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See the Just Tao It Series Introduction Tao/It on-ramp, PART II: HERE
See Just Tao It, Chapter 1: HERE

From my interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 29 (Unpublished):

Some reach for the powerful place

Without concern for the whole.

Some climb to the highest space

With the intention to control.

In chasing the part

They forget the whole.

Yet the parts are connected.

The whole remembers them all.

Under heaven some lead

And some follow.

Cool winds arrive

And warm winds go.

Some rise high.

Some settle low.

Harvest comes

From the seeds we sow.

The power-wise soul

Keeps both head and heart.

Caring for the whole,

It tends each part.

—

There is a form of leadership that believes power is fundamentally a zero-sum game. When they gain power, we lose it. When they speak, we are silenced. When they belong, we disappear. When they lead, we are diminished. That story has existed throughout human history, and it has justified an astonishing amount of suffering along the way.

Barry Johnson’s Chapter 22 in And, Volume One remains one of the clearest descriptions I know of this tension: Claiming Power AND Sharing Power. Every individual, group, organization, nation, religion, movement, and democracy requires the capacity to claim power. Human beings need agency, voice, influence, self-protection, participation, representation, and the ability to shape conditions affecting their lives. Claiming power matters. Though the moment Claiming Power loses relationship with Sharing Power, systems begin reorganizing around domination. And domination eventually destabilizes everything.

That pattern becomes easier to recognize once you stop looking at politics primarily through ideology and start looking at systems through the lens of power dynamics. Authoritarian systems almost always frame power as scarce, fragile, and under threat. Which means someone must control it before someone else does. Fear becomes politically useful inside that story. So does humiliation. So does division. So does dehumanization. Eventually leadership itself becomes performative strength theater: dominance confused for maturity, cruelty confused for honesty, intimidation confused for competence, loyalty confused for integrity.

We are watching versions of that happen globally now.

The V-Dem Institute’s 2026 Democracy Report describes the current period as a “third wave of autocratization,” with roughly 74% of the world’s population now living in autocracies or autocratizing systems. Freedom of expression has reportedly fallen to 50-year lows globally. The more sobering reality is that modern democratic decline rarely arrives through dramatic military coups anymore. It increasingly arrives through elected leaders gradually weakening institutions from inside the system itself: attacking the judiciary, undermining independent journalism, politicizing civil service structures, eroding trust in elections, concentrating executive authority, and normalizing behavior that previously would have triggered institutional alarm.

The United States increasingly shows signs of this same pattern.

That sentence would have felt almost unthinkable for many Americans to write even a decade ago.

Now it feels difficult to avoid.

The V-Dem Report documented measurable decline in U.S. democratic indicators over the past decade, alongside growing concerns about executive overreach, institutional weakening, voter distrust, disinformation, extreme polarization, and the erosion of democratic norms themselves. Increasingly, the concern is less about disagreement and more about whether large portions of the population continue viewing political opposition as legitimate participants in a shared constitutional system.

That distinction protects democracy itself.

Democracy has always contained conflict. Healthy democracies require conflict. The principle of loyal opposition emerged precisely because democratic systems require a way for people to oppose each other fiercely without abandoning loyalty to the larger constitutional whole holding everyone together.

“His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition,” as it emerged in Britain, recognized something profoundly important: loyalty to a nation and loyalty to its current leadership are different things entirely.

Opposition parties are supposed to challenge power, expose mistakes, criticize policies, represent minority perspectives, and offer alternative futures. That tension serves democracy. It is one of the primary mechanisms preventing power from hardening into authoritarian control. The ruling party acknowledges the opposition’s legitimacy. The opposition acknowledges the legitimacy of the constitutional system itself. Both remain accountable to something larger than temporary political victory.

That arrangement requires maturity.

It requires enough developmental capacity to oppose each other without turning one another into enemies of the state. Enough restraint to tolerate dissent without treating disagreement as betrayal. Enough systems-awareness to recognize that peaceful transfer of power depends upon preserving legitimacy even when outcomes feel painful, threatening, or deeply disappointing.

