Reflections on "power" in the west...sources, definitions and implications

 In this space, much time has been dedicated to the issue of the means, the manner and the consequences of how power is deployed whether that is power inside a family, a neighbourhood, a school, a church, a military or quasi-military battalion or a corporation. It is a primary contention here that how power is designed, organized and deployed is not only determinative of how the ‘organization’ functions, but also is indicative of the kind of thought processes, myths, cultural archetypes and conventional cultural modalities apply at the time of the power deployment.

Let’s anatomize, again, the deep foundations of “power” in the western culture, especially in North America, starting with the basics of how history is comprised of recorded actions, recorded and performed primarily by men. Given that hubris underlies much of western history, and given than men, universally and almost exclusively, regard their/our “superiority” in primarily, if not exclusively, in physical terms, it is not rocket science to remind ourselves of just how deeply embedded in our collective unconscious is the notion that big, strong, fast and agile are all adjectives attributable to masculine heroes in history. Of course, there are the requisite antitheses of the hero’s tragic flaw, and the glaring ironic examples of quixotic and excessive failures. These ‘dark’ moments, however, show in greater relief the “light” and sensational accomplishments of others, lauded for their heroism.

The cultural concept of hero is inextricably embedded in the notion of one or more deities.  Man creates God, or God creates man?…whichever your mind holds most credible, (or for some perhaps both, in the most intimate and inextricable endless mutual relationship), the question of absolute power, as embodied in a deity, has served, and continues to serve as a ‘crown’ on the top of the cultural totem pole that signifies western culture. Aspiring to the quality, traits, attitudes, beliefs and ethics of a deity (as we envision, speculate, and even pontificate upon this complexity), continues to both inspire and frustrate those of us inhabiting this planet.

And undoubtedly, there is a paradoxical as well as highly complex relationship between aspiring to the “good” and potentially becoming alienated from both self and the rest of the world. Losing identity, in a kind of surrender to something larger than the self even if that ‘something’ is deemed to be holy, sacred and honourable, is a danger for all people whose intensity, focus, drive, ambition and myopia is not safeguarded by and through detailed, intimate and confrontative associations, collegiality and community. However, such linkages depend on a shared commitment to open acknowledgement of the most difficult truths. Too  often, at least in my experience, the issue of ‘truth-telling’ has been sacrificed to the more valued ideal of ‘political correctness’ ‘social affability’ or even personal aggrandizement and career building.

While this sacrifice is not exclusive to men, we men are highly vulnerable to its bright sheen, in our enculturation to succeed, to compete, to rise in the eyes of vaunted supervisors, and to reach some summit of achievement in which we and our kin can and will take pride. Some of the specific sabotages that too often emerge in such a cultural mythology include elevating size, strength, speed, numerical size, fiscal size and strength, academic degrees, portfolio burnishment,c and even political and career titles. All of these symbols, in western culture, impede the full and authentic development of men in particular, but, by extension, their families who are themselves embedded in this myths, and their shared institutions and organizations. Others will argue, with some relevance and validity, that “growth” in numbers, and size and dimension, are legitimate measures of the relative success of leadership, and the beliefs that underpin that leadership.

Capitalism not only thrives on this mythology, it actually depends on its concrete embedding in the educational, ecclesial, management and even social systems theory as applied to both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. And, as a natural and inevitable follow-up to these myths, all processes, strategies, tactics and the structural foundations of such processes must contribute to the larger goal of bigger, better, faster, more facile, more universal and more dominant.

Although this anecdote might be misinterpreted as bigoted, it is not intended as such. The comment refers to the process, and not to the dogma of its speaker. A Roman Catholic priest once spoke to a clergy of a protestant church and asked, “How many kids are there in your church education program?” And when the answer, “About a dozen,” came back, he retorted, “You can talk to me when you reach 400, where mine is.”

