Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book…
37 minute read
Chapter 2
The views expressed below on safeguarding are the personal views of the author and should not be assumed to represent the views of other members of the Triratna Buddhist Order or any organisation run by members of the Order. Despite our personal views, all order members undertake to abide by the Safeguarding policies of the Buddhist organisations in which we are active.
Safetyism
‘Safety is obviously very important. But it is also a principle that, absent countervailing considerations, admits no limit to its expanding dominion. It tends to swallow everything before it. Once you indulge the vitalist perspective with some sympathy, your gaze is shifted and it becomes easier to see the ideological work that “safety” does in our society. Those who invoke safety enjoy a nearly nonrebuttable presumption of public-spiritedness, so a stated concern for safety becomes a curtain behind which various entities can collect rents from perfectly reasonable behavior. The trick is to formulate rules that are at odds with our natural reasonableness (for example, setting the speed limit below the speed dictated by the features of the road). That way you can guarantee a certain rate of infraction, and therefore revenue. If one cares about safety (and who doesn’t?), one does well to take a skeptical look at the safety-industrial complex, and its reliance on moral intimidation to pursue ends other than safety. To do this thoroughly, one must venture beyond the mental universe of risk reduction altogether. That universe takes its bearings from the least competent among us. This is an egalitarian principle that is entirely fitting in many settings, a touchstone of humane society that we rightly take pride in. (One of the people closest to me is significantly disabled, and I am often moved with gratitude for the accommodations our society makes for her.) But if left unchallenged, the pursuit of risk reduction tends to create a society based on an unrealistically low view of human capacities. Infantilization slips in, under cover of democratic ideals. I will insist, on the contrary, that democracy remains viable only if we are willing to extend to one another a presumption of individual competence. This is what social trust is built on. Together, they are the minimal endowments for a free, responsible, fully awake people.’ —Mathew Crawford[1]
Safeguarding within a religious community
I am a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order, which was founded in 1968 by an Englishman, Sangharakshita. Since that time, over 3,000 people have been ordained into the Order. Our ordination follows a tradition which dates back to time of the Buddha when typically, a person would encounter the Buddha; would be inspired by his person or utterances; and would ask to be his disciple, thus: ‘I go for refuge to the Blessed One (The Buddha), his teaching (The Dharma) and to the Community (The Sangha). Beginning from today, let the Blessed one count me as a follower who has gone for refuge to him for as long as breath lasts,’ at which the Buddha would say “Ehi bhikkhu!” “Come, monk!”
A community of ordained Buddhists is—in principle—a free association of individuals, whose faiths coincide, as we saw with the ‘religious tradition’ pyramid in Chapter 1. The Triratna Buddhist Order thus has no legal entity although each order member is subject to the laws of their country of residence and their commitment to Buddhism in myriad ways: some will set up public teaching centres; some will express it through career responsibility and family; some may be solitary meditators, artists or scholars.
All of the urban Buddhist and rural retreat centres in Triratna operate as autonomous charities, which is where the ‘public face’ of Triratna Buddhism encounters safeguarding. ‘Safeguarding’ is a British legal term for processes concerned with the institutional protection of harm of children, vulnerable adults or ‘adults who may be at risk.’ It is worth considering that Buddhists are already good at safeguarding—in fact safeguarding is a central religious issue, a first-person issue. It is not unusual for the ordained spiritual experience of a group of order members to be measured in decades if not hundreds of years (the seven order members in my weekly chapter have been ordained for a combined 114 years). As a religious community, the Order has its own highly developed person-to-person processes to deal with harm and reparation: its members commit to observing ten ethical guidelines, called the Ten Precepts.[2] These include the non-harm of living beings.[3] Most order members take the opportunity to confess breaches of said precepts on a weekly basis with their peers and to make reparations to the relevant party for any harms. If a member is not certain that they are able or willing to give up an unskilful behaviour, they will voice it as a disclosure rather than as a confession, which while it stops short of confession, fosters transparency. Usually, their peers will explore the disclosure with them, and sometimes this does lead to a feeling of regret, and then to confession.
There is no such thing as rote confession in Buddhism: for confession to be genuine, the person must see for themselves the harm they have caused, and regret having been the cause of such harm. The desire to put things right which naturally follows from regret may involve apology and making amends (which must always be done in a way that doesn’t cause further harm). Only when the person, in their own heart, has done as much as is humanly possible to right the wrong, is the process of confession seen to be complete.
People use confession well, but suppose someone is describing something serious, even illegal. Because it is shameful, it would be possible for the person to describe it in a minimalizing way simply to get it off their chest. Safeguarding in this case would involve asking more questions of the person; encouraging them to really take on the consequences of their actions; and to make reparations to the person(s) concerned. Encouraging the person to deepen their practise of the Ten Precepts in this way ought to lead to appropriate action being taken, which might involve the voluntary involvement of the relevant safeguarding authorities. This taking of self-responsibility would be the ideal.
Avoiding, abstaining from evil; refraining from intoxicants,
being heedful of the qualities of the mind:
This is the highest protection. —Mangala Sutta[4]
Rather than worrying about one’s roof not protecting one from the rain, the Buddha exclaimed, ‘Open the Thatch’, meaning ‘Let whatever is going to happen, happen.’
The ‘public face’ of religious organisation, whether church or Buddhist centre, is usually a charity, and its trustees will be held responsible for breaches in safeguarding: if one person gropes another at a bus stop, that individual will be subject to the criminal law. But if someone acts inappropriately at a Buddhist centre, the centre’s trustees are accountable for doing something about it, as the centre is a legal entity. In this way, the moral autonomy of the individuals within a religious group are distinct from the public face of the religious organisation they attend: Religion and Politics are separate. As we saw in the previous chapter, the necessity for this arises because each is founded upon non-compatible forms of evidence: second-person evidence in the case of Politics; first-person evidence in the case of Religion.
