The end of Dictator Gaddhafi and the source of Dictatorship
- Oct, 20 2011
- By Kamyar
- Featured, Reflections
- 2 comments
Just a few minutes ago I heard the news about the death of Muammar Gaddhafi, previous dictator of Libya. Staring at the images on the BBC news channel showing the people of Lybia celebrating in the streets, which is completely understandable, I felt an urge to lit a candle for his soul.
Having lived a life that has been affected by the dictatorship in my own homeland Iran, and through continuous reflections on the source and nature of the dictatorships, I have come to see it as a process or a way of being sourced from a certain level of consciousness. Seen within that frame, the question of dictatorship shifts from focusing on the political power structure or the people in that structure, to the consciousness level that the whole society operates at.
In the global Presencing classroom, Otto Scharmer talks about the cycle of Absencing, which provides a clear language to communicate where the process of dictatorship is sourced from. In this class, he basically distinguishes between two ways of facing disruptive challenges: Presencing and Absencing.
With Presencing we connect to the issue with open mind and open heart. Letting go of what we already know, we notice the new information that does not match our current model of understanding the world. We step into a field of not knowing. And then with open heart, we start to feel the issue the way it’s felt by the “others.” In another words, we bring down the walls standing between us and the others, and start sensing the issue as if we are all one field. This way of connecting will completely shift our perception from seeing as a part to seeing from the whole, which will lead us to access a new level of understanding ourselves and the world. A new level of consciousness.
The second way moves in the opposite direction, which is referred to as Absencing. In this way, we hold on to our current understanding of the world and stay blind to the messages behind the discomforting challenges we are faced with. Attending with a closed heart, we label the other as enemy, evil, stupid, or problem, which are all about building thicker walls between us and the other. This way will lead us to acting from one single truth; my truth, which is also referred to as fundamentalism.
With a closer look, any dictatorship is simply the Absensing cycle being magnified to the scale of the state-wide-power. In that sense, the dictatorship is NOT sourced from a dictator, or a group of people in the political power structure. The Absencing cycle can be easily noticed in all the levels of our “civilized” societies, starting from our families and close relationships, to groups and organizations, and all the way up to the relationships between nation states. The Absencing cycle is an essential element of the consciousness level that the majority of humanity is operating at. It is deeply woven into all the levels of our societies.
In that sense, all a dictator does is mirroring and magnifying this inner dimension of our societies. This is all Saddam and Ghaddhafi did unconsciously, and that is what Ali Khameneie does in Iran, which in essence is not very different from how the European Union and World Bank are dealing with the Greece situation, or the American government with the Occupy Wall Street movement.
With all that, in order to walk away from all the dictatorships we have created around us, we need to tend to the source of the fractal, the basic model that is fractaling in all directions in different scales. What really needs to die is not Muammar Gaddhafi, or Ali Khamenei, since the model will still be present in all the levels of our social life. A real change will happen when each and everyone of us start to shift our way of relating to the world around us, from Absencing to Presencing. Of course that is no easy job when it comes to practicing beyond words. But if we truly want to live in a world free of dictatorships that is the ONLY way. We simply can’t run away from this responsibility anymore.
With that knowing, I am sitting with a candle in my room, asking for blessing for Muammar Ghaddhafi’s soul which was not separate from our collective soul. May he rest in peace.
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Aydin
Thank you for sharing your view. I believe that everyone needs to find her own dictator within herself. Dictator must be awaken and then brought to our attentions.
Yesterday I read a quote which pretty much sums up all my comments. Ronald Siegel says “What we resist persists”.
John
Thanks Kamyar!