Becoming a Dictator
Zach and I are still so moved by the interview with Swe Win earlier this year. There is so much in his story that brings together the worldly and the spiritual in ways that few of us on the path have ever had to deal with. In the following passage, Zach reflects on some of the deeper meaning behind Swe Win’s observation that there is a thin line separating us from a dictator.
“If you had the same internal and external conditions, and the same opportunities, you could easily be a dictator!”
“So I'm not saying America is perfect, but when you compare it to coming to these places [like in Myanmar], it's really easy to be judgmental, and to have an expectation. And so what Swe Win brings to his activism isn't this blame and victimization.
He said very clearly, 'We are all dictators,' and what he means by that is we're only a few conditions away from being and doing horrible things! So coming from one set of conditions, it's easy to judge another set, but but actually it's easy to forget that if you grew up in the conditions that the dictator did, if you had the same internal and external conditions, and the same opportunities, you could easily be a dictator!
And, it's that kind of wisdom that he brings to his activism. And I think, I mean, that's, that's incredible to me!
He talked about it in more simple terms, about just being clean. If we're going to clean up society, we have got to clean up ourselves, and you really have to understand the human condition overall. And it's just so easy to demonize the other side. And I think that's where we don't come back together. We're not really trying to understand.
I could go into a lot of details about what's going on America. I won't right here, but, absolutely I think understanding that the way everyone's behaving is based on conditions, and not on being inferior or being stupid.
Bringing that understanding to activism, I think it's essential, otherwise you do end up just being a part of polarizing and it is just going drive people further apart from each other.”