This is no doubt why ‘Church’ and ‘State’ are, ideally, kept apart: the state agrees to not impinge on religion; and religion agrees to not impinge on the state. The moral impetus behind safeguarding originates in the ethical codes bound up in religion: whereas its legal impetus originates in society; some people think that safeguarding in relation to religion has gone too far; some think that it has not gone far enough. I am going to lay out the arguments for each.
Arguments for safeguarding
The danger inherent in religion—and maybe also in the entertainment industry—is that everyone assumes the best, and rather than being over-vigilant concerning potential abuse, no-one is on the watch at all. A recent UK inquiry into child sexual abuse (ICSA) spent seven years looking into people abusing children in plain sight, where no-one had done anything about it, even though questions were raised. The inquiry explored all areas of public life, including religions, and found a failure of people in religious organisations to spot abuse going on under their noses. They saw ordained people in the churches covering up for their friends, or dismissing the allegations, if they came from children. We have probably all seen documentaries covering this topic. In the case of Harvey Weinstein, it took a number of women to come forward to break the conspiracy of silence in Hollywood that had protected him for years. And we saw a similar ‘institutional blindness’ in the culture at the BBC in relation to Jimmy Saville.
Safeguarding mechanisms are necessary to deal with such cases, and they need to be proportionate. It is not that people need to become freaked out and terrified and suspicious, they just need to learn to be more alert to the possible risks. Maybe we can make a useful analogy with the laws of physics. Under most circumstances the classical Newtonian laws of physics—such as the law of gravity—hold up; however, in extreme cases—i.e., the very small or the very large or the very fast, they break down and new concepts, like quantum mechanics and relativity, need to be invented to explain things adequately. Likewise with safeguarding, under most circumstances where harm has been perpetrated, the process of genuine self-examination / confession / apology / making amends, is sufficient to remedy the situation; however, in more extreme cases in which individuals lack the professional expertise to know the best course of action, they may need to turn to safeguarding processes: such cases being the exception, not the rule.
Take an example of a person with mental health issues attending a Buddhist centre and joining a WhatsApp newcomer group, in which they share thoughts of suicidal ideation. Such a situation will no doubt make many people feel unsafe; as a result, they may stop coming to the Buddhist centre, so as to not be involved in such complications. The team running the Buddhist centre, at a loss as to what to do, may turn to a worker trained in safeguarding, who would deal with the situation appropriately. In practice, the safeguarding process is ideally guided by the key principles of confidentiality and quiet assessment. It might be perceived, when an incident or allegation occurs and the organisation involved says it cannot share the details of the case, that it is involved in a cover up. However, by law both parties—accused and alleged victim—are entitled to confidentiality, in order to protect both parties from harm. Confidentiality makes it possible to handle a case without everyone getting involved and having lots of views and opinions; and life becoming impossible for the people concerned. In practice, particularly with public figures, it is virtually impossible to maintain confidentiality, and reputations do get harmed.
The trustees of the charity would be accountable if more information was shared than was legally permitted—i.e., beyond those with a need to know.
If, and when, confidentiality is in place, the ideal is that a safeguarding team quietly assesses the situation. Safeguarding should be just a matter of quiet general awareness of how we come across to people; and how people are behaving: the type of complaint should be analysed; the date and time; the details; what was done; at this point some complaints will just melt away. The process of investigation ought to be quite nuanced; the same principle might be used in completely different ways in different cases. Very often a completely hands off approach might be taken, ‘Well, that’s an allegation: let’s see, if it happens again, then we may need to do something about it.’ It shouldn’t be a question of a reflex response: ‘This has happened; therefore, this has to happen.’ People need to ask, ‘What are all the circumstances around the incident? Have there been any previous complaints of this kind of thing?’
Arguments against safeguarding
All of this might sound very reasonable and appropriate. However, some people are more cautious about safeguarding, for a number of reasons. It depends on the culture in which a safeguarding process takes place. In a normal human situation where we expect standards of people but don’t expect them to be perfect, and where there is mutual trust, such an approach is likely to work.
But where there is an unhealthy obsession in society with safety itself that is disproportionate and unreasonable; where government has become more and more involved in the ethical lives of its citizens; where ‘safeguarding’ has become a kind of secular religion: one that we might call ‘Health and Safety-ism’—or just Safetyism. Then we have a problem.
In any vital religious institution, clumsy state intervention or politically motivated action over issues like safeguarding only foster a climate of fear and suspicion that is inimical to developing the trust necessary to build the kind of spiritual community foundational to a healthy society; and is a development which will only make its inhabitants less safe. The assessment of moral integrity and wisdom are beyond the state’s remit: when safeguarding becomes a crusade, the Buddha would be under suspicion if he were alive today.
Fourth-Wave Feminism
As well as an obsession with safety, there is the simple problem of the political agenda; safeguarding is unlikely to work in any meaningful way when the atmosphere is charged with an overriding presupposition of a power agenda in the accused (i.e. men.) Feminism went through various phases:
‘A Brief History of Third-Wave Feminism
Beginning in the 1990s, the third wave of feminism built upon the causes emphasized in the movement’s first and second waves:
‘The first wave: In the United States, the struggle for women’s equality and freedom began around the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century with the issue of women’s voting rights. After the Nineteenth Amendment passed in 1920, guaranteeing women the right to vote, the intensity and momentum of first-wave feminism waned.
