The Loneliness of Absolute Power

Considering resistance to the collapse of democracy in the USA and the role of contemporary art in restoring democracy.

,John White and Aviva Rahmani in the performance of “Mirrors,” a 1970 work by Aviva Rahmani filmed by Lynne Lonidier.

In the development of my trigger point theory about systemic collapse, I began with two simple biogeographic ideas and extrapolated first to the restoration of natural habitat in Ghost Nets, and then to law and policy guidelines in Blued Trees. The first idea was articulated by E.O. Wilson and Robert MacArthur. The second is a series of experiments in Brazil I have followed:

1. Systems die from the edges not the center.

2. Carefully identified nuclear sites can trigger regional restoration.

Thirty-five years after commencing Ghost Nets, I would argue that gas lighting, disinformation, disassembling education are all the essential tools to destroy the center of democracy and create absolute power. Art may be an antidote to that absolutism.

I am considering out current state of systemic political collapse. I have been applying trigger point theory to what I watch happening. I've evolved my thinking. My question is, what is an effective plan to resist authoritarianism? Can I apply what I know about the edges of systemic biological collapse? Is there an effective analysis of nuclear site location for restoration? The non-material is as viable a point of consideration for those questions as any physical place. Empathy is an example of a non-material site. Loneliness might be the vulnerable center.

The narcissistic-addict-tyrant and their flying monkeys are pathetically lonely figures, continually desperate for attention. The control a world that leaves them in their pwn prison. No amount of attention can ever assuage the depth of loneliness. Human connection cannot survive absolute power. It may be that exposing that essential loneliness is one key to redemption.

I think empathy has to go hand in hand with political resistance to fascism so we can all keep our humanity and sanity. I don't mean collusion or tolerance for cruelty and authoritarianism. I mean interactive models for democratic inclusion and individual agency that could outlive the current political disaster being faced by democratic nations, including but not limited to the USA.

The question is, how can you include and work democratically with people who want to eliminate you and have the power to do so? In colloquial parlance, I would label people incapable of compassion or intimacy as suffering from emotional anorexia. Usually one form or another addiction replaces compassion for self or intimacy with others. Power and control over others is one such addiction

When I began my career in the late sixties, I envisioned integrating multi-media, technology and existential questions about relationships and street theatre, all the elements that were impacting me as a young artist. In 1968, I began by assembling the American Ritual Theatre (A.R.T.) my own street theater performance group in San Diego, California, at that time, a far-right military enclave. My thinking evolved quickly to combine simple choreographies with an interest in Gestalt therapy and psychotherapy.

I have often written about the impact on my entire career of the 1966 E.A.T. Armory show in New York City, sponsored by Bell Labs. One of the works in that show was a walking dance piece by Yvonne Rainer. What struck me besides the powerful formal simplicity, was the sense of isolation and loneliness between the slow figures. One of those works, filmed by Lynne Lonidier, in performance with John White and I, took place in the empty parking lot of the Del Mar, California horse racing track in 1970

Two figures slowly and repeatedly approach each other, making eye contact, as though would meet but at the last minute, they diverge and continue walking on. Arguably rape may be the ultimate expression of that disaffection. The theme persisted into 1973, as in "Ablutions" about rape, created with Judy Chicago, Suzanne Lacy, Sandi Orgel and myself. Several works from that period were written about recently in, "Modernism, Art ,and Therapy," in a chapter about that early work by Jacob Stewart Halevy. My key theme through those years was the avoidance of intimacy and what lies under that avoidance.

Narcissism and addiction have a lot in common. The behaviors of both amount to an obsession with the self's experience, to the exclusion of all else, which leads to personal collapse. Both require enabling behaviors from others. At its extreme manifestation, the narcissist becomes a strong man, whether in a household or a nation and the controlling behavior becomes a form of addiction, reinforced by rageful threats and withering cruelties. Those behaviors are what destroy the edges of integrity for a system that includes empathy. In the case of a strong man, one sees characteristics of narcissism and addiction merging, as the individual morphs into a dictator, a tyrant. Both culminate in extractive behavior, from human rape to rape of an ecosystem. Both are expressions of disaffection.

As with any narcissist, the dictator cannot tolerate any whiff of opposition or criticism, which empathy evokes. Empathy shatters disaffection. Art is like the nuclear approach of activating small points of empathy, that reinforce the structural integrity of the whole. There are always artists who defy the status quo with empathy.

In the narcissistic political system, maintaining a status quo for the addict-perpetrator is as crucial as creating chaos for others. Art provides an alternative order. The tyrant's status quo demands a consistent supply at all cost. Chaos allows sufficient destabilization to allow the agent to feed off the anguish that has been created, whether by arbitrary control or profligate cruelty. In the case of the addict, any remorse or self-doubt is drowned in whatever substance abuse permits denial. In the case of a dictator, there must be a scapegoat target on whom control, chaos and delusions of gain can be exacted at the cost of empathy and vented to sustain the exercise of power. Art is like an experience of intervention: confronting the agents of chaos with the impacts of disaffection.

Some speculative research, as I have written before suggests several causes for this trajectory of disaffection, including:

1. A childhood experience of being the wunderkind or "golden child."

2. Overwhelming neurological experiences of sensory overload and abuse.

Art that reifies affect beyond a limited community, rather than outcomes for small groups requires embracing the chaos of overwhelm and discerning a new order, grounded in different values.

