Domination Systems

Domination systems as revealed by language

Marshall Rosenberg describes a domination system as follows:
"...By systems I mean governments, organizations, institutions that regulate human affairs. In The Powers That Be and
Engaging the Powers, theologian Walter Wink talks about domination systems as ones in which a few people control
(many) to their own advantage. In domination systems you have to train people to think in ways that support the system, so
they fit the system.
Domination systems require:
1 Suppression of self
2 Moralistic judgments 3 Amtssprache (This expression was used by Nazi officials to describe a
bureaucratic language that denies choice, with words like: should, have to, need to, got to, must and ought.) 4 The
crucial concept of deserve"
These 4 characteristics of domination systems explained as revealed in the language we use:
1. Suppression of self - meaning denial of your own feelings and needs. Before exposure to Rosenberg's work in
nonviolent communication, I had great difficulty revealing how I was feeling and what I was needing. I lacked a language
for feelings and the ability to ascertain what I was needing. I was not alone. Once, I asked a psychologist, who I presumed
would be an expert in this area "How do you feel?" His reply was "I feel fine." I asked him to be more specific, and to use
some feeling words, because I said that I wanted to learn how to identify my own feelings more precisely and would like
his assistance. He was unable to answer my question, so I told him that this was going to be my last appointment with him.
I then asked him again how he felt, and you know what his response was? He said "I feel fine," but the look on his face was
not congruent. In fact, he got rather angry with me.
The majority find it hard to express feelings and needs because we got educated by society to ignore them so we can
become an interchangeable part in a vast money making machine, where feelings and needs dont get considered important.
In a domination system, the language of feelings and needs becomes unnecessary, only obedience to authority. My boss just
wants me to come to work and do the job. If I don't feel like it, well too bad because plenty of people waiting in the wings
to take my place will do it.
2. Moralistic judgments - when we judge another person as wrong or bad when they do things that do not agree with our
values. If you say to a person "You are selfish" or "You are a lazy good for nothing bum," "You are neurotic" "What you
did is wrong," "You are too fat," you are making a moralistic judgment. Insults, put downs, labels, name calling, criticism ,
comparisons or diagnoses form moralistic judgments, and you can find lots of other examples of this kind of language on
"Discouraging words."
Now how did moralistic judgments become so widespread. I think it started out with our being taught to classify. In
Nisbett's book "The Geography of Thought," in it you can see an illustration: a drawing of a chicken, labeled A, and a
drawing of grass, labeled B. Underneath the two drawings gets found a drawing of a cow, and the question gets asked:
"What goes with this: A or B. Researchers found that American children linked cow with chicken since they were both
classifiable objects belonging to the same "taxonomic" category. The Chinese children said the cow and grass go together,
because "the cow eats the grass." In the Western tradition traceable back to the ancient Greeks, children get taught to
classify objects according to rules, while in the Eastern tradition, children get taught that things connect to other things, and
so they look for relationships. I have even heard that the Orang Asli, an nonviolent aboriginal people of the Malay
peninsula, do not have the word "to be" in their language and so they cannot even perform the classification act itself!
(Alfred Korzybski also thought certain uses of the verb "to be" lead to errors in thought. His most famous line: "the map is
not the territory.," which I first learned from Gregory Bateson's "Mind and Nature.")
Once you view the world in terms of categories, then labeling things in that category as being bad seems but a short step
away. Labeling by the dominant members of society acts as a form of oppression. For example, the DSM-IV has many
categories of mental illness, and the psychiatrist who makes the diagnosis, ie, the judgment, has the power to determine