‘The second wave: The second wave of feminism was characterized by an acceleration in political activism and cultural prominence in the 1960s through the 1980s. Second-wave feminism focused on gender-based discrimination and marginalization beyond the legal and political sphere—sexism in the household, institutions of higher learning, and the media. Other key issues included access to birth control and the intersectional effects of class and race.’[5]
Rebecca Walker can be credited with launching the third wave of feminism in 1992, which lasted until the 2010s:
‘Third-wave feminism is postmodernist in orientation, focusing on the self rather than group, context, community, religion, or society at large. If self-centered perspectives incidentally benefit a larger group, such benefits are welcomed, but the primary purpose of third-wave feminism is not social change. Third-wave feminism is individualistic, not contextual, in its essence[6] and thus cannot be defined or standardized. With each personal story, feminism gets defined differently.
‘While third-wave feminism is individualistic, it also claims to be inclusive, accepting every experience as authentic and every discussion as important. Thus third-wave feminism rejects stereotypes and all forms of essentialism and universalization. It does not seek to qualify itself to fit into any standards or framework, and thus does not operate according to rules, expectations, norms, and standards.
‘Third-wave feminism affirms femininity or “girl power” loudly and clearly. Third-wave feminists celebrate femininity as powerful rather than shameful.[7] They critique second-wave feminists for entering the male world of masculinity and mimicking male role models in order to project power. According to third-wave feminists, second-wave feminism is counterproductive, causing females to disown femininity and thus submit to genderism with its inherent discrimination against women.’[8]
Fourth-Wave Feminism, though, takes the cause of women beyond mere equal opportunities and self-expression; and agitates for women as a group against abuse by men, using the powerful tool of social media:
‘Although debated by some, many claim that a fourth wave of feminism began about 2012, with a focus on sexual harassment, body shaming, and rape culture, among other issues. A key component was the use of social media to highlight and address these concerns. The new wave arose amid a number of high-profile incidents.’[9]
Leading to movements such as Me Too:
‘Phenomena such as the Me Too and Times Up[10] movements, the rising popularity of gender studies, trans rights, and increasing focus on the need for comprehensive social reform to achieve true gender equality are all legacies of the third-wave feminist movement.’[11]
The struggle is seen no longer as being about addressing individual acts of sexism, as it was in the second wave, but in addressing men as a group, which Oprah Winfrey, in the immediate aftermath of multiple accusations of rape and sexual assault against Harvey Weinstein, did when she informed the audience at the 2018 Golden Globe Awards:
‘“Brutally powerful men” had “broken” something in the culture. These men had caused women to suffer: not only actors, but domestic workers, factory workers, agricultural workers, athletes, soldiers and academics. The fight against this broken culture, she said, transcended “geography, race, religion, politics and workplace”.’[12]
Her speech had echoes of the militant feminist slogan ‘All Men are Rapists:’ uttered by Val, a character in Marilyn French’s novel, The Women’s Room (1977.) In a moment of extreme anger, Val cries out ‘All men are rapists, and that’s all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes.’[13]
Steve Bannon sensed a watershed moment at the Golden Globes; according to his biographer Joshua Green, he had switched on the TV and sensed a dark puritanical mood amid the proceedings
‘A Hollywood guy at heart, Bannon switched over to the Golden Globe Awards, and in a rush it all came into focus. The black dresses. The Time’s Up activism. The preening Hollywood egos dictating to the country. Only now, he noticed, the men-leading men, movie stars!—were silent and submissive, gelded by the female rage pulsing and throbbing right through his television set. This was real, he recognized, and profound.
‘It took only a moment for Bannon to summon the perfect historical allusion. “It’s a Cromwell moment!” he practically shouted, invoking the seventeenth-century Puritan zealot Oliver Cromwell. “It’s even more powerful than populism. It’s deeper. It’s primal. It’s elemental. The long black dresses and all that–this is the Puritans! It’s anti-patriarchy.” …
‘Bannon thought Oprah might represent an existential threat to Trump’s presidency if she decided to campaign for Democrats in 2018. She’d flip the House and they’d race to impeach him. But the movement was bigger than Oprah. “The anti-patriarchy movement is going to undo ten thousand years of recorded history,” he said. “You watch. The time has come. Women are gonna take charge of society. And they couldn’t juxtapose a better villain than Trump. He is the patriarch. This”—the Golden Globe Awards—“is a definitional moment in the culture. It’ll never be the same going forward.”’[14]
Bannon was speaking five years ago, just two years into Trump’s presidency: which had been a shock result for the Left; it is worth reflecting on what has happened since in the male-female political dimension. Has the Left in general become more controlling and authoritarian?
Equality of outcome
One of the ideas that underpins movements such as Fourth-Wave Feminism and Black Lives Matter is that of ‘equality of outcome.’ In a blogpost entitled ‘Why Equality of Outcome is a Bad Idea,’[15] Steve Glaveski says:
‘In the days leading up to the 2020 US Election, Kamala Harris released a video dubbed Equality v Equity.[16] In it, she depicted two men – one white, the other black – climbing up a mountain. The white man has access to a rope, whereas the black man also has a rope but it is out of reach. As a result, the white man reaches the summit whilst the black man stays at the foot of the mountain.
‘In the video, narrated by Harris, she says that “it’s about giving people the resources and support they need so that everyone can be on equal footing, and then compete on equal footing”, which in and of itself is an admirable world view, albeit not a very realistic one.
