“Right Balance” Systemically: When Checks & Balances Break Down

In imagining into this second image, picture a small interdependent community. If some people are growing food, and others are making clothing, cooking implements, or tools, and still others have the skills to help build shelters – the community needs are met if there is mutuality and sharing. There need NOT be “power-over” relationships if all skills are needed, all members valued, and the wellbeing of the community or village is taken as the highest good, rather than any given individual needing to “thrive” above the others. If per chance more food were needed, perhaps more people would shift to that endeavor. If there are too many vegetables, but not enough cotton, or not enough sheep for wool, someone could shift to growing cotton or raising sheep. If, instead, more shelters were needed, community members would participate together (like to old-fashioned notion of “barn raisings”). There are, in such small communities, natural checks and balances, everyone’s needs are valued, everyone’s needs are met. No hierarchy need exist, even if one person has more experienced skills than another: the group would share knowledge, share skill-building, because it would be in the greater service of the community at large for all the needed skills to be represented. These two examples (within oneself and within a small community) exemplify instances where natural checks and balances can occur, and where no “power-over” relationships need arise. It is only when we as humans were beset by greed, and the realization that we could “take more than our share” by exploiting others, that natural checks and balances go out the window. If someone works himself or herself 10 hours a day, they get tired. If instead, something like slavery comes into being, or people start exploiting workers from third world countries paying them pennies per hour – then a person can exploit the labor of countless others and not get tired. Checks and balances from natural (internal) consequences go out the window. Greed and exploitation can go haywire. Power-over/ power-under relationships abound. This third illustration is an attempt to capture that phenomenon: