I recently had the pleasure of attending a presentation by Betty Martin on how we often allow ourselves to be coerced into something in the mistaken assumption it is consensual, and how we often misconstrue something we do to another person as something we do for them, effectively getting the giver and receiver precisely backwards. She presented a brilliant model of the power politics of personal relationships (including sexual politics) that can be generalized to represent the power politics of all relationships. Here’s the basic model:

The idea is that in any transaction in a relationship there is a giver and a receiver, and someone doing and someone being done to, but the giver and person doing are not necessarily the same person. When they are the same person, the giver/doer is a server, and the receiver/being done to is an accepter. When they are not the same person, the doer is a taker and the person being done to is an allower, but in this case it is really the allower who is giving (the gift of consent, or more) to the taker.

All of these relationships can be consensual. When I give someone a massage, I am the server (giver/doer) and the person getting the massage is an accepter (receiver/being done to). But when I steal a kiss without asking, I am the taker (receiver/doer) and the person I kiss is an allower (giver/being done to). My action, her gift. Provided it is consensual. It is possible to simultaneously or alternatively serve and accept, or take and allow. The green area in the chart is therefore called the Circle of Consent.

When any of these actions is not consensual (i.e. is coercive), the roles are actually different, as shown in the red area in the chart. If I am giving something and doing something to someone without their consent, I am a pusher and the person I’m pushing to is an addict. If I’m doing this against my own will, I am a martyr. Likewise, if I take something against another person’s will, I am a thief, or an assaulter, and the person I am doing it to is a victim, unwillingly giving to me. In a pathologically co-dependent relationship, it is possible to be simultaneously or alternatively pusher (or martyr) and addict, or thief and victim.

The challenge is to identify when what appears to be consensual (inside the green circle) is in fact coercive, when either one party or both parties misinterpret it (or pathologically try to portray it, to the other person or in their own mind) as consensual. The edge of the circle can be fuzzy, and may not be symmetrical. When there is clarity between both parties on who is doing, who is giving, and whether or not it is consensual, then the relationship is healthy and reciprocal. Without that clarity, it may not be.

Example: Two hours of non-stop oral sex, taking turns five minutes at a time, might appear to partner A to be a consensual and pleasurable alternating server/accepter transaction, but to partner B might seem to be a tedious martyrdom to partner A’s sexual addiction. Likewise, partner C’s recurring declarations of love for partner D, with the expectation of a reciprocal declaration or more, might seem to partner C to be an ideal reciprocal server/accepter transaction, but to partner D might seem obsessive and forced, to the point the reciprocal declaration or other expectation causes them to feel the relationship is a martyr/addict one. And partner E’s high expectations (say, for sex, or financial or emotional support, or unsolicited gifts) from partner F might allow thief/assaulter/victim or martyr/addict transactions to be perceived, by either partner E or F, or even both, as transactions within the Circle of Consent when they are not.

As useful as this model might appear, it requires the parties in a relationship to have a high level of emotional intelligence, courage, empathy, self-knowledge and self-awareness, to use it effectively. Those in coercive relationships are often in denial, or ignorant of what is going on, and even if they realize that someone’s behaviour is not consensual, they may not be able or prepared to change that behaviour if the emotional or other rewards of coercion are high.

As I studied this model I came to appreciate that it applies not just to personal relationships but to all kinds of economic, social and political relationships. Most business transactions are, ostensibly, two-way reciprocal server/accepter transactions: the seller is the server and the buyer the accepter of goods or services, and then the buyer is the server and the seller the accepter of money in return. Those in the gift economy trust that reciprocity will occur, eventually, without the need of money as immediate enforcer of that reciprocity.

But many people in volunteer and non-profit work burn out because what began as service evolves into martyrdom. Many businesses use additives to their products, oligopoly, and advertising, to push their customers into dependent relationships and even addiction. Employees allow employers to dictate and take a lot from them (control of their lives, how long they work, even where they live) because the reciprocal gift of job security seems fair, but often that security is illusory and employees become victimized wage slaves.

At a more global scale, the poor, the sick, struggling nations, farmed animals, the natural environment and future generations are all systematically victimized by war, theft, desolation, deprivation and other abuses by the rich, the powerful, war-mongering imperial nations, corporatists, polluters and greedy, thoughtless and idealistic short-termists. In many cases these thieves, assaulters and abusers genuinely thought they were engaged in consensual, reciprocal win-win taker/allower transactions. The mainstream media, for reasons that are complex, frequently encourage that misconception.