She then adds that “equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place”. This renders “compete on equal footing” redundant. It’s hardly a competition if everybody ends up at the same place – it’s a form of Marxism.
It feels like Harris is ‘fudging’ the argument here; it sounds like she is talking about equality of opportunity—giving the black man a rope that is within his reach, but she is actually talking about equality of outcome: everybody ending up at the same place. In fact the idea that equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place is a naïve fallacy: it assumes that every person will work as hard and conscientiously as the next.
Glaveski says that competitions have winners and losers; that if we all end up at the same place it is hardly a competition; and that equality of outcome disincentivizes hard work and encourages slacking; inhibits innovation; promotes authoritarianism; eliminates personal responsibility; creates ironically bad outcomes; and destroys our freedoms.
In a 2018 Joe Rogan interview,[17] Jordan Peterson outlines what happened in the Soviet Union in the twentieth century: where ‘tens of millions were killed as a consequence of internal repression [between 1919 and 1959.] For instance, six million Ukrainians died of enforced starvation in the 1930s. All the food that the newly-collectivized farmers produced was taken from them and brought to the cities, so all the farmers starved to death:’[18]
‘Here’s how draconian it got! So, let’s say you were the mother of some children; and all your grain had been shipped off to the cities, and you thought, “I’m not going to have my children starve to death; I’m going to go out into the field, on my hands and knees, and I’m going to pick up the grains that are left over that the harvesters didn’t get, and I’m going to feed those to my kids; that was punishable by death. You were supposed to hand it those extra bits of grain, so that they could be shipped to the city as well.’[19]
Peterson says: Solzenitsyn didn’t think such outcomes were a consequence of the Marxist system gone wrong, but simply an inevitable consequence of its axioms; what Solzenitsyn got right was how much tyranny you have to impose to ensure something like equality of outcome; according to Thomas Sowell, you have to cede so much power to the government that a tyranny is inevitable.[20] Also, Peterson claims there is a technical problem with equality of outcome, namely
‘What measure of outcome?: there are lots of outcomes: how happy are you?; how much pain are you in?; how healthy are you?; how much money do you have?; how much opportunity for movement forward do you have?; what’s the width of your social connections?; what’s the quality of your friendships?; do you have expose to art and literature? You can multiply the number of dimensions of evaluation between people innumerably. … Are you going to get equality of outcome on every one of those measures? Is everyone going to have to be equally happy in their relationship? And if not, why not? …Why stop with pay? There is no place to stop.’[21]
He concludes, ‘because there is no place to stop, there will be no stopping. Nobody can have anything that everyone else doesn’t have at the same time; that’s the ultimate outcome of equality of outcome. Think about that would mean! There’s nothing but a tyrannical system could impose that.’[22]
Equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome in Triratna
In the Critical Social Justice worldview,[23] which is in line with Fourth-Wave Feminism, any power imbalance in organisational position is assumed to be due to one’s gender, sexuality or ethnic group, rather than one’s merit; in this regard, it is instructive to consider the process of ordination into the Triratna Buddhist Order: a collective of ordained Buddhists committed to a non-power-based relationship with each other.
According to Sangharakshita, its founder, the fundamental act which makes one an order member is that one effectively Goes for Refuge to the Three Jewels: meaning that one places the Buddha, his teachings (the Dharma) and the community of Buddhists (the Sangha) at the centre of one’s life. That this commitment is adjudged to be the case is the responsibility of the person who publicly ordains you, a senior representative of the Order called a public preceptor, in consultation with the wider order. The ordained person then takes on the ethical practise of the Ten Precepts, as an expression of that commitment to Buddhism.
Triratna’s 2,500-strong Order consists of roughly equal numbers of men and women: of equal ordination status, ordained by public preceptors of their own gender. Around a quarter of order members are people of colour: the majority being from the Dalit community in India. And Indian order members have their own public preceptors. The vast majority of Western order members are middle-class; there are some transgender and non-binary order members; and perhaps 50-80 non-Caucasian order members live in the West. The only reason a person is ordained in Triratna is due to their commitment to the Three Jewels, but that commitment is open to anybody; in this way, Triratna offers equality of opportunity, when it comes to ordination.
In principle, equality of outcome regarding ordination could never be on the table in Triratna; no-one would be allowed to be ordained for a reason such as race, gender or to raise their perceived status.[24] If such a thing ever were to happen, the integrity of the Order and the commitment of any order member perceived to be in such a group would be brought into question: Politics will have interfered in Religion.
Having said this, it can be difficult for someone of more working-class identity or a person of colour to integrate into the predominantly white middle-class Triratna culture. If they perceive a ‘cultural barrier,’ people can be deterred from staying around. Many efforts are made to help people of all cultural backgrounds feel welcome; including the regular, collective practise of loving kindness meditation and the encouragement of an appropriate sharing of experience within interactive class structures, yet still people mysteriously ‘drop away,’ for all sorts of reasons.
Buddhism however does set an inherent challenge to the participant: to be aware and emotionally positive. In my experience, the solution to integrating into the Sangha for the working-class person or person of colour boils down to building a robust network of friendships among those who do culturally get where one is coming from—and there will always be those people if one makes the effort to seek them out; and then to use that as a launching pad to seek to engage with others who are culturally alien, in the spirit of Sangharakshita’s seminal maxim:
‘I believe that humanity is basically one. I believe that it’s possible for any human being to communicate with any other human being, to feel for any other human being, to be friends with any other human being. This is what I truly and deeply believe. This belief is part of my own experience. Is part of my own life. It is part of me. I cannot live without this belief, and I would rather die than give it up. For me, to live means to practise this belief.’[25]
Virtue-signalling and the expansion of the concept of abuse
Virtue signalling
In 12 Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson explores how Aristotle studied the virtues and vices in his Nicomachean Ethics:
‘a book based on experience and observation, not conjecture, about the kind of happiness that was possible for human beings. Cultivating judgment about the difference between virtue and vice is the beginning of wisdom, something that can never be out of date.