The moment opposition itself becomes framed as illegitimate, dangerous, traitorous, subhuman, or unworthy of participation, democratic systems begin shifting toward something else entirely.

That movement rarely happens all at once.

It emerges gradually through normalization.

A population feels threatened, economically strained, culturally displaced, ignored, overwhelmed by complexity, or exhausted by instability. Someone arrives promising strength, certainty, restoration, control, simplicity, and enemies to blame. The relief can feel intoxicating. Finally someone is fighting for Us. Finally someone is strong enough. Finally someone is willing to break things.

And for a while, that energy can create very real feelings of empowerment among people who previously felt unseen or unheard.

Until the compensations begin.

The system slowly starts requiring increasing loyalty, increasing obedience, increasing ideological conformity, increasing tolerance for cruelty, increasing distrust of dissent, and increasing acceptance of behavior that previously would have felt morally disqualifying. People normalize what they once would have resisted because belonging itself has fused with identity and power.

Barry Johnson describes a similar movement in Reality 51—how groups get “hooked” by one value/fear diagonal and become unable to access the wisdom of the feared pole. The more threatened people feel, the more tightly they grip the value they believe will save them. The downside of their preferred pole becomes increasingly normalized while the feared pole becomes increasingly caricatured.

Then systems reorganize around the polarization itself.

The Tao sees this pattern clearly. Chapter 29 never argues against strength, leadership, influence, or authority. Those capacities remain necessary. Human systems require people willing to lead, decide, protect, build, organize, interrupt harm, and exercise power responsibly. Though the chapter also recognizes something modern cultures repeatedly forget: power without stewardship eventually becomes self-destructive.

Martin Luther King Jr. named this tension precisely: “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.” Modern culture increasingly rewards one side of the polarity while distrusting the other. Some leaders overidentify with force, dominance, certainty, and winning. Others overidentify with accommodation, harmony, and avoiding conflict. One produces intimidation. The other produces passivity incapable of interrupting harm.

Healthy systems require both Strength And Restraint. Both Advocacy And Inquiry. Both Freedom And Accountability. Both Claiming Power AND Sharing Power.

Barry Oshry (See Chapter And_V2_PEEK_C36_OSHRY) described a similar dynamic through Power Processes AND Love Processes. Systems require differentiation and individuation. They also require integration and shared coherence. Too much integration without differentiation produces obedience and groupthink. Too much differentiation without integration produces fragmentation and division. Healthy democracies require both.

That feels increasingly important right now because technology is accelerating nearly every destabilizing force simultaneously. Social media systems reward outrage faster than discernment. Algorithms amplify humiliation faster than wisdom. Political ecosystems reward certainty faster than complexity. Public attention increasingly moves toward whoever can dominate emotionally instead of whoever can steward reality responsibly.

And reality eventually responds. Systems fragment. Trust erodes. Institutions weaken under conditions they weren’t designed to survive.

History has a remarkably long memory regarding what happens when societies drift too far toward concentrated power while losing relationship with interdependence, institutional trust, shared accountability, and the humanity of political opposition. The damage rarely stays contained to one group for very long. Eventually the whole absorbs the consequences.

Which may be why Chapter 29 ends where it does:

“The power-wise soul
Keeps both head and heart.”

Power-wise.

Strong enough to claim power. Mature enough to share it. Wise enough to recognize that every attempt to dominate the whole eventually destabilizes the parts. And every attempt to destroy the parts eventually weakens the whole.

That feels less like ancient philosophy these days and more like a survival skill for democracy itself.

Here’s a Polarity Map for Claim Power AND Share Power:

INVITATIONS:
How are these polarities showing-up for you right now?
Try the AI-trained “Chat w/Cliff” for Step 1, Seeing, CLICK HERE.

Want to go deeper into Polarity Thinking? See our online self-directed Credentialing and Introduction to Polarity Practice, CLICK HERE.

Additional Chapters focusing on variations of this Chapter, see:
Chapter 10
Chapter 36