your fate. Generally of mental illness gets an accepted view as a biochemical imbalance in the brain, treatable with drugs.
The psychiatrists in power in concert with the pharmaceutical companies, like this interpretation. But another viewpoint
exists. After psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, wrote the book "The Myth of Mental Illness," he was marginalized by the
psychiatric establishment, as recounted in an essay by Ronald Liefer. According to Liefer: "The psychiatric repression of
Thomas Szasz exists as a symptom of the rise of the State-Science Alliance--the ascendance of the ethics and technology
for managing and controlling people and the simultaneous decline of the ethics of individual freedom, dignity, and
responsibility. See this short video entitled "Psychiatry: No science, no cures". According to Marshall Rosenberg "All
diagnoses happen via tragic expressions of an unmet need."Jan Hunt has also argued in "Subjective Vs. Objective Labels"
that the use of subjective labels, as psychiatric diagnoses, lead to unfortunate consequences of self-fulfilling prophesies.
more...
3. Amtssprache: bureaucratic language or language denying choice: When Adolph Eichmann was asked, "Was it difficult
for you to send these tens of thousands of people their death?" Eichmann replied, "To tell you the truth, it was easy. Our
language made it easy." Asked to explain, Eichmann said, "My fellow officers and I coined our own name for our language.
We called it amtssprache -- 'office talk.'" In office talk "you deny responsibility for your actions. So if anybody says, 'Why
did you do it?' you say, 'I had to.' 'Why did you have to?' 'Superiors' orders. Company policy. It's the law.'"
If you say to yourself, "I drink, because I am an alcoholic," your self-talk combines Amtssprache and moralistic judgment
because you deny responsibility for your choices by labeling yourself as an alcoholic, a kind of tautological self-fulfilling
prophesy.
I value freedom. This statement makes a value judgment, and a statement of a need, distinguishable from moralistic
judgment, which implies right or wrong. Freedom means I take responsibility for my choices because I choose to do the
things I do. Problems come when taught from an early age, out of awareness, that do not have freedom, despite words to
the contrary. Domination systems want to fool you and trick you into believing you have freedom, yet meanwhile have you
serving them. In actuality, "You are free, but you just don't know it!" See a webpage on this topic of freedom.
4. Language of Deserve: "I came in on Saturday to work, and deserve to be paid overtime." A statement combining a
moralistic judgment and deserve thinking exists as typical in our present retributive justice system: "He did something
wrong and deserves to be punished," in contrast to restorative justice. Domination systems have us believing that people in
positions of judgment, power and authority can punish or hurt others because they believe they "deserve" it, but in reality,
this exists as a way for them to use their positions of power and authority for their own benefit.
Deserve thinking also leads to the language of demand and coercion as in "I demand to be paid." When someone holding a
position of authority over you, like your supervisor, asks you do to do something, invariably, it gets interpreted as a
demand. Saying "no" risks the charge against you of insubordination, which would elevate your chances of getting fired, a
frightening experience to contemplate. Interestingly, in the aboriginal group called the Semai,(part of the Orang Asli from
this map), known for their nonviolence and fun loving attitudes, saying no gets made very easy. The children of Semai get
taught from an early age, the concept of "bood." If a parent asks a child to do something and the child replies "I bood," in
other words, "I don't feel like doing that," the matter gets closed. The parent never tries to force or coerce the child to do
something it does not want to do! As a consequence, Semai have a nonhierarchical society. With no formal leaders, no
police, courts or government and there violence does not occur! Unfortunately, this nonhierachical society cant defend
against domination systems, such as corporations, which decimate their tribal lands.
They say that the language we get taught prepares us for the society we will live in. Language having the above four
characteristics prepares us to live in a domination system where a few people (largely hidden from view) will control the
large majority. I am not satisfied living in such a system. It does not meet my need for fairness. To change the system, we
need to first change ourselves and the way we think about things. If the language just described leads to violence, then this
suggests that learning to speak in the opposite manner will lead to the opposite result. In other words, using nonjudgmental
language that reveals our feelings and needs, and making clear requests to fulfill those needs. I have started writing my
own website on Nonviolent Communication but I sure have a lot to learn!
We learn to speak this language from birth, and in so doing, our alienation from each other happens completely out of
awareness. We accept our loneliness as a natural state, when really not so. I have provided glimpses of other types of
language systems used in another society, with the hope of planting a seed in your mind that other ways of living exist. But

