Reading Social Interactions

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Often books about oppression, privilege, and diversity present sociological and economic data to support the idea that some people are advantaged at the expense of others. Such information is critical to know and to understand. However, we assume our readers are not in need of proof about the reality of oppression. Reading Social Interactions

Some books explore these dynamics by focusing on a single life, describing an individual’s story in the context of whatever mixture of social memberships they hold and the oppression and/or privilege that accompany these memberships. These stories can help us feel the reality of oppression and privilege, share in someone elses pain and anger, and help us develop Empowerment and Awareness skills. Some life stories can show what it’s like to live beyond Inclusion, to challenge oppression with grace and energy.

In this book, we use images, metaphors, and brief stories to talk about oppression and privilege in terms that we can understand with our bodies, hearts, minds, and spirits. Dr. Nieto developed some of these metaphors and images, while some refer to other sources such as books and movies. Some stories come from friends and colleagues who’ve generously allowed us to use their experiences.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could read a book and through its pages come to full consciousness? Have you ever given a book or movie or article to someone else and they didn’t read it? Or, they read it, saw it, heard it, but it didn’t have the same impact on them as you hoped it would? Oppression is difficult to talk about, to explain, to understand. Language fails us. The models and methods in Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment rely on the associative, imaginal, metaphoric mind. Images can be more complete than words alone. They can bypass barriers to understanding through mechanisms like resonance – that sense that something fits or rings true. Reading Social Interactions

You’ll notice that this book uses many metaphors to talk about oppression. Oppression is described as a river that flows only one way, yet it’s also an ocean that fills every part of the world with its cold, salty water. Oppression feels like a birdcage that holds Target group members inside a small container, but it’s also like a suit of clothes that Agent group members wear. Oppression can be like “the Matrix,” (Wachowski & Wachowski, 1999) an inhuman system that sucks life force from people and uses it to destroy the earth, and it can be a theatrical role that requires people to play different parts. Metaphors offer glimpses, sometimes indirect, of what oppression is like. No one metaphor says it all. The choice of metaphors – in a training setting, for example – is a function of timing, the emergence of co-created meanings in the moment, somatic signals given by participants, and many other elements. Hold and use the metaphors gently. You will likely have some favorites and will surely evolve many of your own.

Our human capacities for understanding are enormous. When we use only our literal, sequential, narrowly rational mind, we understand ideas in a linear, narrow way. Using this mind, we check if things are true or false, real or made-up. We can’t help but check concepts against our own lived experience. When we use more of our mind’s capacities, we are available to deep feeling, vivid imagination, and insights that encompass much more than true/false. We can even hope to glimpse realities well outside our own lived experience. Metaphor, imagery, and story allow us to access these larger and wider ways of knowing. We invite you to engage with these images and metaphors using all of yourself.

Reading the world like peeling an onion

We are working here with the metaphor of reading, as Paulo Freire (1985) invoked when he invited us to read the world. Picture a set of reading glasses with extraordinary lenses, allowing a person to see at three depths into the social world. Like other metaphors in this book, this three-layer idea is a construct, a set of tools that you can add to the tools you already have. In the beautiful film Northfork (Polish & Polish, 2003), the magical character Happy, played by Anthony Edwards, wears a set of glasses with multiple lenses and throughout the film he’s constantly flipping them around. If you can, imagine lenses like that.

Picture an onion with three layers. Your glasses have a lens for each layer, which we use to analyze social dynamics. The layers of the onion are, starting from the outside: Status, Rank, and Power. People often use these terms as if they were interchangeable, but here we’ll use these terms to denote different things.

Power, the deepest layer, has to do with things like wisdom, source, and will. Rank, the second layer, relates to our social memberships. We all have multiple group memberships; some bring social privileges, some bring social marginalization, and some are neutral. Status, the outer layer, is a question of style, wherein we operate as either “above” or “below)’ All three of these layers are active all of the time.

This model allows us to make sense of complex interactions, by focusing on just one moment at a time. When we read a slice in time, like a short scene in a movie, a frame of conversation at work, a thought, even a single word – we can observe three levels of dynamics among participants. Understanding a narrow slice won’t totally explain collective experience, but deeply seeing what happens within and between individuals in key moments is useful.

Layers of the onion

The outer, most readily available layer of the onion we call Status. Easy to observe from the outside, Status has to do with style of interaction. Status may be high or low in any given moment, and almost any individual can take a high Status or low Status position at any time. Status is slippery, labile, constantly changing. In the drama of human interactions, we observe Status play – a kind of performance. It can be changed by choice, can be predictable, and is central to our enjoyment of story and humor.

The next layer in, Rank, is more difficult to observe. We can choose whether to take a high or low Status position, whereas Rank categories are socially ascribed (assigned) memberships, not self-chosen. Status will shift often and easily. Rank categories are usually fixed and resistant to change. Status play is two-directional while Rank is one-directional. Agent Rank brings access and privileges, and Target Rank carries marginalization. With a little bit of attention, Status play becomes obvious. While Rank categories have implications all of the time, in most interactions we tend not to be aware of them unless a specific incident brings them to consciousness. Status play is visible and performative, but Rank dynamics are automated and impersonal: Rank will often act through us without our knowing it.