‘By contrast, our modern relativism[26] begins my asserting that making judgments about how to live is impossible, because there is no real good, and no true virtue (as these two are relative.) Thus relativism’s closest approximation to “virtue” is “tolerance.” Only tolerance will provide social cohesion between different groups, and save us from harming each other. On Facebook and other forms of social media, therefore, you signal your so-called virtue, telling everyone how tolerant, open and compassionate you are, and wait for likes to accumulate. (Leave aside that telling people you’re virtuous isn’t a virtue, it’s self-promotion. Virtue signalling is not virtue. Virtue signalling is, quite possibly, our commonest vice.)’[27]
The correct, and ultimate, arbiter of ethics is a person’s conscience: for an ethical change to take place, that person has to realize, and admit to themselves and others, that they have caused harm. If we recall the Religious tradition pyramid in Chapter 1: each person makes their own choice about the way they are going to live their life, based on first-person evidence. Their faith might be in a universal religion such as Buddhism, Christianity, or Islam, or it might be in secular humanism; all of which, in their most elevated teachings, do claim there is a real good and a true virtue to strive for. And they come together with others of similar conviction to form a religious tradition.
This is towards the peak of the pyramid. But as one goes lower down the pyramid, and each individual will have their place on it somewhere or other (each person has a belief system of some kind,) other belief systems kick in, which often constellate around some form of self-identity or group membership. The Left probably take refuge in self-identity: in seeing themselves as sophisticated, as above the common herd:
‘Intolerance of others’ views (no matter how ignorant or incoherent they may be) is not simply wrong; in a world where there is no right or wrong, it is worse: it is a sign you are embarrassingly unsophisticated or, possibly, dangerous.’[28]
Being an ‘Influencer’ is such a form of religion: where to be moral is irrelevant, but to be unsophisticated is intolerable and unforgivable. The Right, on the other hand, manifests its baser ‘religious’ beliefs more through tight-knit group behaviour and parochialism.
Of course, not really having anything very elevated that one really believes in is quite existentially painful: so, one either gets lost in nihilism or takes up a cause, to fill the gap:
‘But it turns out that many people cannot tolerate the vacuum–the chaos–which is inherent in life, but made worse by this moral relativism; they cannot live without a moral compass, without an ideal at which to aim in their lives. … So, right alongside relativism, we find the spread of nihilism and despair, and also the opposite of moral relativism: the blind certainty offered by ideologies that claim to have an answer for everything.
‘And so we arrive at the second teaching that millennials have been bombarded with. They sign up for a humanities course, to study the greatest books ever written. But they’re not assigned the books; Instead they’re given ideological attacks on them, based on some appalling simplification. Where the relativist is filled with uncertainty, the ideologue is the very opposite. He or she is hyper-judgmental and censorious, always knows what’s wrong about others, and what to do about it. Sometimes it seems the only people willing to give advice in a relativistic society are those with the least to offer.’[29]
With the ease and breadth of communication over social media, the debate around ethics has become intensely political, but this is maybe inevitable: to the extent that the ‘collective moral rectitude’ is low, instead of focusing on what ‘I’ am doing or not doing ethically, I will end up focusing on what ‘you’ are doing or not doing.
Let’s remind ourselves of the Political tradition pyramid. The ‘currency’ of the political domain is ‘opinion.’ Others seek, therefore, in an open democracy, to influence YOUR opinion, by rational argument (by presenting second-person evidence.) At the ‘peak’ of the Political tradition pyramid is a free and open democracy which is often protective and supportive of secular and religious freedoms.
However, as we ‘descend’ through the political hierarchy, two things happen: opinion begins to be manipulated for a political end, through obfuscation and censorship; and both overt and covert power come into play, until at the very base of the political hierarchy are dictatorships and totalitarian regimes, over which the individual has no power; and which have no need for their opinion. There is, therefore, a clear link between virtue-signalling and a decay in the political system, leading to totalitarianism.
A recent expression of frustration at people virtue-signalling came from Elon Musk, who in a 2023 interview said:
‘Tesla currently sells to twice as much in terms of electric vehicles as the rest of electric car makers in the United States combined. Tesla has done more to help the environment than all other companies combined. It would be fair to say that therefore as the leader of the company, I’ve done more for the environment than any single human on earth. … I’m saying what I care about is the reality of goodness, not the perception of it and what I see all over the place is people who care about looking good while doing evil. F*** them!’[30] (My emphasis)
The abuse of ‘abuse’
‘Abuse’ used to only refer to the most serious of cases; today the very vagueness of the term lends itself to ‘errors of equivocation,’ i.e., using the same word with different meanings: false equivalence is created in the mind of the listener, potentially misleading third parties as to the gravity or extent of any harm done.
