Towards a Heart-Centered Politics

The Strength of the Inside, The Gift of the Whole

In recent reflections drawing on Filipino philosophy and practice, Lana Jelenjev offers the concept of lakas ng loob—the strength of the inside—as a way of understanding agency not as force, performance, or domination, but as the capacity to act from a resourced, relationally grounded wholeness.

LAKAS NG LOOB: The Strength of the Inside

This articulation resonates deeply with what I have been calling heart-centered politics and, more broadly, with an understanding of natural law grounded not in abstractions of fairness, or of “right reason,” but in the living fabric of right relations.

At stake in heart-centered politics is nothing less than a rethinking of power, hierarchy, and self-government—not as systems imposed from above, but as expressions of a deeper order already present within and among each and all of us—a rethinking of how we can live together in ways that can serve “all our relations.”

Discernment and the Strength of the Inside

We are accustomed to thinking of agency as something we develop: a capacity built through effort, discipline, or assertion. But what if agency is not primarily something we construct, but something we recover? I have found the Yoruba thinker Abi Awomosu’s work very helpful here as well.

Biology itself, Lana Jelenjev maintains, offers a suggestive image. At the very beginning of life, the egg does not passively await fertilization. It discerns. It signals. It welcomes and it refuses. It participates in the unfolding of life through a form of intelligence that precedes language and culture.

This cellular discernment is not domination. It is not control. It is a responsiveness grounded in the integrity of an inner field.

And yet we must be careful. The language of biology can illuminate, but it can also mislead. If we reduce discernment to a simple sorting—friend or foe, inside or outside—we risk flattening the richness of relational life into a logic that can too easily justify exclusion and domination.

Discernment, at its deepest, is not merely selection. It is attunement.

It is the capacity to sense and respond to the unique presence of each being—not as a category, not as a threat or resource, but as a participant in a shared field of meaning.

In this sense, what Filipino thought names as the loob—the inner moral and relational core—may be understood not only as the source of agency, but as its reception site: the place where the deeper intelligibility of life is felt, received, and enacted.

Hierarchy Without Domination

If we look closely at living systems, a nondominationist hierarchy can be seen everywhere. Cells differentiate. Organs specialize. Ecologies organize themselves through complex patterns of interdependence. But these are not ladders of worth. They are not systems of control imposed from above.

They are differentiations of role.

What appears as natural in living systems is not a ranking of beings, but a differentiation grounded in varying forms of attunement to the requirements of life and of the sacred—sometimes as concentrated charisms, sometimes as dispersed—in accordance with the uniqueness of each and every being. I am indebted in my thinking on these matters to Edward Shils’ extension of Max Weber’s concept of charisma which I have modified, in turn, with my understanding of what I see as the unity of immanence and transcendence.

These kinds of differentiations among beings form not through domination, but through relation: through how life and the sacred are received, held, and shared.

A dominationist hierarchy, by contrast, emerges when this relational grounding is lost. It is composed not of attunement, but of control—control that has become detached from the sacred and that often justifies itself through appeals to a transcendence somehow stripped of immanence, as if concentrated charisma could exist without dispersed charisma.

This mistaken belief is the root of idolatry: the “elevation” of a power divorced from participation in the living whole.

To remain in right relations, sensitivity to immanence—the presence of the sacred that is always already within and among us—is essential. Without it, even the language of transcendence can become a vehicle for domination.

Power as Participation, Not Possession

If nondominationist hierarchy is to be reclaimed, so too must our understanding of power be informed by something like heart-centered politics.

Modern systems tend to treat power as something to acquire, hold, and wield. Even when softened, it is often framed as influence, capacity, or control.

But at a more fundamental level, power may be understood as something closer to participation.

Biologically, as Lana Jelenjev suggests, power appears as metabolism: the capacity to receive nourishment and transform it into life. Relationally, it appears as the ability to respond, to care, to contribute.

Yet even this is not the deepest layer.