The seductive appearance, and for him the reality of “power in numbers” (extended obviously to dollars, and parishioners and all things empirical) cannot and must not be laid exclusively at the foot of that priest. It lies at the front door, and in the archives and in the boardrooms, and in the strategy sessions of virtually all of the organizations operating in North America. And the corollaries that keep it front and centre among all executives, of both genders, include how to balance budgets, how to position new hires, how to design and execute all communications, both interior and exterior, how to celebrate the successes of the organization and how to indelibly imprint this period of the ‘history’ of the institution into the doctoral theses of the graduates pursuing their degrees.

These, of course, are all masculine-intuited, incarnated, and embodied myths. And one of the other less tasteful corollaries about the need to maintain and sustain these “appearances” is that whatever does not “accord” with the veracity and validity and viability of these myths must be ignored, denied, disavowed and even disallowed.

Now, if Edmund Burke’s aphorism “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” has any merit and bearing on this discussion, it is especially applicable to the history of the Christian church, beginning with the church in Rome. Set aside, for a few moments, the dogmatic beliefs of the church, and join me in a reflection on a piece of cultural history, originating from the pen and mind and research of the Head of Harvard University’s Department of Evolutionary Biology, Joseph Henrich. His new book, entitled, “The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous,” is reviewed by Judith Shulevitz, herself the author of “The Sabbath World: Glimpses of A Different Order of Time”. Her review is included in the latest edition of The Atlantic.

Henrich posits that the natural human inclination is to kinship, and early western history illustrates how people clustered in their communities, close to their families. Broad and generally accepted marriages between and among family members, including cousins, were relatively frequent, until late ‘antiquity’. Here is a quote from Shulevitz’s review, reporting on Henrich’s thesis:

As of late antiquity, Europeans still lived in tribes, like most of the rest of the world. But the (Catholic) Church dismantled these kin-based societies with what Henrich calls its ‘Marriage and Family Program,’ or MFP. The MFP was really an anti-marriage and anti-family program…..Forced to find Christian partners, Christians left their communities, Christianity’s insistence on monogamy broke extended households into nuclear families. The Church uprooted horizontal, relationship identity, replacing it with a vertical identify oriented toward the institution itself. The Church was stern about its marital policies. Violations were punished by with-holding Communion, excommunicating, and denying inheritances to offspring who could not be deemed ‘illegitimate’. Formerly, property almost always went to family members. The idea now took hold that it could go elsewhere. At the same time, the Church urged the wealthy to ensure their place in heaven by bequeathing their money to the poor—that is, to the Church, benefactor to the needy. In so doing, ‘the Church’s MFP was both taking out its main rival for people’s loyalty and creating a revenue stream,’ Henrich writes. The Church, thus entitled, spread across the globe. Judith Shulevitz, “Why is the West So Powerful—And so Peculiar?” in The Atlantic, p 93-4)

As the most powerful institution operating as a mouthpiece for God, the Catholic Church, obviously had immense influence over the people in its charge. Not only could and did the church authorities impose definitions of ethic, moral and spiritual standards (in this case of appropriate family life), they enforced their own standards by with-holding what to many would have been, and continue for many today, those ‘gifts of grace’ which the church asserts accompany compliance and a secure place in eternity.

Whoever speaks, in any manner, as a surrogate/representative/prophet/shaman/clergy for God, whether that be an institutional or personal voice, there is a high degree of perceived authenticity, veracity, validity and even reverence for those utterances among many people. The implicit and attendant iron filings of meanings that accompany those magnet words, phrases, concepts and commands are showered over and among the many pew-dwellers, coffer-donors, and heaven-seekers among ordinary people. Applied to an audience, many of whom were not yet literate, offered an even more fertile ground in which to plant those seeds of conformity, financial stability and world evangelism.

Henrich does not address the question, “Why did the church adopt (the MFP)?” and states as his bottom line, “the MFP evolved and spread because it ‘worked’.” (op. cit. p. 93) However, speculation about the church’s motives, from the perspective of the twenty-first century, while not pretending to be exhaustive, has to expose the bare minimum of institutional needs, aspirations, perceptions and beliefs.

