ConsciousPolitics.com endeavors to offer promising, plausible, and psychologically sound approaches to difficult issues in global politics - violence, terrorism, war, weapons of mass destruction and ethnopolitical conflict.
New Paradigm
Conscious Politics articulates the new, sustainable, survivable post-military paradigm. We are currently operating from a lethal paradigm, which does not contain the seeds of its own resolution. Increasing lethality of weaponry and technology, and availability to nonstate actors now render this paradigm unsurvivable. The military paradigm is characterized by a widespread, tightly held, hegemonic belief that it is universally true that the best or only way to solve problems is by domination and control through threat or use of violent force. Negotiations, sometimes considered as a preventive measure, often operate within this paradigm, and have limited success.
Best Case Scenario
For any given conflict, we can use scientific, creative, multidisciplinary, counter-intuitive, thinking to consciously design pragmatic optimal outcomes for the maximum number of people on all sides. Conscious Politics provides a forum for constructive ways of thinking about current events based on social sciences, such as political psychology, general systems theory, conflict transformation, and depth psychology, including knowledge of human development, attachment, trauma, identity, the Other, identity, fear, humiliation, gender, splitting of the psyche, projection, and gender. This approach is deeply informed by practice in clinical psychology, applying a healing, therapeutic consciousness to the political realm.
Liberation from Retaliation
Our goal is to apply relevant bodies of knowledge to transcend destructive cycles. Principles, knowledge and techniques from psychotherapy and family therapy and organizational development can be applied. Even with the best of intentions, conventional ways of responding to problems often provoke escalating cycles of violence and retaliation.
Consciousness:Law of Intended Consequences
While "the law of unintended consequences." also called blowback is considered inevitable, from a psychological perspective, negative unintended consequences are a result of psychological ignorance, false assumptions about the adversary’s psychology, failures to take the perspective of the Other, to account for potential reactions, and so on. To a great extent they can be predicted and prevented. We can say that the practice of psychotherapy, and Conscious Politics is based on the Law of Intended Consequences, which is a matter of Consciousness.
A Work Against Nature
We are naturally gripped by powerful emotional forces such as fear, rage, hatred, envy, humiliation, guilt, and a sense of moral violation. Acting out of these understandable emotions, and a sense of being right and justified usually makes things worse. Carl Jung, father of analytical psychology stated that consciousness is a work against nature, an "opus contra naturum." Conscious Politics embodies this work against nature, against the path of unconsciousness, impulsiveness, instinctive reactions, and ego-based responses.
The Nine Dot Problem - Our guiding metaphor is the Nine Dot Problem. The goal is to connect the nine dots with four straight lines without picking up your pen from the paper. It is best to try to solve this problem now before looking at the solution.
Second Order Change
Most strategies we use, such as deterrence, counter-terrorism, all forms of violent force, represent first order changes. A first-order change is that which occurs within a system, but in which the system itself remains unchanged. In second order change, the system itself and the nature of the relationship are transformed. For example, arms negotiations or SALT talks are first-order approaches, as they remain locked into a framework of assumptions about enmity and a militaristic approach to problems. All words and actions occur in the context of a competitive, usually hostile relationship. Everything is interpreted in an environment of mistrust. By contrast, a friendly visit to China with ping-pong diplomacy, a joint space venture, and Gorbacev’s unilateral initiative to withdraw from the nuclear arms race that ended the 50 year Cold War represent second order approaches, since both alter the basic nature of the relationship and all of the assumptions about that relationship. It allows for new and different interactions to occur. 100% of the material on this website represents second order thinking.
The Human Psyche
The fragile situation in the world today has come about by the workings of the human psyche. Automatic responses are "inside the box" and make the situation worse. Psychological processes that are very basic to our nature, especially the ways in which human beings create enemies are at the heart of global threats to security. By coming to understand these processes, we will be more able to transcend them. The results of our behaviors are challenging us to go beyond them, to be conscious. By going "outside the box" of our limitations, by expanding our frame of reference, we can reach a place where workable solutions may be generated. We can act consciously, carefully and deliberately to make choices that will enhance the quality of life on this planet.
Global Emergency
We are living at the most dangerous time in history, with global weapons trade, terrorism, ethnopolitical conflict, increasing access to fissile materials and weapons of mass destruction, and environmental degradation. The stakes are as high as they can possibly be. Exquisite consciousness is required In order to transcend such dangers.
ABOUT CONSCIOUSPOLITICS
- Political wisdom
- Political maturity
- Political intelligence, an extension of Daniel Goleman’s groundbreaking concept,Emotional Intelligence (1995)
- Transcendent Politics in which policies include and transcend particular interests, dualistic thinking, to consider optimal, win-win strategies with long-term benefit.
- Political Evolution. We must evolve new political attitudes and forms if we are to survive the forces of destruction.
Guiding Principles
- Conscious Politics is nonpartisan
- Conscious Politics is entirely off of the right - wrong axis. It transcends dualistic thinking of us - them, right - wrong, good - bad, right-left, liberal - conservative, and winning or losing. These polarizing positions are inside the box and are part of the problem. They deepen conflict, make it intractable, cause more trauma, and set back progress.
- All acts of violence, terrorism and war are capable of being understood. Understanding is necessary to correct root causes
- Root causes must be addressed.
- Win-win strategies produce most stable results. Inequality is inherently unstable and unsustainable over time. Defeat and oppression provoke asymmetrical responses, such as terrorism.
- Any strategy must contribute to tension reduction, fear reduction, mutual recognition, and violence prevention.
- Any strategy must be explored from the perspective of the Other, penetrating how it would be received and experienced by all parties in the conflict. This is done in intelligence training.
- Consequences of actions through time and social space must be anticipated and accounted for.
- Nonviolent forms of force may be strategically applied. Richard Wendell Fogg, Director of the Center for the Study of Violence claims we must use force - economic, political, psychological, spiritual, educational, moral, religious, social, and aesthetic forms of force, used in coordinated complex strategies. I have coined this as "Metaforce."
- Punishment, coercion, threat and use of force do not produce stable results and will eventually backfire. Concrete, physical approaches such as killing people and getting rid of "terrorist infrastructure" cannot resolve problems. Eliminating terrorists will not eliminate terrorism, and may increase it.
- Workable solutions are based on principles that are psychological, spiritual, economic and social.