Puppet Robot Flesh

The Status layer is like strings on a puppet, completely attached and reactive to what other people do. The Rank layer is robotic; our sensations are blunted by hardened surfaces; our perceptions are filtered through well-programmed layers of socialization; someone else has the remote and is in control, With Power we shed the strings, burst out of the robot, and what’s left is skin and flesh – authentic and immediate.

Layers of the Onion, Continued

The core of the individual, at the innermost layer of the onion, we call Power. If Status is obvious, and Rank systematic yet unseen, Power is hard to observe directly but undeniable when present. Power encompasses strength, grace, resilience, and equanimity. When we have access to our core, we evidence consciousness of Status and Rank – we have a relationship to them. One way to think about Power is that when we initiate from the Power core, we are most ourselves. We reveal the person we really are, rather than being remotely controlled by Rank roles as if robots, or simply reactive to Status play like puppets on a string.

Using our special glasses, one set of lenses shows you ever-shifting strings in a constant Status dance of complementarity, up/down, high/low. Another, much finer set of lenses reveals people acting out their ascribed Rank roles as members of Target groups and Agent groups. Your most authentic, purest glance perceives Power: divinity in each person, the inevitable “I thou,” a flame inside each person, all part of one fire. Reading Social Interactions

Power

We use the word power in a specific way, so clarification is in order. The word power often describes power-over or control. Power-over is real, and it is important to observe and discuss the workings of force in the world. Here, we want to distinguish power-over, which usually arises from fear, inadequacy, or greed, from the core of Power in the center of each human being. We are reclaiming the word Power to arouse in the mind an image of being tapped in, being connected to something larger than ourselves, being hooked up to a transcendent source. This kind of Power manifests in inner Power, Power-to, Power-with, and Empowerment.

Our assumption is that when we come from our center, when we are Powerful, we are our truest selves. We move in the world connected to peace, centeredness, strength, awe. When we have access to the core of Power, the world and how we see people changes. We feel hope.

Why is it important to start here?

The work of challenging oppression, facing the suffering that oppression brings to the world, knowing the ways we ourselves participate in systems of oppression, can be heartbreaking, It can bring us to our knees. It hurts. Among people who work to bring about change in the world, we often hear the phrase – “I won’t see it in my lifetime.” We feel grief, loss, discouragement, and sometimes helplessness. However, the very drive to change the world for the better is an expression of Power. Through the resources in our deepest core, we find strength and groundedness. Surprisingly and randomly we find ourselves handling the toxic stuff of oppression and the fragile stuff of liberation. There is mystery here. A saying attributed to Margaret Mead (2010) tells us: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” The committed individuals she describes are persons with practiced access to their Power core.

Our discussion of the Power core so far has hinted at what some call spiritual Power.

Another facet of Power is psychological Power. The psychologically Powerful person puts their suffering to work. When bad things happen, the psychologically Powerful person makes the most out of it. Pain is a teacher. Heartbreak enlarges us. It can increase our potential for healing rather than leaving us ruined. We are made resilient by suffering. Reading Social Interactions

Psychological Power is evidenced in the capacity to see many sides of a story. It surfaces in compassion for the person who annoys us. It sends our hand up to say yes to great challenges in spite of risk and suffering. Psychological Power is marked by a sense of wholeness and coherence, even in times of great pain. When you find your sense of you even in the midst of sorrow, you are exercising psychological Power.

Exercise: Person of Power Visualization

To get a sense of what Power is, think of someone you know, or remember, or have read about, or can imagine – a person who meets all these criteria:

They have equanimity, wisdom, clarity, ruthlessness

They exhibit relentless love

They have unfathomable compassion

They can hold not just two sides of an issue, but many sides

They use the idea of seven generations – thinking of seven generations ahead, seven generations back, seven layers of significant differences to the side, seven levels of evolution above themselves, and seven levels of evolution below themselves

When they walk into the room everyone’s best self can come forward

When you talk to them you experience being totally accepted

This person brings forth in you a strong desire to be the best that you can be. Around them you feel simultaneously exposed (as if they can see through you) and forgiven or blessed. At times it seems this person’s sheer presence contributes to the resolution of conflicts and contributes to the emergence of a harmonious environment. They have a different sense of humor that involves laughing with instead of laughing at. You might feel loved by this person, or feel love around this person. You might feel admiration, respect, and a deep sense of generosity of spirit.

Once you’ve formed this picture in your mind, imagine that this person is behind you, as if watching over you. Feel this person extending blessing to you in your endeavors, backing you up in your work. Notice how you feel being in the presence of that person. What is it like having them on your side, in your corner, backing you up? You may sense an opening of your heart center and a sense of connectedness.

As you read, from this point forward, when you see the word Power, let it remind you of this feeling. You can invoke this person of Power to back you up whenever you want to, simply by saying their name or envisioning them in your mind. Reading Social Interactions