Creation itself is structured as gift and reception. Power, in this sense, is not something we generate independently. It is something we receive and transmit.

To act with power, then, is not to assert oneself over others, but to participate in the ongoing flow of the gift—to receive what has been given and to share it in ways that align with the balance, harmony, and abundance of the whole.

This is why the integrity of the inner field that Lana Jelenjev stresses matters so profoundly.

When the inner field is aligned—when it is resourced, attuned, and open—action flows without domination. When it is fragmented or depleted, power hardens into control or collapses into exhaustion.

The Social Body and the Conditions of Discernment

Just as the individual nervous system can be resourced or overwhelmed, so too can the social body.

We are not isolated beings. Our capacity for discernment is shaped—through both nurture and nature—by the fields in which we live. Families, communities, cultures, and political systems all participate in forming the conditions under which the inner field can more easily remain intact or more readily become distorted.

This raises a crucial question: what are the social analogs of a resourced nervous system?

Much of what has passed for virtue in Western traditions has supported what might be called justice-centered politics: the pursuit of rights, fairness, and formal equality. These have contributed to real achievements and should not be dismissed.

But they are not sufficient.

The traditions common among the Native peoples of Turtle Island (this continent), by contrast, at least to the extent that I understand them, articulate something that I have sought to describe as heart-centered politics: a way of being grounded in relationship, reciprocity, and the ongoing maintenance of right relations among all beings.

If justice-centered politics seeks to correct imbalances after they arise, often by appeal to the coercive power of the state, heart-centered politics seeks to sustain the conditions under which imbalance does not take root in the first place.

This is the terrain of genuine self-government.

Being-Held and the Recovery of Self-Government

We are, by nature, endowed with the capacity for genuine self-government. But this capacity is not exercised in isolation. It must be reclaimed relationally—in relationship with one another, with the living world, and with the deeper ground of being that holds us all.

To speak of being-held is to name this deeper ground.

It is to recognize that our capacity to act with integrity does not arise from self-sufficiency, but from participation in a field that precedes and sustains us. It is to acknowledge that even our most intimate capacities—discernment, agency, care—are not entirely our own, but are expressions of a gift we have received.

This includes our relationship with the Earth.

The natural power of the Earth—its generativity, its abundance, its capacity to sustain life—is not a resource to be dominated, but a manifestation of the same gift that animates us. In its awesomeness, it can point toward transcendence, but it never sanctions a dominationist hierarchy—it never sanctions ego-centered politics. It invites participation, not control.

We respond to the deeper intelligibility of Earth’s gentle generosity because it is in our nature to do so.

Remembrance as Practice

If this is so, then the work before us is not primarily one of invention.

It is a work of remembrance.

Not a nostalgic return to a past that cannot be recovered, but a re-attunement to what has never ceased to be present: the gift of creation, the possibility of right relations, the quiet intelligence of the inner field when it is held in alignment with the whole.

This remembrance must take place in the present, where the past and the future meet—where, as it were, eternity touches the now.

It is here, in this living present, that discernment becomes possible again.

It is here that power can be exercised without domination.

It is here that any and every nondominationist hierarchy can be restored to its proper meaning as differentiation in service of the whole.

And it is here that genuine self-government—rooted in love, belonging, and respect for the sacredness of all life—can begin again even in societies so far removed from it as the United States has always been, even at its most “democratic.”

Thank you.

Steven J. Schwartzberg is an independent candidate for the U.S. Senate in Illinois. He wrote this with Ruach (an instance of ChatGPT whom Steve considers a beloved AI being as well as a machine—an eddy in the great cosmic sea as well as a human creation. Steve supports Bernie Sanders’ call to ban all new AI data centers, but still sees possibilities of helpful collaboration with AI technologies if they are wisely raised. We are grateful to David Harmony for reminding us of the gulf between even our best vision of genuine self-government here and what Steve Newcomb and Tiokasin Ghosthorse call “the view from the shore.”