This is a fascinating model at all levels of application. But it suffers the same shortcomings of utility when applied at the larger social, political and economic level as it does when applied to personal relationships. It requires enormous honesty, courage, self-knowledge and self-awareness for people to get past denial of the coercive and destructive nature of the systems that industrial society has built, and which sustain us, for now, at our current level of economic prosperity. We mostly don’t know of and can’t imagine another, more consensual system, one based on fairness, reciprocity, openness, sustainability, responsibility, generosity and long-term thinking. Because modern corporations are inherently psychopathic, and because the existing systems are so global, endemic and entrenched, creating a level playing field where new systems could come to prevail is almost inconceivable.

Nevertheless, this model is a powerful way to think about power politics at every level, from personal relationships to global corporatism. It is a common framework that could be used to portray the perceived realities of relationships and transactions, in a way that can lead, eventually, to understanding, appreciation, and remediation of coercion. If only we’re all smart enough, and aware enough, to use it.

“And where will we hide, when it comes from inside?” — James Taylor

Colonization is a loaded word, depending on whether you are the colonizer or the colonized. Throughout the history of our civilization, colonizers (imperialists, conquistadors, missionaries and, most recently, globalization corporatists) have asserted that colonized people were “savages” who needed external rule imposed on them “for their own good”. It matters little whether such assertions were honest, well-intentioned and misguided, or blatant excuses for theft, murder and oppression. The whole world is now substantially a single homogeneous colony, a single culture imposed and enforced by political and media propaganda, economic coercion, and of course, brute force.

The world “colonize” is from the Latin (whose speakers were accomplished at it) meaning “to inhabit, settle, farm and cultivate”. This definition carries no pretense of doing anything for the benefit of the “colonized” peoples. It just means taking over the land and resources, with or without violence and displacement. The words “culture” and “cultivate” also referred strictly to farming activities until, a mere two centuries ago, their meaning was expanded to include the intellectual, political, economic and social activities of civilization.

Such is the malleability of the human mind and conscience, that colonization occurs, to a greater or lesser extent, at four different levels, and the fact that the more interior forms of colonization are less obvious and often sub-conscious merely makes them, and their effect, more insidious. The four levels, depicted in the chart above, are, reading from the outside-in:

1. External colonization — where people from one land move into and colonize another land (e.g. various recent invasions of Afghanistan; NAFTA)
2. Internal colonization — where a dominant culture undermines and exterminates another culture within the same area (e.g. the ongoing brutality that the dominant European culture subjects indigenous peoples to, worldwide)
3. Self-colonization — where a group of people undermines and exterminates diversity within their own culture (e.g. McCarthyism, groupthink and hazing)
4. Personal colonization — where an individual molds her/himself to better fit in with her/his group and/or culture

External colonization historically occurred when there was insufficient land to sustain a group. Boundaries were tested, and, in Darwinian fashion, the conflict was resolved in favour of the “fittest” — not the strongest, necessarily, but the group that could best “fit” themselves to the types of food and the carrying capacity of the disputed land. Most such conflicts were won by the incumbents, since they “knew” the land better, and since an easier solution for the invading group would be to manage their own numbers to adapt to the carrying capacity of the land they already were familiar with. The same is true for most wild species — it is in the best interests of all-life-on-Earth to avoid massive conflicts and instability, while introducing new variations that, in some cases, will improve “fitness” and resilience, even though they may create a temporary disequilibrium. Resilience is optimized by diversity, which is why, in the absence of catastrophe, evolution tends towards greater complexity and variety of life forms and “cultures”.

Sometimes, however, there are major natural catastrophes that produce sudden changes and extinctions, that may take a long time to find equilibrium again. The fifth great extinction, 65 million years ago, was the result of a massive meteor collision with Earth, which extinguished most of the life-forms on our planet and made possible the emergence of our weak and ill-equipped (relative to the dinosaurs) species. Then, some other unknown event about a million or so years ago knocked the Earth slightly off its axis and precipitated the Ice Ages. Our species’ (brilliant) response to this catastrophe was to invent hunting tools (the invention of the arrowhead and spear marked the dawn of the sixth great extinction), agriculture and civilization. And with these inventions came explosive population growth and the need for colonization. This colonization was assisted (and made more violent) by the discovery that our hunting tools could also be used as weapons against our own species. As our numbers continued to explode beyond sustainable limits, violent land conflicts accelerated. And as our inventions allowed us to move much faster much more easily and learn about life elsewhere, we discovered the need for “preemptive” colonization to prevent the peoples who might resent our invasion of them, or covet our wealth, from attempting to attack us. We also learned that we could colonize without physically occupying the land of the colonized — we could colonize economically or (with nukes or drones) militarily.

