As state and federal lawmakers continue to knowingly support those at the top of the bulging heap to retain personal power and control, the words "complicit" and "enable" rise to the surface. Both are destructive, though they are not the same.
Complicity implies sharing guilt or knowing participation in a wrongful act. Enabling means providing support or removing consequences that allow a behavior to continue — often driven by a misguided desire to help. Complicity involves moral, ethical or legal liability — you are aware and choose to remain silent, often choosing to continue to benefit from it. Complicity is most common in institutional, legal or systemic settings.
Enabling is often unintentional — rooted in love, fear or a desire to avoid conflict. Enablers shield a person from the natural consequences of their actions. Enabling is common in personal relationships, families or addiction recovery. Enablers engage in caretaking (to prevent harm), protecting (to cover up), rescuing (to “fix†the problem) and overcompensating (taking on responsibilities).
Complicity includes staying silent when someone does something bad. You share the blame, even though you didn’t plan the main act. You knew. You joined in. You looked away. And you reaped the benefits. The reasons are numerous: fear, blind loyalty, following orders, looking away. But you knew. We must, each of us, be held accountable and responsible for our own actions. There is no way around it, nor should there be. We made the choice to turn the other way. And, once that decision was consciously made, the momentum increased.
Enablers often possess excessive empathy and poor personal boundaries. By enabling, they think they’re keeping the peace. They often have low self-esteem. They avoid conflict.
So, whether we’re talking about the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, or turning our heads knowing of a family member’s addictive behavior, it’s clear what defines one from the other. There is no fine line between the two.
While I’ve not served as a sponsor for someone making their way through addiction recovery, I have served as a support contact. I take that role very seriously, knowing when to step away and tell them to call their sponsor or their doctor. The worst thing I can do is try to save them. I’m not qualified to do that. But I can listen, and I can point them in the right direction.
In his book, "COMPLICIT," author Max Bazerman, a Harvard Business School professor, discusses the “traps that lead us to ignore, condone or actively support wrongdoing in our businesses, organizations, communities, politics and more.†He tells the stories of those who enabled Theranos, the opioid crisis, the sexual abuse that led to the #MeToo movement, and the Jan. 6 Capitol breach. These people had a team of people who knew: employees, investors, business associates.
Each of these behaviors is multi-leveled. They cannot be fully examined in a single commentary, but clear examples of each aren’t hiding; they are in full view if we but open our eyes and look at the dangers each one cultivates. I know that you are as aware of them as I am, as each of us must surely be.
What comes next is the question: “What are we going to do about it?†in our homes, our communities, our region and our nation. You might say, “It’s too big to tackle.†That’s what they said about the opioid crisis in our own backyards and yet, it was brought to its knees by one of our own, Eric Eyre. So yes, it can be arrested if, collectively, we come together, put one foot in front of the other and call a halt to any further destruction.
And yes, I do think it’s possible. To suggest otherwise does nothing to halt the destructive impact that accompanies complicity and enabling. And something must halt each.