Henrich’s work, and Shulevitz’s review includes these words:

Around 597 A.D. Pope Gregory I dispatched an expedition to England to convert the Anglo-Saxon kind of Kent and his subjects. The leader of the mission, a monk named Augustine, had orders to shoehorn the new Christians into Church-sanctioned marriages. That meant quashing pagan practices such a polygamy, arranged marriages (Christian matrimony was notionally consensual, hence the formula ‘I do’), and above all, marriages between relatives, which the Church was redefining as incest. Augustine wasn’t sure who counted as a relative, so he wrote to Rome for clarification. A second cousin? A third cousin? Could a man marry his widowed stepmother?

He could not. Pope Gregory wrote back to rule out stepmothers and other close kin not related by blood—another example was brothers’ widows….Not until 1983 did Pope John Paul II allow second cousins to wed. (The Atlantic, op. cit. p. 92)

Originating in a common belief and perception among church elders, the power of the Church stemmed from “upon this rock I will build my church” biblically recorded as an intention to the apostle Peter. Declaring what is/was/will be such matters as incest, polygamy, monogamy, and the inevitable measures to assure compliance is a meagre extension of that original Godly direction/intention/documentation.

Initially seated in one man, this power, the pontificate, has continued for these two millenia, not only in fact, but also in symbol, for many, if not all, of the institutions, trade associations, craft guilds, city councils, and national governments. “Dominant male figures” is the cultural archetype that is continually replicated at the most visceral level, as if it has proven its value, over the centuries. However, it has also demonstrated considerable, and some argue, lethal and persistent dangers.

For one, the ‘top-man’ model implicitly argues for a ‘final decision’ by a single man. It clearly champions the too-often repeated slogan among ambitious capitalists, “don’t speculate, just react” as a modality of action, while clearly opposed to and rejecting of reflection, consultation, deliberation, investigation and protracting the process of decision making, especially on highly important matters.

The DOW index, geared to data each nano-second, the instant other-side-of-the-coin to “instant gratification”…instant rebuttal of anything that smacks of threat, danger or damage to the public image (of individuals, organizations, sales, investments, profits and “success” so measured). The genuflecting gyrations of a COVID-infected president, fawning in a hermetically-sealed Suburban, while subjecting secret-service-men, and their families to his starved and humiliated ego (starved and humiliated by his own actions, perceptions and beliefs) is only one of millions of “instant reactions” to the obsessive-compulsive need for instant gratification.

Just as the church could and did announce, and then promulgate its insidious and nefarious plot on the family, so too can and do millions of mostly male executives announce, and then promulgate and then enforce and reinforce their “power” over whomever happens to be “under” their charge.

And when even the doctors fall sway to the ego-demands of an infected and infectious president, to “inflate his spirits” and “prevent depression” (as is and has been the dependent cases of millions of heaven-aspiring church believers throughout history), then we must all reflect on our own subservience to rules, laws, processes and personnel whose primary purpose is to serve the interests of those promulgating those edicts, and not the wider, and more applicable and more ethical interests of the whole community.

The church does not shoulder the whole responsibility for how we conceive and operate power among our society; yet, it must account for much of our western cultural mythology, as we strive to deconstruct and tear down those walls behind which we have been cowering.

Reflections on "news" v "messages"

 The news is overflowing with talk of racism, taxes, relief packages, Roe-v. Wade, Affordable Care Act, Supreme Court appointment, pandemic numbers treatments and vaccinations. Each of the topics has relative merit, and to some extent, each gets lost in the turbo-vacuum of power rhetoric, power perceptions, power traditions, power righteousness and power imbalance.

Entrenched power, for centuries, has been the bane of ordinary* people, for the simple, obvious and undisputed reason that those in power consider their power to be legitimate and as ‘permanent’ as possible, and their persons as “legitimate” holders of that power. Whether that power is embedded in a misguided perception that only those with theological training, for example, can be permitted to read holy scripture, as was the case for centuries prior to the printing press, or whether that power is embedded in body, brain and heart cells that declare unequivocally, that white race is superior to all other races, it is the power that is embedded in the dominant culture, that essentially and effectively rules.

