Mystics and Groupies: Democracy vs. Dictatorship

A participant in the "Dharma Students' Bill of Rights' working group at the BG conference recently contacted me and shared an essay that she wrote about her experience of the event and her thoughts since the group.

Her thoughts are definitely worth some discussion, I believe.

Here is the link:

mysticsandgroupies.com/

It may be valuable for teachers who would like to build more "democratic" relationships to emphasize some of the elements from the essay in their teaching method. Suggestions:

- Make sure to let it be known that you don't have all the answers, and that it's ok to seek other sources of information. It may be obvious, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be said.

- Make room for student's critique and disagreement, and don't unnecessarily try to convince them of things. This could be problematic in paid teaching, where both the teacher and the student could feel that they must make sure the student gets their money's worth. I'm not sure what to do about that, suggestions? However, paid teaching has advantages, i think, in making it easier for the student to keep things at arms length, and may help make the student feel that they don't owe the teacher anything extra, making it easier to escape problematic relationships. I don't know, though.

An aside. Browsing the website, i came upon this wonderful article: Building Resistance: Tactics for Counteracting Manipulation and Unethical Hypnosis in Totalistic Groups
icsahome.com/infoserv_respond/info_educators.asp?ID=45219

This passage struck me (i had a short period of reading and experimenting obsessively with hypnosis, so i know a little bit about the subject):
"Hypnosis involves powerful transference. The induction process involves establishing and utilizing rapport, and hypnosis is perhaps first and foremost an interpersonal process (Fromm, 1979). Most subjects, after being hypnotized, feel closer, more trusting, and more positively about their operator than before. It is always more difficult to objectively assess someone (or what that someone says) after a powerful transference relationship has developed."
I suspect the same applies to some teaching techniques. Guided meditation in general uses hypnotic patterns all the time, and the same might be the case for other techniques, such as pointing out instructions and such things. I don't know much at all about transference relationships, but, you know, ping-pong noting, especially of the mahamudra sort, might create these things too (in addition to the building teacher-student bond)

Anyone who knows about this stuff care to comment?

also, this discussion from the blog seems important to me: mysticsandgroupies.com/2011/12/08/setting-the-stage-for-abuse/

Abusive relationships don't appear out of the blue. They usually start with the small stuff - requests for special treatment or favors, other boundary violations et.c.
This means that the teacher-student relationship should ideally include means to stop the slow escalation towards abusive relationships, the building up of excuses, the perception that this relationship is increasingly a "special case", towards which ordinary rules do not apply.
I don't think (no means an expert) that these things all that often start with with someone thinking (oh, i'm gonna start being abusive now). I think we are all at least a little vulnerable to getting a bit drunk on that feeling of the "special relationship".

At the risk of alienating people, I'm going to point out that in our culture and in many spiritual sub-cultures it's taken for granted that anything non-hierarchical, decentralized, or "open source" is automatically good, but that's not the case. The purpose of a teacher is to impart knowledge or skill to the student. This implies that the teacher has expertise or skill not already possessed by the student. So it is a hierarchical relationship, whether you want it to be or not. I don't think the goal should be to make the student-teacher relationship democratic. The goal should be to make it non-exploitative. Those are two separate things. No one individual in the student-teacher relationship "has all the answers", but clearly one individual in the relationship has some answers not possessed by the other, otherwise it wouldn't be a student-teacher relationship, it would be a different kind of relationship.

So I really don't like the "democracy vs. dictatorship" dichotomy. I don't think it applies here. I think the better dichotomy is between expertise and authority. While authorities get you to do things by force of personality or coercion, experts gets you to do things by being competent and giving good reasons for things. It's still a hierarchical relationship, but it's beneficial.

I really like that expertise vs. authority distinction. And i agree, it's rarely going to be an equal relationship. I have not assumed otherwise myself, and i haven't seen others do so either. I think the democratization options from the essay can apply usefully to expert-client relationships as well, to help avoid some of the traps that will always be present.

HI, I wrote the essay that Ron links to above, and I really appreciate your comments. Reading makes me think I failed a little with my essay though...I think the points you raise are completely accurate. Students would not seek out teachers if they didn't feel there was something to be learned that the teacher could teach. By democratic, I don't mean to suggest that all opinions should be given equal weight or consideration. As you pointed out, expertise is a real thing, and the expertise of a teacher should be valued, not minimized.

But living inside the idea of "one person, one vote" is the idea of equality, which I do think is critical. NOT equality of knowledge, or expertise, or skill, but a basic human equality that fosters mutual respect and care. Hierarchies and power differentials can and do exist between people who still consider each other equals...that's the foundation of democratic societies really. Not everybody has the same role or job, and some people are rightfully held up as experts, but every person has the right to be seen and heard as a whole person.

This very likely all sounds pretty abstract and possibly lame. To try and be more specific, I would say that in spiritual communities where this is *not* the case, students have a hard time saying anything negative. There is an unspoken feeling that, because the teacher is the expert, he is always doing a good job at teaching, and the students don't feel free to push back with difficult questions or even to just not like something. Students who are open about their struggles are quickly characterized as "resistant" or "just not getting it." Even if they are stuck, their experience is too easily dismissed.

Does that make sense?

" NOT equality of knowledge, or expertise, or skill, but a basic human equality that fosters mutual respect and care. "

This is, to me, the most critical idea of all - that people can have expertise without having a special right to hurt others!

It's really clear that the cultish power dynamic sets up a situation where the teacher projects all of their failings as a human and teacher, especially students not waking up, upon the student. The teacher owns none of it and the students are the scapegoat. That's why the cult teacher instictually starts isolating his/her students. Deep down in their heart they know they are wrong and they fear being caught out. So they wall off their members. Of course the worst thing would be for the students to leave, the teacher loses his scapegoats!

It makes sense. The point is to have a non-exploitative relationship between student and teacher and for the student to feel comfortable speaking up if something is not working or if there's something wrong.

I just don't see what's gained by calling it "democracy". There are so many ways relationships between people - and between student and teacher specifically - can be screwed up. A person doesn't have to be a "dictator" to be manipulative, to have bad boundaries, or to just be clueless about the impact they're having on another person.

I've been in activist organizations that were ostensibly democratic. We made decisions according to majority rule. But the personal dynamics were completely screwed up. Most of the people in the group actually had been in a cult previous to this, and the thing more or less functioned according to group-think. I don't think this is a strike against democracy. It just shows that lack of democracy is not always the problem.

Also, there are a lot of reasons a student might not feel comfortable speaking up that have nothing to do with a lack of equality. Some people are very assertive, some people are hardly ever assertive, and lots of people fall in the middle. Very often in relationships there's a stronger personality and a weaker personality. It's not always problematic, but when it is problematic, I'm not sure the categories of democracy and dictatorship always or often give us the means to resolve the problem.

All that being said, I do recognize that the word "democracy" resonates with people a certain way and seems synonymous with fairness. I personally prefer the words "fairness" or "consensual", since they seem to get at what we really want and more directly, but they're probably not as sexy as "democracy".

Wow Beta, that's the best and most succinct explanation of cult behavior I've ever read...thanks!

It's also a good description of how abusive families operate.