The word ‘vulnerable’ too—through ‘mission creep’—is today proving to be ‘vague and extendable;’ many of these terms are now vague, and definitions are being stretched. A typical definition of ‘abuse’ comes to be expanded to include those in positions of power, or even perceived to be so. As Triratna’s 2018 recommended policy document on Safeguarding states:
‘”Abuse” is not a legal term, but covers a number of ways in which a person may be deliberately harmed (legally or illegally), usually by someone who is in a position of power, trust or authority over them, or who may be perceived by that person to be in a position of power, trust or authority over them; for example by a Friend, Mitra or Order member who is helping to run activities for those newer to such activities. The harm may be physical, psychological or emotional, or it may exploit the vulnerability of the person in more subtle ways. However, harm can also occur less consciously, through naivety, idealism or lack of awareness.’[31]
This increased sensitivity to abuse is all very well—as an aspiration. However, the ‘extension of abusive parameters’ into the realm of subjective emotions has its dangers: if we are not careful, society can place those individuals who are in contact with a supposedly vulnerable person in a ‘prison of emotional expectations,’ that is really nothing to do with abuse and everything to do with a tyrannical demand for comfort and affirmation.
The Buddha made ethics a free choice for his disciples: his Dharma is ‘of the nature of a personal invitation.’ He said about it: ‘Come and see for yourselves (ehipassiko)’, probably because he realized that human beings will only fully get behind a spiritual idea if they feel completely at ease to reject as well as accept it; ethics is not something to be demanded or expected of others, but something to be undertaken voluntarily by oneself: an invitation, not an expectation: this is where modern society gets ethics so wrong: it increasingly tries to over-regulate and politicize ethics, rather than invite participation.
The Depp v Heard trial
When an allegation of abuse is ‘conjoined’ with a Fourth-Wave Feminist agenda, it may be genuine, but it may also be a convenient weapon to gain power and ascendancy over men; some think that this is what happened in the Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard defamation trial. In her 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post,[32] published 11 months after the Golden Globes, Amber Heard banked on Oprah’s argument against Johnny Depp, leading Depp to sue her for defamation:
‘I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.
‘Imagine a powerful man as a ship, like the Titanic. That ship is a huge enterprise. When it strikes an iceberg, there are a lot of people on board desperate to patch up holes—not because they believe in or even care about the ship, but because their own fates depend on the enterprise.
‘In recent years, the #MeToo movement has taught us about how power like this works, not just in Hollywood but in all kinds of institutions—workplaces, places of worship or simply in particular communities. In every walk of life, women are confronting these men who are buoyed by social, economic and cultural power. And these institutions are beginning to change.’
The jury, however, disagreed, finding Heard guilty of malicious defamation.[33] In fact many came away from the trial with the impression that it was Heard, not Depp, who was guilty of abuse. Some revealing post-trial responses appeared in a Mail Online article[34] the day after the verdict:
‘Meghan McCain wrote on Twitter: “#MeToo is dead. Helluva job @ACLU,” in reference to the fact that the American Civil Liberties Union helped Heard to draft her Washington Post article which triggered the defamation case to begin with.
‘Heard fans who have been massively outnumbered, were shocked and saddened by the jury’s decision. “This jury is a racist, sexist fan-group and nothing more,” said one person, who said they initially backed Depp. “I have no hope for women—ever.” The jury was a mix of white, black and Asian people. Heard is white. It is not clear why the commenter believes the verdict was racist. (My emphasis)
‘Another added: ‘My heart goes out to Amber. F*** that sexist jury and f*** this sexist country!’
‘Another woman who described herself as a Depp fan, said the case “went in the correct direction”. She said: “This was a really tough case. I feel the most important thing aside from money was he got to tell the truth about what happened. Even if he won $1 he got to finally speak up for himself. She did cause a hoax and said some false things. I tend to believe all women, but this case opened my eyes to not believing all women and following the evidence. I just was a little bit disappointed in myself for taking that stance at first because I didn’t have all the facts. There’s no gender for domestic violence, it can happen to anyone, it can happen to an older male with money and fame. If he was deeply in love with her, he was willing to put himself through hell to make it work”.
Meghan McCain thinks ‘the backlash against Heard is a necessary correction to feminism run amuck. … She has come to represent what many see as women who have weaponized a movement for their own personal gain:’[35] the trial has been a ‘check’ on liberal naivety which assumes that individuals would not use safeguarding as a weapon: the $8.35 million judgement against Heard warns others of future sanctions if they do.
Unconscious bias and victimhood
One order member proposes that when we bring an ideological perspective to safeguarding and introduce the idea of ‘inherent power imbalance,’ we invite others to think in terms of ‘powerful, or perpetrator’ and ‘vulnerable, or victim;’ and taking our cue from this idea, we can easily assume that we know where ethical guilt lies, using the equation: power equals perpetrator; vulnerable equals victim. If we imbibe this ideological perspective, we may believe we are acting from an ethical perspective when in practice this equation is not necessarily grounded in ethics but derives instead from a simplistic (political) assumption. They say:
‘We merely look for disparities in power and all is now explained: it signals who we should support; it signals where ethical blame lies. … Ethical sensitivity is replaced with a pseudo-ethics that hunts out disparities in power and signals where virtue belongs. This allows hatred to parade as compassion and obscures the important deeper beauty of ethics. … Within the Kafkaesque world of “unconscious bias,” any protestation that we do not have the alleged bias is taken as proof of our unconscious bias.’
The Drama Triangle
They continue: relational asymmetries are an inevitable part of life, but if they are seen as inherently power-based—and therefore inherently problematic, if anyone ever feels—either at the time or retrospectively—upset in such a dynamic, it can be framed in terms of power asymmetries, victimhood and abuse, the dynamics of which are outlined in the Drama Triangle. This is ‘a model of dysfunctional social interactions which illustrates a power game involving three roles: Victim, Rescuer, and Persecutor, each role representing a common yet ineffective response to conflict.’[36]
‘Victims (“Poor me.”) often feel victimized, trapped, helpless and hopeless. They think they are at the mercy of life. They are unwilling to take responsibility for their undesirable circumstances and don’t think they have the power to change their lives. (They) assume themselves as powerless or incompetent and blame on Persecutors (can be other people or a particular situation). They always seek for Rescuers to solve the problem for them. If the Victims continue to stay in the ‘dejected’ stance, it will prevent them from making decisions, solving problems, changing the current state, or sensing any satisfaction or achievement.
