I RECENTLY attended an event on power, health and social justice hosted by the ever-excellent Glasgow Centre for Population Health. The subject of power – who wields it, who is excluded, and the consequences of power and powerlessness – is hugely important. It affects how every one of us fares in life, and how our society feels as a whole.

Mindfulness-trained leaders would be nurtured in clarity of thought, calmness, contentment, and compassion. This is what mindfulness brings. How many of our elected leaders and representatives are sufficiently clear-thinking, calm, content and compassionate? How many of our business leaders? And you?

A compassionate leader would want all citizens to feel confident and engaged enough to make their voice heard in their community and in their country. A clear-thinking leader would work to make that a reality, acting to ensure that all citizens feel not only able to access the temples of power, but know they can contribute once they’re there. How many people feel completely excluded, unable to reach those who might make a difference?

From a mindfulness perspective there can be no such thing as real democracy. Democracy means the power of the people; but people never unanimously agree. What we mean by democracy is voting in an election or referendum, whereby a majority get some version of what they want while the minority get what they expressly didn’t want. That is not people power, that is dictatorship of the majority. I’m not arguing against it or suggesting a better system; merely stating that we should use the correct words when describing things. This is not only semantics. If democracy is not possible then a clear, calm mindful voice tells us we should say that, then go on to explore how power should best be granted to a person or group, and under what conditions and for how long. In other words we need to review our constitution to find better ways of sharing formal power.

There’s a much deeper aspect to this question of power and public health. It’s not only our official leaders who need to be trained to be profoundly mindful; it’s all of us. If we, the electorate, are not trained to understand how conditioned we are, how biased, how prejudiced, how literally ignorant of issues, and then taught how to manage and overcome these deluded views, then we do, as the old phrase puts it, get the government we deserve.

We see this absence of mindfulness through the history of revolutions. Old regimes are overthrown, utopias are promised, then what follows are millions on the guillotine, in the Gulag, in the gas chambers, in killing fields. Power is a very heavy, dangerous tool. The people who wield it need to have the mental strength to bear such a weight lightly, calmly, gently. And most of us are not equipped by life alone or our genes to be this way naturally.

We know so many abuses of power. In our governments and parliaments, in our churches and institutions, in small businesses and global corporations. Also in our homes, our schools, our streets. The saying goes that “power corrupts” but in fact most of us carry the seeds of this corruption in our minds, through that mysterious combination of DNA and life experiences.

I stepped down as convenor of the Scottish Green Party in 2004. It was the highest position in a party that is instinctively wary of putting power and “leadership” into one or a few hands. I did so because I felt I needed to work more on the cultivation of my own mental qualities through my mindfulness practices before I’d be fit to take anything like that role in future. More than a decade later I’m still working at it, and still not yet fit.

So where does that leave me upon reflection? Empower yourself by starting to take full control of the thoughts and reactions that are produced by your own mind. Only when we are capable of that, and therefore able to stop the destructive elements of our mind’s relentless production line, can we be truly fit for positions of power of any sort. Only then will we nurture the intelligence, wisdom and compassion to review our totally dysfunctional levels of power inequalities and make a better set of systems for the good of all.