Reframing the Aim of a Humanizing Democracy
Countering Autocratic Dehumanization:
Recursive, Reality-Reshaping to Effectively Humanize Humanity
In a FB group i was invited to join, i asked its creator, Fred, about its purpose.
Fred said: this is a group I started because politics and religion have been combined by the Reich wing. So we need a forum to express the correlation between compassion and empathy in religion and in the political climate.
to which i answered: The group’s intent is a great idea. Reclaiming empathy and compassion as key to religion and people of faith in contrast to those who use religion as a weapon—dehumanizing women (i.e. defining their role as subservient and non-autonomous to men) and non white culture and differing communities such as LGBTQ.
What I notice in the posts, is the absence of rigor necessary for effective spread of the idea (those who agree, lacking sufficient interest or rigor in discourse)
i am curious how corruption of empathy and compassion in faith and religion spreads:
Are those who value faith easily corruptible when its institutions advocate for dehumanizing behavior,
or does their lack of rigor in discourse give those who advocate for dehumanizing the dominant voice?
because both are likely factors, as well as self-involvement with one’s own life diminishing passion and focus, though that’s also nuanced—sometimes personal struggle can ignite passion, if someone connects their own experience of hardship or exclusion to others’. The difference is whether self-involvement closes the circle inward (diminishing passion) or opens it outward in recognition (fueling passion).
Why dehumanizing dominates, is likely because of those who are drawn to power and wealth beyond one’s own comforts—they tend to be corruptible or easily bent into becoming willing or silent cohorts and those who less interested in excessive wealth and power accumulation tend towards ignorance or silence. And perhaps, people with power, expect so little from those who don’t covet power.
My interest: to understand the dynamics of how dehumanization is accepted by decent good people, so as to effectively counter dehumanization.
Countering efforts are visible because they are driven by effective communicators, who often focus on growing activist resistance. But this isn’t the only key to effectively countering dehumanization. Dehumanization is just the tendency of humanity, since history favors wealth and power-seekers as rulers.
But, the fact that American Democracy happened—with its vision of its founders (as stated in The Declaration of Independence)—is not just revolutionary, it’s evolutionary. Humans aren’t lemmings, though at times it seems that way. Understanding spreads not only through argument—it also propagates through recognition.
Also key to effectively countering dehumanization is how understanding what’s happening—fractally expands as populations grow: understanding itself can ripple outward. A single clear recognition—that dehumanization is not “natural” but manufactured—can replicate in smaller and smaller scales, shaping how someone sees institutions, conversations, even their own inner reflexes. Each layer of understanding becomes a template for the next.
So instead of only depending on persuasion (few voices trying to pull others in), the spread of understanding can unfold recursively—people noticing patterns in their own lives, then recognizing the same dynamics in broader systems. That’s often slower, but it roots deeper, because it reshapes how people interpret reality itself.
IMO reshaping how people interpret reality itself changes humanity itself. The effect is the revolutionary, evolutionary lean to humanizing humanity. Evolution itself moves: toward greater diversity, interdependence, and thriving complexity. Life doesn’t narrow down; it branches, adapts, multiplies. Humanizing democracy is an evolutionary lean—the very pattern of how life sustains and flourishes and multiplies.
Question for America is: will we remain an evolving democracy, because we can if we opt to.
© Leslie Bianchi
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