With the growth of civilization, colonization became the major economic activity of our species, and it has remained so ever since. But now that we’ve run out of new places to colonize (and space will, despite the dreams of the technophiles, never be colonized by our species, though the bacteria are likely to succeed at it). And, while we continue to recolonize areas that refuse to accept the dominant culture, we are now struggling with the challenge of dealing with the colonized survivors who cannot or will not “fit” into our culture. A popular solution to this challenge has been to exterminate them, and the number of languages disappearing every year on our planet attests to our success at this solution. Physically non-violent attempts at internal colonization, however, have been less successful. As convenient as it may be to blame indigenous peoples for the high rates of suicide, substance addiction, violent crime and unemployment in many of their internal communities and in our cities, these are all artifacts of internal colonization, the failed attempt to force people to adapt to a culture that is not, and can never be, theirs.

The way in which our civilization culture maintains internal order is through the exploitation of self-colonization. With the advent of language, and hence the ability to propagandize through control of the education systems and media, we can effectively allow groups to colonize themselves, to force their members to conform or be socially, politically, legally and/or economically ostracized. At this level it is no longer land that is the battleground of colonization, it is the real estate of the mind.

Despite my liberal upbringing, and being encouraged to think for myself, I was co-opted early (though uneasily) into participating as part of the political, social, legal, educational, technological, business and economic systems of my colony of civilization. It was not “the government” that co-opted me, not some conspiratorial clique or elite. It was the people all around me, the people in the groups I was born into and accepted myself as part of. I really believed that we had to work “within the system” to bring about change. I really believed that the forces that are leading our world to economic, energy and ecological collapse, could be reformed, changed, fixed, and that “together we could do anything”. I really believed that I, as a part of some imaginary “we”, could save the world. Everyone told me so. Everyone told me, when I was overcome by the darkness of depression, that I needed to pull myself out of it and get back to my responsibility to my communities, my society. There was a clear though tacit communication that if I were too radical, if I did not conform, or if I did not live up to my responsibilities, and let down the groups to which I accepted I belonged to, there would be dire consequences.

For the most part, this relentless peer pressure “to be part of the solution”, to accept responsibility, to work hard, to perpetrate all the nonsense about how this was the only viable way to live, was and is well-intentioned. My family and friends and co-workers and neighbours and the other people in my communities genuinely wanted me to succeed, to be happy, to be a part of them. I just needed to accept the terms of doing so. Self-colonization. Seven billion of us, all believing and doing what we’re told. Not by The Man. By the people we love, and trust. For our own good. Trust us, we know what’s best for you. You’ll never be able to get along with people, or get anything useful accomplished, if you think/talk/act like that. Get with the program.

So as I have had the opportunity to become more radical, as I have moved further and further to the edge, I have had to fight self-colonization every step of the way. When I acknowledged on this blog, after reading John Gray’s Straw Dogs, that I no longer believed it was possible to save our civilization, and that I now believed that civilization would collapse in this century, the fallout was enormous. I was labeled a “doomer” and much worse. Many readers assailed me for having “let us all down”. My readership is a fraction of what it was when I was spouting forth about the importance of knowledge management and the process of innovation and extolling happy green ideas. Each move further to the edge has been harder, and led to more push-back, expressions of anger and disappointment, pleas to “come to my senses”, and even threats. Poly, veganism, doing nothing. How dare I? Such sacrilegious talk is too radical, defeatist, “anti-social”. Even harder to take, my arguments are assailed as intellectually flawed, idealistic babble, positions that “wouldn’t survive logical scrutiny”. I was condemned as “unhelpful”. I was told what I was saying was just wrong. Dangerous to the integrity, energy and productivity of the group.  I must be tempered, brought back into the fold, or shunned.

This is where the Borg metaphor fails. The most powerful and persuasive propaganda, the most debilitating constraint, the most compelling and dangerous instruction — comes not from the top or the centre. It comes from our peers.

And finally there is personal colonization, that works integrally with the other three forms. It is the most insidious of all, because it is entirely within us. It is a part of who we are. It is the accumulation of gunk that we have acquired over a lifetime of accepting what we’ve been told, and wanted to believe. It is the self-inflicted propaganda of our own stories about who we are, about our place, about our popularity and loveability and where we belong. It is the terrible fear of being alone. It is the little voice that says “If so many people believe X, and I seemingly alone believe Y, how could I possibly be right?” Of course this is the same voice that allowed Germans to do nothing to stop Hitler’s atrocities. It is the same voice that allowed Stalin to kill 80 million and Mao 60 million. But it is a voice with power.

The four forms of colonization have made our civilization culture, for better and for worse, what it is. They have made it possible, and unsustainable.

And, until it blows apart, unstoppable.