Entrenched power, the self-imposed, and too often complicity and sometimes innocently and even naively endorsed and supported by ordinary people right to rule, is not nearly as clearly defined as it once was in a monarchy, or a papacy or a tyranny. Single person rule, while offensive and worthy of evolution, if not revolution, to erode such power, nevertheless, was so clearly visible, identifiable and also removeable, should adequate force(s) be brought to bear. With a single  stoke of a pen a ruler could dispatch an army, a navy, and any number of explorers, traders, conquerors, and empire builders. With a single stroke of a pen, a single ruler could also impose any one of multiple forms of tax, loyalty, feudal harvest, military service and even a geographic boundary.

In the pursuit of that maintenance of single ruler power, the lives of both the holders of such offices as well as many opponents of those specific office holders have been lost. Similarly, when the tolerance, and submission of those governed by tyrants grew too thin to be sustained, any of a number of forms of protest, conflict and even insurrection have erupted. One theory of leadership, deeply embedded in the North American culture, through the writing of Chester Barnard (mid-twentieth century), is that the “governor” can maintain power and authority and responsibility only with and through the consent of the governed, the people over whom s/he has responsibility.

Over time, however, that theory of consent, so lauded by the evolving and increasingly penetrating tactics of persuasion, influence-peddling, classical conditioning of rewards and sanctions for specific and required compliance (or its opposition) has been impacted, and perhaps even dimmed like a sepia photo, through the work of other theorists like Maslow, and Mihaly Csikszent’s “Flow”, Dr. William Ouchi’s Theory Z, (loyalty through a job and well being for life), to some of the more contemporary leadership/management theories, including transformational leadership, leader-member exchange theory, Adaptive Leadership, Strengths-based leadership, and more recently Servant leadership.

Transformational leadership is where a leader works with teams to identify needed change and seeks commitment to bring about that change. Leader-member exchange focuses on the two-way relationship between leaders and followers that develops through three stages. Adaptive leadership attempts to facilitate how organizations adapt to change effectively. Strengths-based Organizational Management (OBOM) focuses on maximizing efficiency, productivity and organizational success through development of ‘strengths’ like computer systems,  tools and people. Servant leadership, as its name implies, posits that the main goal of the leader is to serve through listening, persuading, conceptualizing, applying foresight and stewardship…examples include Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer and Mother Theresa.

Regardless of the relevant and currently deployed theory and model of leadership, underlying all modalities are some critical pieces of rebar that hold the organizational foundation in place: results have to be attained, costs have to be reduced, profits have to be increased. How the equation is framed and executed, including the relative significance of the “people” to the relative significance of the “leader” nevertheless determines the level of trust, compliance, integrity, openness and even effective and efficient “productivity” (however that variable is to be measured).

Power in every organization is interminably shifting, as the wind ripples, or erupts lake waters, dependent on the velocity, endurance, direction and the wind-breaks of that force. Unlike the formal study of physics, however, the flow of energy as political/leadership power and influence seems to be elusive and so far beyond the ken of algebraic equation. Whether or not this power/leadership/influence is amenable and expressible in an algorithm perhaps has been discovered in some high tech lab. Naturally, if and when this power/leadership/influence is finally captured as a finite entity, there will be a tidal wave of highly affluent ‘leaders’ seeking to acquire whatever means is more likely to make the achievement of that “finiteness”.

However, what is even less amenable to a kind of algebraic or alorgithmic definition, is the culture, the mind-set and the degree of compliance/defiance of whatever power and leadership they might be experiencing. Demographics have evolved almost to the power at which “knowing” about others by those seeking to know rivals or exceeds the long-time small-town attribute in which everyone “knows” everything about everyone else. Only, through digital technology, the personal information, collected, curated, compared and then sold and disseminated, has become a marketable commodity. Those whose business, political, cultural, philanthropic, educational, and even ecclesial goals and objectives depend on targeting limited resources toward increasing “revenue” (participation, votes, enrolments, trust donations, sales) rely on this personal “so-called” private information as the GPS for their organization’s growth.