‘Rescuers (“Let me help you”) constantly intervene on behalf of the Victims and try to save Victims from perceived harm. They feel guilty of standing by and ‘watching people drown’. (They) may have all the good intention and strive to ‘help’ other people as they see necessary. They fail to realize that by offering short-term fixes to Victims, they keep Victims dependent and neglect their own needs. This is why Rescuers often find themselves pressured, tired, and may not have time to finish their own tasks, as they are busy fire-fighting for the Victims as they arise!
‘Persecutors (“It’s all your fault”) are like ‘Critical Parents’ who are strict and firm and set boundaries. They tend to think that they must win at any cost. (They) blame the Victims and criticize the behaviour of Rescuers, without providing appropriate guidance, assistance or a solution to the problem. They are critical and good at finding fault, and control with order and rigidity. They keep the Victims oppressed and sometimes can be a bully.’[37]
The three roles can switch around, even in the course of one conversation. As one therapist once said with reference to the Drama Triangle, ‘A “Victim” is just a “Persecutor” waiting to get out!’ There is, however, a way out of this mind game:
‘Karpman’s Drama Triangle describes dysfunctional relationships where the people in the relationship shift between three roles, Persecutor, Rescuer, and Victim, all held in place by guilt and blame.
‘When you find yourself stuck in a self-defeating or self-serving role, it’s horribly easy to end up in an extreme state that doesn’t help anyone, neither you nor the people you’re interacting with. The idea is to move away from the extreme edges of the triangle towards the centre, where there’s a much healthier and more positive balance.
‘By doing this we move from being an oppressive persecutor to an assertive person with good boundaries. We shift from playing the role of helpless victim to a less vulnerable state of self-awareness. We stop being self-sacrificing rescuers and move towards attunement and compassion.
- You assert rather than persecute
- You are vulnerable but you’re not a victim
- You are caring but you don’t overstep the mark
‘Right in the middle of the triangle, at the sweetest spot of all, we find the place where all our roles integrate, the place where we are self-aware and are coming from a level adult place. From a stance where you are okay, and others are too.’[38]
‘The Left’ often (obviously) sees themselves as ‘the Rescuer;’ sometimes as ‘the Victim;’ but today—perhaps unconsciously—they frequently come to be ‘the Persecutor.’
Offence and harm
Our cultural climate is moving rapidly to a situation in which differentiating between ‘offence’ and ‘harm’ is proving impossible for some. Where does responsibility lie when offence is taken, the person with the feelings (the ‘victim’) or the person ‘perceived’ to have the power? This could be a further undesirable consequence of Safeguarding approaches. It gives individuals the potential to make allegations against those who are subjectively ‘perceived’ as more powerful. There is a line of argument that gives credence to a victim’s subjective ‘lived experience’ of claiming offence and ipso facto therefore harmed. We have to ask ourselves, ‘Is there a clear distinction between “offence” and “harm” in safeguarding procedures?’
With the caveat that oppression does exist; that some individuals do behave in oppressive ways; that recipients find themselves in pain as a result; and that perpetrators have ethical responsibility for the suffering of those they victimize, there is always the possibility that safeguarding can be deployed as a political device, masquerading as ethics, especially when there is an assumption buried deep in ‘safeguarding’ which accords with the ‘equality, diversity, inclusion’ or ‘equality politics’ agenda.
The danger is that religious ethics will become rites and rituals, underpinned by politics, policed by the state, and executed by internal ideologues. If ‘safeguarding’ unfolds as predicted, the medicine will be worse than the disease: far from safeguarding those involved, it will endanger the spiritual vitality of religious communities by moving the focus from ethics to power; it will discourage members of such communities from accepting positions of responsibility (particularly if you are a man); it will encourage an unhealthy search for power disparity, encouraged by the ‘equity-politics’ and ‘identity-politics’ agenda.
Duty and responsibility
Rather than talking about ‘abuse’, ‘vulnerability’ and ‘power’ we should explicate positive principles around ‘responsibility’, the enhanced duties that go with responsibility, and about ‘individuality.’ With increased responsibility comes increased duties, including ethical duties. A greater ethical precision can be expected from those with increased responsibility and influence. At the same time, we should not promote an environment where ‘power imbalance’ can be used to suggest, or determine, where ethical blame lodges. At worst, blame can be attached merely because a person has more responsibility and duties. This framework can be used improperly as an alibi for misconduct, encouraging a transfer of ethical responsibility to the person with more responsibility, for no other reason than they have more responsibility. There is even the proposition that if someone makes an accusation of a sexual kind, then one has to believe it, which is problematic and very painful for the person falsely accused.
There follows an exploration of Safetyism issues around Gen Z, controversies around Buddhist teachers and the ‘guru principle,’ advantages of gurus and Safetyism during the Covid-19 pandemic: including the phenomenon of mass formation.
[1] Mathew Crawford. (2021) Why we Drive: On Freedom, Risk and Taking Back Control. Vintage. Kindle version p33-4.
[2] See Sangharakshita (2013) The Ten Pillars of Buddhism. Windhorse.
