PART 1 — From Everyday Trance to Compassionate Citizenship: Myth, Ritual, and Social Change

We often assume that politics fails because people lack information. But perhaps the problem isn’t so much about knowledge, but a trance state that the vast majority of us are living in.

Everyday life in capitalist society functions like an unrecognised ritual. It trains us — without our knowing — to see ourselves as separate individuals in a world of scarcity, competing for status, security, and more. Capitalist materialism is therefore not just a type of economy; it is what Joseph Campbell would call a myth — a collective belief system that shapes identity (“I am what I own; I am my profession and status”), evokes an emotional tone (background anxiety, comparison, drive), and patterns behaviour (compete, buy, get ahead). Because it feels like common sense, or just the way it is, we rarely notice it as a construct, an interpretation, rather than reality itself.

By way of contrast, traditions like Buddhism, while simultaneously reminding us that reality itself can never be apprehended, offer a different myth: one of interdependence. Here our true nature, rather than being a separate individual in a world of things is a dynamic, ever changing presence that is connected to all life. The feeling tone is one of compassion, loving-kindness, and equanimity; and the rituals — such as sitting meditation, chanting, sadhana, the Bodhisattva Vow — are technologies of attention that loosen the grip of the ego. These practices cultivate altered states that can, over time, become altered traits, allowing for a more stable attitude of care, connection, and spaciousness.

Unfortunately, it seems that contemplation and inner work are not enough to effect widespread social change. Buddhism can and does transform people, but it does not guide the dominant institutions of modern society. Mindfulness can even be co-opted as grease for the cogs of competitive capitalism, stripped of ethics in the name of secular neutrality. Compassionate people can be pulled into acting in un-compassionate ways by systems that prioritise and reward efficiency, profit, and getting ahead. So inner change without structural change is easily drowned out; but structural change without inner change is likely to be resisted.

This leads to a question of politics and social change. If a world oriented to compassion and wisdom is to emerge, can it rely on individual spiritual practice? I think it needs both inner change and structural change — people who live and think differently, and systems that support and make that way of living viable. Inner transformation without structural change leaves the neoliberal wheels turning; structural change without inner transformation could lead to rule-following resentment; maybe even a kind of moral Prohibition — better than nothing in limiting harm, yet ultimately unstable and unsustainable because people comply outwardly while resisting inwardly.

There is some good news — promising signs of social change already exist: for example, movements and media like Resurgence, Positive News, Sounds True, and the network of nonviolent activists, Extinction Rebellion. Many people are doing their best to live the values of care, reciprocity, and ecological responsibility. The issue doesn’t seem to be absence of potential or willingness; it seems to be that somehow not enough momentum gets gathered which is perhaps due to a lack of joined-up coordination. You could say we have plenty of healthy cells but not yet a whole body that can act with real impact. It seems improbable that small concentrations of altruism will ever pose a significant challenge to the economic and political status quo.

“Joining it up” doesn’t mean creating a master plan. Its probably more like slow, relational weaving of co-emergence: mapping what already exists, people gathering across differences, building trust, and trying to work together. Something like this will require time, energy and roles—we probably need people whose job is simply to connect others. Without at least modest funding for this kind of relational infrastructure, everything is likely to remain fragmented, voluntary, and fragile.

For me, this is where personal meets political. Such unglamorous work involves boredom, patience, disappointment, and the risk of failure. My son’s common complaint — “I’m bored”—becomes my teacher. Boredom, as Chögyam Trungpa said, can be a royal road to awakening — if we are willing to stay with it rather than zoom off into distraction. My own strong preference for inspiration leaves a gap: I love creative, exciting work, but meaningful change also calls for unexciting graft — trying to find collaborators, writing and following up emails, waiting, trying to get the hang of social media, failing, and trying again. Perhaps this reveals a different facet of the Bodhisattva Vow. Not as heroic sacrifice, but as a spacious willingness to include boredom, disappointment, and failure — for the benefit of all beings. Transcend and include it, as Ken Wilber puts it.

In the light of these reflections, politics is not only about policies and procedures, but about a collective state of mind from which we act. Politics, we can see, is also about a myth-making, or myth sharing — helping to shape how the collective imagine what life is all about, what we value and what is possible.

A society aligned with interdependence would of course not be without its problems and struggles, but it would make compassionate responses structurally sensible rather than heroic; corporate kindness the standard rather than the exception.

Positive change begins then, not with perfect plans, but with a mind that can sit with what is difficult, boring, or disappointing — and still keep doing the right thing. A calm, slightly sad, and tender stance could be the fertile ground from which a more compassionate world can grow.