Once the status quo of the narcissistic-addictive system pattern is established, however, constant reinforcement to sustain the status quo is required, as is constant reinforcement of the opposite, to break it. That is why dictators attack art.

Some speculate that there is a mutual attraction between narcissists and empaths, who provide consistent emotional "supply," and a circle of flying monkeys, who reinforce the disaffected behaviors. We can certainly see that in historical accounts of how dictatorships are established. But the empath- artist can also provide a way out, a meeting that disaggregates the disaffection.

Can there be redemption, rehabilitation and restoration? Research has indicated that narcissism, especially at the malignant stage we can observe today is an almost intractable condition, often linked to patriarchal assumptions. The patterns are effective simply because, they work, at least in the short term! However, there are historical examples of powerful people who have repented. The author of Amazing Grace is legendary for repenting of his role in the slave trade . In personal situations, an individual needs to be inwardly motivated to consistently face their compulsions.

Hard boiled flying monkeys and enablers are not innocent victims. But they might be considered as an opportunity to reinforce the edges of systemic habitat collapse with a balancing connection. Like scavengers who trail predators in any wilderness, they hope to share in the spoils of what is left behind. They are as addicted to the desire for numbing gain as the addict-strongman, even if the goals and means are clearly delusional solutions to suffering and insecurity and certainly their behavior inures them to the devastating impacts on or ethical considerations for others. But what if they retain some humanity? Could they be dissuaded from their role in sustaining a cruel and ultimately failing status quo? Could they come to comprehend empathy as a nuclear restoration?

How then, can art enter into this system and change it? First, we must recognize that art and artist need protection. Without that protection, all culture is threatened. In the case of a tyrant, after crushing women & children, art is one of the first go-tos to annihilate resistance. Art routine ly examines and tests any status quo and often requires an experience of alternatives and empathy. That is why Hitler labeled the contemporary art of his times, "degenerate" and burned the art and destroyed the artists. It is why Trump had to appoint himself head of the Kennedy Center.

The need to crush the hope art represents under the heel of narcissism is why the far-right began by attacking support for individual artists at the NEA in the early ninetiesin the United States. Even earlier, promoting a debunked trickle-down theory made it harder and harder for artists, along with many marginalized groups, to survive. These were just two of the systematic assaults on the edges of democracy, launched decades ago.

And yet, art and resistance rises, like weeds in city pavement. Gaslighting, for example, identifying scapegoats or targeting threats to the status quo works to suppress dissent and quash rebellion. Truth and empathy and art are nuclear options for remediation.

In my book, "Divining Chaos," I wrote of how personal and political systems converged in my experience of rape, "Rape was, and often still is, accompanied by an experience of gaslighting at the cultural scale. ​ It distracts victims of sexual violence from the crimes of patriarchal entitlement. ​ For the rest of my life, rape left me craving an elusive wholeness as solid as the rigid social systems I had accepted until then. ​ My boundaries had been blasted to smithereens from the inside out." Being blasted to smithereens is the essential outcome of any dictatorship.​

Later in my text I wrote, "For many women, the most egregious example of gaslighting was during the 2016 election. In an editorial titled 'Hillary Clinton Was Right to Warn Us,' published the day before the 2020 presidential election, Jennifer Senior of the New York Times wrote of fictionalized women who prevail over patriarchies versus what occurs in real life: 'In real life, such women are often despised precisely because they are right.' ​ My reaction for a long time was bitter. ​ I had to accept that the culture I inhabit doesn’t just rape bodies; it rapes minds. ​ During the pandemic, it became clear to me that this form of denial was on a continuum." ​

The continuum was strategically critical. Therefore the agents of tyranny have had to attack abortion rights and women's bodily autonomy, and then trans rights. These examples are the exercise of personal rape, environmental rape, cruelties of every order, including gaslighting that gut the integrity of the center of community empathy and reify bullying. But we have seen, women resist, including governors, Kathy Hochul in New York and in my home state, Janet Mills, rising, fiercely, standing up to bullying from Washington DC. On every level, any system that supports bullying must be contested. The recent public display of narcissistic bullying with gaslighting flying monkeys directed at Zelenskyy was another example of resistance.

Art can be a means of resistance to the degradation of the edges. In addiction work, an intervention reveals the consequences of addictive behavior. If the perpetrator cares about the witnesses, they will enter treatment. If they can't change, the advice is to "detach with love." Children can't do that but citizens can by simply feeling and mirroring the affects of tyranny on each other. That is the adult response. That is part of the task of any artist now despite threats to existence when the status quo is contested.

In the end, more than fifty years after performing, “Mirrors,” I see the same task for myself that I identified in 1970: allow the performers to meet rather than pass by each other. In 1970, the tableau on an empty parking lot and the dancers did not meet. The walking was interspersed with images of endangered white Rhinoceroses. Those animals are now almost extinct. Their appearance in the film framed a failure, not just for people to meet each other but also for the rest of the world to meet what has since been lost, to see ourselves mirrored in each other. In 2025, I believe my aesthetic task has evolved from mirroring the incipient disaffection I saw in 1970, to artfully mirroring the tyranny of denial against models of empathy and courage.