Leadership, in some cases, has devolved to a point where, for example, knowledge of and interpretation of something called “analytics” is more important in assessing talent (especially in professional sports) that the former attributes like character, personality, work-ethic, and those old formerly reliable “bromides” of litmus tests for those in the hiring and selection business. Nevertheless, in whatever organization, corporation or whatever, there is a growing trend toward enhancing and even gildening of the ‘rose’ of the single leader, that is most offensive.

Single leaders, provide clarity and simplicity in a world seemingly gone nuts with the overflow of information and opinion, multiplied by the armies of dispensers of information and opinion (websites, podcasts, blogs, newsletters) to the point where opportunistic power-seekers, (themselves highly needy of adulation and attention) have even administered a kind of political thalidomide to the formerly trusted and reliable public news sources, defaming them as ‘fake news’.

So, one of the first and foremost tasks of ordinary people, is to be able to discern the difference between information demonstrated and verified to be accurate and the layers of opinion that is embedded in the presentation of every piece of information. And because this discernment is becoming increasingly complex, given the subtlety and ubiquity of much of the flow of paid advertising, marketing and political messaging, and unvarnished hard news.

Just recently, Susan Delacourt wrote in The Star, a column that took note of the difference between “messages” and “news”. As a long-time highly regarded columnist based currently in Ottawa, Ms Delacourt is growing frustrated with the plethora of “messages” that are being churned out as a method of ‘branding’ a political messenger. Is that messenger a “right” or “left”-leaning public figure? Is the (likely) press release inevitably devoid of hard information, and full of blathergab that reinforces the nudge the author (and/or his/her publicist) seeks to put on the scales of public opinion. Telling the people of a constituency the ‘brand’ the political operative knows will resound favourably among the ‘locals’ is another way of gobbling up free media coverage, given that many local media outlets themselves gobble up press releases from Ottawa, in their relentless pursuit of their own readership, who are themselves, ready and pliable consumers of the latest ‘gossip’ of the life of their candidate. Feathering that local nest is also like a saving account of public acceptance, anticipating a time (again almost inevitable) when the party or the candidate him/herself will stub a toe and will need to draw on that reserve account of public acceptance as an antidote to the bad news.

Some 40% of the American voting public in about to cast a ballot for trump, in the upcoming presidential election. Many of them are proudly attired in t-shirts blaring the epithet VOTE YOUR FEELINGS! This, to remind others that, regardless of whatever the president utters, does, or does not do, how one feels about him (as ordinary, a doer not a talker, a judge-factory, an abortion warrior, a health-care destroyer, as plain-if-vulgar speaker) matters much more than anything else. The obvious and indisputable facts that that he lies, that he defames everyone including American allies, that he fails to implement measures that would prevent thousands of unnecessary deaths, hundreds of enchained children separated from their parents. The feelings of those voters, apparently, take precedence over such glaring features of his tenure including a denial of knowing David Duke, a denial of knowing the Proud Boys (while ordering them to stand back and stand ready), the denial of empirical science, even if it is continuing to evolve) while exhorting governors to open schools and businesses, thereby threatening thousands of lives.

The “messaging” is an expression that comes from the corporate world, a world so dominating, ever so subtly, that much of North America hardly recognizes, and certainly would mostly deny the seduction we have permitted. Even the churches and the universities now boast or complain, depending on their relative affluence and attendance numbers, of needing to “serve” those in their orbit, or to “gather” new recruits in order to maintain or to grow their value. The public relations business is the heart and mind of the messaging business. How to manage a crisis, especially, has taken on a whole vocabulary, a methodology and a contractual relationship between the practitioners of the new business and the organizational or individual resident of the crisis. Corporations, and by default, individuals seeking to reclaim a public trust and reputation turn to the professional “message-makers” whose task it is, for considerable fees, to transform a public debacle into an easily forgiven or forgotten mis-step into a ‘win’ another of those “measureable” turning points in the life of an organization or an individual.

