by accident — they need to be nurtured and rewarded. We must pay more attention to emotional intelligence.

Compassionate citizens should be encouraged to lead by example rather than direction and to focus on positive rather than negative sanctions in relation to social order.

Compassionate Politics

The promotion of compassionate politics should reinforce positive relationships, decrease the prevalence of toxic negative emotions and behaviour, increase optimism and hope, build resilience and energy levels, and counter fear-based politics.

Compassionate politics is loving kindness in action. It pays particular attention to health, education and welfare — key to life and societal happiness, and critical reinforcers of reciprocity. This is why welfare states have been so successful on most well-being indicators, even though these systems are not immune to authoritarian impulses if subject to the politics of fear.

But for a new, socially driven imaginary to succeed it must first analyse and negate politics and practices of domination everywhere. This means critiquing relationships of domination and subordination at the personal and social as well as formal political levels.

The #metoo movement is a wonderful example of women challenging patriarchal entitlement, harassment and dominant relationships in workplaces and in homes. It is around these kinds of movements that political respect is forged and compassionate politics become possible.

And there can be no compassionate politics that does not place equality and inclusion at its heart. This means a radical critique of the ways in which our social processes produce and reproduce patterns of hierarchy, power and privilege. But it also means giving priority to the weakest and poorest and an identification and reinforcement of individuals and groups who are willing to sustain the social fabric in the face of economic and political subversion.

We must focus on inclusive participatory processes capable of doing justice to the concrete experiences of those who are victims of domination, violence, marginalisation and humiliation. This requires personal transformation and a willingness to live courageous, hopeful and loving lives — critical ingredients for speaking “truth” to power, for challenging dominatory power, force and coercion.

John Paul Lederach in The Moral Imagination (2010) suggests practical steps for promoting the politics of compassion.

To learn the capacity to reach out to those we fear.

To transcend simplistic, dualistic thinking so that we might touch the heart of complexity, develop more empathetic consciousness and eliminate naming and blaming others for our own mistakes.

To practise imagining beyond what is seen — how do we develop new imaginaries suitable for the 21st century?

Finally, to risk vulnerability one step at a time.

To do this means quietly replacing the old paradigms with something new and ensuring that the risks we take will be transformative rather than ineffective. 

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 243 November 2019: 4-5