The Oppressor Within...Me
The Shift Within: How We End Oppression and Divisiveness to Create Liberation and Indivisibility for All
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The Oppressor Within...Me
While on this journey of discovery and creation, I found myself getting frustrated on many occasions wondering why more people weren’t making the shift away from oppressive and divisive power-over social systems more rapidly. It was around this time that a friend shared the book “Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds", by adrienne maree brown with me and I was introduced to the concept of fractals.
The concept of fractals refers to patterns that repeat themselves at different scales or levels of complexity. Fractals have also been used as a metaphor for understanding complex systems, where small interactions or patterns can have large-scale effects on the system as a whole. In the book, brown argues that fractals are a useful metaphor for understanding how change happens in complex systems because they demonstrate how small, interconnected patterns can have a big impact on larger systems.
She suggests that by paying attention to the patterns and relationships within systems, we can identify places where small interventions can lead to big changes. That’s when I had yet another epiphany…that the most impactful way for me to make the huge positive impact that I felt called to make in the world was to start with myself and focus on making a shift within me. This included noticing and naming the areas where I had already begun this process and being intentional about continuing to examine my thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors in order to continue shifting more rapidly.
When I think about the shift within me in regards to rejecting societal norms that are a result of power-over social systems I realized that it had already been happening for several years before I was aware of the term “power-over”. I had already made the decision to shift away from social systems like race, conventional education, and authoritative parenting because I could see and name those social systems and I realized that they were not aligned with my values.
However, I didn’t know at the time that I was transitioning away from systems of power-over to systems of power-with because I didn’t have that language at the time. When I did discover that language I was able to be more intentional about making that shift within me in many additional ways.
In time I began to expand on the language that I was using to guide my shifts. I went from saying “power-over systems” to saying “systems rooted in power-over and control”. I then articulated that I was shifting away from “systems rooted in power-over and control” towards “systems rooted in power-with and collaboration”. I used this language when speaking to others, on my podcast, and I also used it during my inner dialogues.
This would happen often in parenting scenarios when I would make a decision about something during an interaction with my children. Moments later I’d reflect and ask myself, “was that decision rooted in power-with and collaboration?” only to realize that it wasn’t and that I was acting out of my traditional authoritative parenting programming. This led to me apologizing to my children often over the years and learning to explain my reasoning while giving them more of a voice to explain theirs before collaborating to make a decision that we both could feel good about.
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