News, like the numbers of deaths and mental defects that will remain with the children in Flint Michigan, for example, are so painful and so tragic, that their capacity to continue to impact the life of the nation has faded, partly through the deluge of other competing headlines, and partly through the cultural tendency and proclivity to deny really painful information. Similarly, the encased and separated children at the border is another piece of news that has faded from public consciousness, in the tsunami of emotive sludge pouring through the president’s twitter feed, and into the Fox “news” channel.

There is an oxymoron, if I ever heard one, “The Fox New Channel”….no longer a channel for the dissemination of news, it has become the no longer alleged, but now openly agreed, official mouthpiece of the occupant of the Oval Office. The capitulation of Fox to the Oval Office, rendering Sean Hannity a literal subject to be channeled by the president, in pursuit of re-election, has effectively elevated propaganda to the level of formerly diligently researched, objectively confirmed, and articulately reported news. And once propaganda is indistinguishable from news and reliable verifiable news, in the minds of millions of voters, regardless of the reasons for that merging, the healthy pulse and the energetic breathing of a democracy, in medical terms, has to be considered in danger.

Whether that democracy can be judged to be ‘on life support’ or merely ‘in a coma’ or perhaps ‘under the influence’ (of a seduction), or even ‘infatuated like an adolescent’….the diagnosis seems irrelevant so long as the lifestyle choices, habits, perceptions and attitudes of that forty percent continue to be locked inside the cult.

Can the other sixty-odd percent provide the needed naloxone (opioid antagonist) to render the American body politic recoverable from this nightmare?

Shackling hope and opportunity with the chains of entrenched power

There are some disturbing cliches that limit, if not actually preclude, the seeding, nurture and development of a global, tolerant, supportive and ultimately survival attitude and mentality needed for the next century.

Some of the cliches are relatively new, while others are traditional. Among those relatively new rhetorical epithets, are:

·        Globalism, and a global economy will lift all boats

·        Technology will solve our most pressing problems

·        Economics are the core of all public issues and debate

·        Jobs must prevail over the protection of the environment

·        Labour rights and protections are a drag on the balance sheet of major corporations

·        Racism, sexism, ageism and religious bigotry reside only in the eyes and minds of those who consider themselves victims

·        Colonialism is the generator of the world’s history of development

·        Individual morality trumps a shared ethic

And among the more deeply rooted epithets that impede a ‘world view’ consciousness are:

§  All politics is local

§  All leaders must submit to a microscopic disclosure of their history, if we are to trust them enough to vote for them

§  My father always bought a Ford, GM, Chrysler and those Asian cars only take jobs away from ‘our people’

§  The unique characteristics of our town, village, township demand that we reinforce them in our kids: how we ‘see’ strangers, how we value (or disparage) change, how Catholics and Protestants do 9or do not) get along

§  How our neighbours acted when there were disputes

§  How the “outside” authorities (province, state, nation) ‘saw’ our little town, in respect to the pork-barrel we received, compared with other towns in the riding

§  How we elevate our local heroes to the stature of rock-stars, as a sign of the pride in what an ordinary kid can accomplish

§  How we denigrate our “failures” as a way of denying, avoiding and condescending the back-stories, in which we might have a part, in order to avoid any shared, collective, and community responsibility

§  How we revere the locals with excess wealth, as if they are the primary custodians of our best values

§  How those living in the biggest houses are both revered for their political and social influence, as well as despised for their arrogance in ‘reverse snobbery’

§  How our local media, in addition to the ads, and the obituaries, concentrate on the police report, the court report and the church/fund-raising socials, as if the core themes of issues mattered only to the official and elected representatives

§  How fires, ambulances, burglaries, murders and tornadoes, while significant, like magnets attract both supportive help and festering nests of gossip

§  How family breakdown, alcoholism, drug addiction is seen and spoken of in a “tutt-tutt” righteously superior manner, by those looking in from the outside

§  How homeless is regarded as a “scourge” on the community, committed by the “no-goods” (not even the have-not’s) because if they were any good, they would not be this ‘drag’ on our community…they are certainly not role models, nor contributors, nor even respectable members of our community

§  How churches, in too many cases, turn up their noses and cast aspersions downward on those less well dressed, less fluent, less educated and certainly those of the LGBTQ community and those of a minority ethnicity

§  The sinister and lethal level of communal gossip that, like a viral pandemic, scurries over the facebook and the chat lines, Instagram and twitter, as a superficial glue and a toxic bullying tactic in both feigned superiority and inclusion, (in a small cell) as well as a lethal weapon of exclusion. The veneer of congeniality that, like mascara, attends public interactions, teaches everyone the acceptable topics of public discourse and the rejected topics of public discourse, both in families and in the community generally.