this insight regarding language may only be the tip of an iceberg. Imagine this: we hold no awareness of and may never
hold awareness of the extent to which our language limits and constrains our very way of thinking.
Origins of Domination systems
So how did this state of affairs came to be. Domination systems, dominator cultures, and hierarchical societies arose at the
time of the Domestication revolution. approximately 8000 BC. According to this timeline, "The availability for the first
time in human history of a dependable food supply ...made it possible to support larger societies. .... food surpluses became
common.... freed some workers to do other forms of work, such as crafts leading to the division of labor. Surplus food and
crafts were traded with others. (Trade) Durable goods could now be saved and some people accumulated more than others.
(Accumulation of valued goods) People now had possessions worth fighting over. (Feuds and wars over possessions).
Captives from battles were forced to do less appealing work. (Slavery) Some people accumulated much over time while
others accumulated little. (Inequality increased). The wealthy wanted to pass their benefits on to their children. (Wealth
became hereditary) Wealth and power became concentrated in the hands of a few. (Power becomes concentrated and chiefs,
kings, and feudal society emerged). With the agricultural revolution 5500 BC "The invention of the plow drawn by animals
made agricultural production vastly more efficient than before permitting far more land to be farmed by fewer people. This
resulted in an even greater food surplus. It also freed far more people for other types of work, creating an even greater
division of labor. Jared Diamond details some of the additional specifics of the process.
According to Walter Wink, since the time of Babylon (1250 BC): "What we have today comes from stories that the rulers
of domination societies told each other and their subordinates called the Myth of Redemptive Violence. It enshrines the
belief that violence saves, that war brings peace and that might makes right. It exists as one of the oldest continuously
repeated stories in the world."
Adam Smith gets credited with promoting the modern version of "division of labor." Previously, division of labor meant
some people worked on the farm, while others specialized in making various goods, but the craftsperson made the item in
its entirety. In its modern form, division of labor means that many workers work on the same item, each rapidly performing
a small simple repetitive operations on a production line. However, if you read his book, Wealth of Nations (1776), you
will find that he actually denounces this form of division of labor. He wrote that it would make us "as stupid and ignorant
as it is possible for a human creature to become." Personally, I do not want to become like this, but those in power in a
domination system love the idea! "Division of labor" says in another way "divide and conquer" because now no one worker
knows even how to make the item in its entirety. Because each step was simple and a worker was easily trained, the
workers themselves became an interchangeable part of the production line and easily replaced if necessary. The worker
could now be paid less and so became even more powerless, and essentially a wage slave of the dominant few. Mohandas
Gandhi said "Poverty is the worst form of violence."
This practice of division of labor even invaded the elite Universities in America so that the brightest students became
interchangeable parts and how this happened gets described in my webpage "On Education."
Corporate capitalism betrayed Adam Smith so that even the whole factory now exists as an interchangeable part. Even if
the workers of the whole factory do not feel like doing the work, well, another factory in another country will willing do it
as cheaply or even cheaper. And the history of how large corporations in America built their enterprises on the backs of the
poor, gets explained in many of Noam Chomsky's writings, such as in this interview "On violence and youth."
The machinery of domination systems (to be expanded)
Death
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War" To insure his army would be obedient and follow orders, he would kill the first soldier who
stepped out of line, and after that, he did not have any problems with the rest of them.
Torture
Punishment
Imprisonment

Surveillance
Advertising/Propaganda: Manufacturing consent (Chomsky, Foucault)
Foucaldian quotes from Deconstructing the Election.
"Foucault was a philosopher of history who posited, basically, the impossibility of achieving an objective and neutral interpretation of a historical
event or phenomenon."..."--the official interpretation--must have been imposed by the exercise of political power"
"... different groups construct different realities, different 'regimes of truth,' in order to legitimize and protect their interests."
"A final Foucauldian note. Foucauldian theory holds that the way of the rich and powerful will prevail, the less powerful or powerless will lose out
(which is partly why the theory has been embraced by the left as a successor or adjunct to Marxism, and is so abhorred by the right). "

Learned helplessness:
Institutional racism
Discouraging words
FOGS: I like the mneumonic FOGS for the words: Fear, obligation, guilt, shame, to remind myself that I don't want to be running my life motivated
motivating behavior based on FOGS. Why would I want to run my life doing things out of fear, obligation, guilt or shame?) Joseph Campbell said
something about doing everything as "play"

The antidote (to be expanded)

Nonviolent communication
Bibliography
Foucault, Michel (1975) Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison.( transl. Alan Sheridan) (1995) 2nd ed NY:Vintage
books.selections: torture, panopticon
Chomsky, Noam (1994) On violence and youth
Diamond, Jared (1997) Guns, Germs and Steel, The Fates of Human Societies...
Korten, David C. (2001) When Corporations rule the world. 2nd Ed., Kumarian Press.
Nisbett, Richard E. (2003) The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why
(NY:Freepress)pg 141.
McCormack, Win (2001) Deconstructing the Election in The Nation
Liefer, Ronald, (1998) The Psychiatric Repression of Thomas Szasz: Its Social and Political Significance
Marshall Rosenberg (1999) Anger and Domination Systems
Smith, Adam (1776) Wealth of Nations
Szasz, Thomas (1961) The Myth of Mental Illness
Wink, Walter (1992) Engaging the Powers:Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, Minneapolis: Fortress
Press.
Wink, Walter (1999) The Myth of Redemptive Violence, in The Bible in Transmission.