Isothymia and Megalothymia in Participatory Workshops

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Recently, I was reading a piece by Francis Fukuyama—a commentary critiquing Marco Rubio's views and Donald Trump's approach (dated October 12, 2026). Putting aside the day's political controversies in the US, what strongly caught my attention and drew my mind back to my experiences in dialogue and participatory workshops was Fukuyama's re-reading of the concept of thymos and its division into two terms: isothymia and megalothymia. Let me explain further.

Fukuyama, drawing on Plato and a re-reading of Hegel's and Alexandre Kojève’s dialectic, reminds us that the driving force behind a huge part of history and politics is humanity's insatiable desire for "recognition" and the preservation of dignity. He divides this desire into two branches:

One. Isothymia, meaning the aspiration for an individual to be seen and treated equally to others, with their status and dignity recognized. In Fukuyama's view, this is the very foundation upon which democratic societies and civil movements strive. When people's isothymia is suppressed or when they feel humiliated, resentment and anger are born.

Two. Megalothymia, meaning the burning desire to be superior to others; the urge to become a hero, to leave a mark, and to stand at the top. This is the very double-edged sword that can be the source of the greatest leadership, courage, innovations, and human progress, or conversely, can lead to autocracy, tyranny, fascism, and the destruction of others.

When reading these lines, the atmosphere of dialogue rooms, participatory circles, and local development workshops immediately came to mind. In workshops, I usually talk with participants from the perspective of transactional analysis (TA); that the constructive relationship between human beings should either be "Child-Child"—meaning based on intimacy, humor, and play free from judgment—or "Adult-Adult"—meaning based on reasoning, mutual understanding, and realism. The "Parent-Child" relationship is wrong due to its authoritarian nature (unless when danger threatens a child), and the "Parent-Parent" relationship does not work either, because it is the collision of two megalothymias, with both sides full of pretense and superiority-seeking.

Beyond this, in a participatory workshop, we face these exact two forces: On one hand, the primary mission of the facilitator is to respond to isothymia: creating a safe space so that the voiceless person—whether a farmer, a local youth, or a quiet woman—feels that their voice, opinion, and presence carry as much weight as that influential person or government official participating in the room. Their voice is recognized. But the main challenge lies elsewhere: What should be done with megalothymia?

Perhaps at first glance, it might cross our minds that it is better to crush any sign of superiority-seeking and ego in the bud so that everyone becomes completely uniform. But experience has taught me that suppressing megalothymia makes the workshop passive. People who possess a strong sense of megalothymia are full of energy, courage, risk-taking, and sometimes even help shift everyone's horizon of vision. If we extinguish this fire, perhaps no grand dream will be created for that community, or it won't emerge at the right time.

So, what is the remedy? Let megalothymia do its work sometimes, but with an important condition: megalothymia that helps others engage; megalothymia that does not create a battlefield, but instead shapes a playground where others can play too; megalothymia that sees others and defines roles for them, but not in a painful way. Without others, never.

In this playground, the urge of that passionate, leadership-oriented person for role-playing is satisfied (not by humiliating and marginalizing others), but by creating openings for the collective (most members of the group) and accepting the hardships of solving a complex problem. They play a central role, but a role that must also grant weight, agency, and validity to others. Constructive and honorable roles. And as a facilitator, I try to make this opening process—this very process of defining roles—proceed as collaboratively as possible, or gradually become more collaborative over time. Sometimes these local elites want everything to advance according to their own definition and perspective, and even want the entire process under their control. We must transform this totalizing tendency into a participatory and constructive process. In some cases, I have been completely successful, while in others, tension has occasionally arisen. Sometimes the megalothymia was so strong that I couldn't prevail. That is why we proceeded more slowly and gradually.

Let me put it this way: dialogue workshops sometimes truly turn into an arena for calibrating and polishing human dignity and pride. Our art in dialogue is to guarantee isothymia so that no soul is humiliated, and of course, to tame and make megalothymia generative so that instead of burning down the community, it becomes the driving force of social solidarity and the co-creation of a shared future. A difficult and delicate task, but immensely delightful and liberating.