In a previous life, I encountered a slogan on a consulting firm that read:

           “Sustainable support for your most valued resource---your people”

Implicit in that sell line, were numerous, often obvious, implications that if that firm were hired to be an effective instrument in growing and developing the people in a workplace, there would be considerable attention paid to assessing:

ü the degree of open, frank and free communication,

ü the relationships between and among individual workers

ü the relationships between and among the levels of authority and supervision,

ü the cultural norms, expectations,

ü the relative comfort with change, and resistance to change

ü the conceptual framework of the organization (pyramidal, circular, ad-hoc teams) including how power/decision-making is both perceived and actually conducted

ü the individual traits of workers, leaders, and influencers..their strengths and weaknesses, from a professional perspective (without clinical assessment, and certainly not through deployment of some WACO personality test)

ü relationship of this firm to its relative competitors, and allies, suppliers, financial resources (again not from an accounting perspective, but from the impact of its over-all health on the performance of the objectives, goals, targets of the firm

Left outside the conventional parameters of the assessment, report and recommendations would be the various cultural, belief, and normative ‘bounds’ on the organization and its people, that either enhance or impede the effective functioning of the organization. These considerations would be considered extra-territorial, mere narrative backdrop, and like the finer details of each biography of each worker at all levels, would be considered the stuff of something akin to an anthropological or even archeological piece of research.

After all, the personal beliefs, attitudes, perceptions and the words and the manner of their expression through adaptation to new work routines, to new machines, to new thought processes and research, and even to the ‘outsider’ (consultant) would be at best a series of footnotes, not actually material to the obvious presenting issues facing the organization that prompted the consult in the first place.

Change, new ideas, new research, new notions of technology, and of experimentation, depending on the entrenchment of the culture in preserving everything “old” as “treasured” and “valued” because it is old, and represents the identity of the organization, all threaten the very identity of many cultures, and the people currently in charge with retaining that culture.

Careers have been built, families raised, communities told and re-told the same stories, through, for example, the media’s persistent repetition of the same old myths (new people are a threat, and the rich deserve the power, and the seemingly righteous are not what they seem, the poor have always lived over there, and caused problems as long as we can remember, the professionals think their ‘s- - t’ don’t stink, our only hope is to put a ‘native’ in office), simply because those myths, they knew, would sell their papers, and reap those advertisements on which they depended. Nothing “too radical” was ever permitted to make it past the publisher’s eyes and desk, for fear that the town would ‘turn on’ the paper. Stability, consistency, dependability and the revering of the town’s “foundational premises and assumptions” are at the heart of the local unspoken “secular religion”.

And we wonder why books like Thomas Homer-Dixon’s “The Ingenuity Gap…How Can we Solve the Problems of the Future” are written, printed, and then distributed. Naturally, from this perspective they are desperately needed. While it is true that some of the proverbial constricting, local myths are giving way to a new generation of youth, as well as a series of generations of immigrants, refugees and migrant scholars from around the world, and there is a flattening of the ‘apex’ of white, male, affluent, older and highly educated individuals’ power and influence, there is still a very long way to go even to ‘rounding’ the peak of that mountain.

It is a granite mountain of resistance,  that, while we cling to its reverence, its sustainability simply because it has been around for so long, and, in our mind thereby having justified its value not only for surviving but for the methods by which it was able to endure. We see signs on the entrances to towns and cities, “innovation and history thrive here” “touch the past, embrace the future” which, sadly, display a truth and a political and cultural dream that is very often, if not always, unappreciated especially by the old-timers, the urn in which the ashes of history are carried, and from which the dust of those ashes will continue to spread over the streets and the living rooms and the coffee shops and the pubs for decades if not centuries.