[3] The Ten Precepts: 1) to abstain from harming living beings; 2) to abstain from taking the not given; 3) to abstain from sexual misconduct; 4) to abstain from untruthful speech; 5) to abstain from unkind speech; 6) to abstain from unhelpful speech; 7) to abstain from unharmonious speech; 8) to abstain from covetousness of mind; 9) to abstain from hatred; and 10) to abstain from wrong views. And as well as abstaining from the above unskilful actions, order members cultivate the Ten Positive Precepts: 1) universal loving kindness; 2) open-handed generosity; 3) stillness, simplicity and contentment; 4) truthful speech; 5) kindly speech; 6) helpful speech; 7) harmonious speech; 8) tranquillity of mind; 9) compassion; and 10) wisdom / right view.
[4] Mangala Sutta. Access to Insight. Accessed 5 December 2022.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.2.04.than.html
[5] ‘Third-Wave Feminism: A History of Third-Wave Feminism.’ MasterClass Updated 7 October 2022. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/third-wave-feminism
[6] Straus, Tamara. “A Manifesto for Third Wave Feminism.” AlterNet, 24 October 2000. http://www.alternet.org/story/9986/a_manifesto_for_third_wave_feminism.
[7] Wolf, Naomi. “‘Two Traditions,’ from Fire with Fire.” In The Women’s Movement Today: An Encyclopedia of Third-Wave Feminism, edited by Leslie Heywood, vol. 2, pp. 14–15. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2005.
[8] Surekha Nelavala. ‘Third-Wave Feminism,’ in O’Brien, Julia M. (ed.) (2014) The Oxford encyclopedia of the Bible and gender studies. OUP.
[9] ‘The fourth wave of feminism.’ Britannica. Accessed 4 December 2023. https://www.britannica.com/topic/feminism/The-fourth-wave-of-feminism
[10] ‘The Time’s Up movement was founded on January 1, 2018, by more than 300 Hollywood celebrities, with the goal of connecting those who experience sexual misconduct in the workplace or in trying to advance their careers with legal and public relations assistance.’ Time’s Up Movement (#TimesUp). Iowa State University. https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/directory/times-up-movement-timesup/ Accessed 8 December 2022.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Charlotte Higgins. ‘The age of patriarchy: how an unfashionable idea became a rallying cry for feminism today.’ The Guardian. 22 June 2018.
[13] Marilyn French. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_French
[14] Joshua Green. (2017) Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising. Penguin. pxxiii.
[15] ’Why Equality of Outcome is a Bad Idea.’ Steve Glaveski.
https://www.steveglaveski.com/blog/why-equality-of-outcome-is-a-bad-idea
[16] ‘NEW AD: Kamala Harris explores difference between Equality and Equity in new 2020 campaign video.’ The Hill. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4kowE_YIVw&t=50s
[17] ‘Joe Rogan & Jordan Peterson on Equality of Outcome.‘JRE Clips. YouTube. 30 January 2018.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bq3YrYjG-s
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid.
[23] For a short history, see Vidyaruchi. ‘A Short History of “Social Justice”.’ Apramada. 3 May 2023.
https://apramada.org/articles/a-short-history-of-social-justice
[24] This is not the case in Buddhist counties of Southeast Asia, where a family experiences increased status if their son became a monk.
[25] Sangharakshita. (2004) Living with kindness: the Buddha’s teaching on metta. Windhorse. p2.
[26] Relativism is ‘the doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute.’ Oxford Reference.
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100412717
[27] Jordan B. Peterson. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Penguin. pxx.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Ibid.
[30] ‘Elon Musk on Advertisers, Trust and the “Wild Storm” in His Mind | DealBook Summit 2023.’ New York Times Events. YouTube. 30 November 2023. 15.26-15.43 mins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BfMuHDfGJI&t=3910s
[31] ‘Triratna Model Safeguarding adults policy 2018.’ Triratna safeguarding policies and ethical guidelines 2018. The Buddhist Centre Online. https://thebuddhistcentre.com/search/node/safeguarding%202018
[32] Amber Heard. ‘Amber Heard: I spoke up against sexual violence—and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.’ The Washington Post. 18 December 2018.
[33] An editor’s note was added to the top of the op-ed on 2 June 2022. ‘Editor’s note, June 2, 2022: In 2019, Johnny Depp sued Amber Heard for defamation arising out of this 2018 op-ed. On June 1, 2022, following a trial in Fairfax County, Va. Circuit Court, a jury found Heard liable on three counts for the following statements, which Depp claimed were false and defamatory: (1) “I spoke up against sexual violence—and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.” (2) “Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out.” (3) “I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.” The jury separately found that Depp–through his lawyer Adam Waldman, defamed Heard in one of three counts in her countersuit.’
[34] Daniel Bates, Kayla Brantley, David Averre. ‘“The jury gave me my life back”: Triumphant Johnny Depp is pictured in pub with Jeff Beck and UK rock star Sam Fender as he wins defamation trial against ex-wife Amber Heard who now faces financial ruin with $8.35M damages bill.’ Mail Online. 2 June 2022.
[35] Meghan McCain. ‘MEGHAN MCCAIN: Amber Heard should FIRE her public relations team and go away until she and the rest of America figure out why we don’t just ‘believe’ women anymore.’ Mail Online. 18 June 2022.
[36] Adapted from, ‘The Drama Triangle Explained.’ Leadership Tribe.
https://leadershiptribe.co.uk/blog/the-drama-triangle-explained
[37] Ibid.
[38] ‘About the Drama Triangle—And how to escape it.’ Listening Partnership.
https://www.listeningpartnership.com/insight/about-the-drama-triangle-and-how-to-escape-it/
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