Town Councils, Regional governments, provincial governments and even national governments, as well as the organizations and corporations in their charge, are possessed by the need to ‘focus on the immediate crisis’ while, at the same time, doing so in a manner that will bring the requisite forces to bear on the potential resolution of that crisis. And while, for example, science and technology, through the plethora of labs, individually and collectively, pursue their own unique speciality of a treatment or cure, or a new algorithm, those new designs and discoveries have to find a receptive host outside the labs and the cyber/silicone caves. And it is far easier and more likely that the pill, medicine or software will find an immediate harbour of incubation and nurture, into acceptance, a similar process does not exist for the seeding, the nurture and the growth and acceptance of new attitudes, beliefs, and values especially into the rural and small urban centres across North America.

We hear and read about the ‘culture wars’ between the urban and rural voters in all elections. We also know that corporations tailor their advertising campaigns to ‘fit’ the culture of their specific demographic market. And we know that, for example, yoga and pilates, have found their way into the most remote corners of many communities across the continent. Tragically, so too have the amphetamines and their requisite labs for production and distribution, (AND PROFIT) have also found their way into the streets and the schools across the continent. It is neither surprising nor accidental that cannabis outlets have sprung up everywhere, having been unleashed by national and provincial governments. This is not an argument against those new commercial ventures, but only a manner by which to compare the relative penetration of the many diverse communities by a commercial newcomer, in reference to the likelihood of penetration of new ideas, processes, theories, and even beliefs that might free the local culture from some of the chains that bind it.

It has been argued, and written that the lectures, books and theories that are and have been unearthed in many of the graduate schools, especially of the liberal arts and theology schools, rarely if ever make their way into the minds, consciousness or even the public media in smaller and rural centres. The LGBTQ community, for example, has struggled to gain even tolerance, (certainly not acceptance) among the many churches across the continent. Liberation theology, as another now relatively ‘old’ school from South America, has barely shown its head in North America, although significant religious and spiritual initiatives to eliminate poverty have sprung up, without the added codicil of political activism on a multiple-issue basis.

I recently listened to a ‘local’ businessman articulate his prescription of how aproposed new (yet long established elsewhere) senior citizens centre needed to be brought to life: “whatever is done, it has be done very slowly…that is the way we do things here” were the precise words from his mouth. He was not being arrogant, presumptuous, or even ignorant of the culture of his community. He was merely asserting one of the cardinal rules of “process” for the community. It must be done slowly….

And when parsing the phrase, one has to wonder what are the underlying themes upon which his utterance is based. Is it the notion that by going slow, the town is more likely to get it right? Or is it that going slowly will be less intimidating to the original townsfolk because it kind of ‘slipped’ in by the back door, without causing a fuss? Or is it that going slowly will provide those ‘gatekeepers’ of the town (and every town, hamlet, organization, government, school, university, college and certainly every church has one or more) to assess both the project and the people leading, before putting the official “town stamp” of approval on the project? Or is it that the gatekeepers, because of their longevity, their deep acceptance among the insiders, must fulfil their self-assigned purpose of ‘keeping the sacred alive’ as if their perception of the identity of the town/region were the ‘right’ and the most ‘acceptable’ perceptions?

And, lying underneath many of the clichés like a silent, secret and yet ready to explode fire in the root of the tree of each hamlet is the fear that their unique and historic identity will be shattered by the invasion of new ideas, new people, new perceptions, new values and new opportunities. And whether that fear/resistance lies in insecure individuals inside families, or inside the town councils or the chambers of commerce, or inside the sanctuaries of the churches, or inside the local hospital, school, college or service club, it will inevitably prevail over the naivety, innocence, impetuosity and curiosity and energy of new infusions of talent.

And, that consulting company’s report and  account, while paid, will too often look like the proverbial ball of wet mud, thrown against the white office wall, only to leave a mere stain of brown when it dries. I know I have watched both side of this fault line. 

A humble homage to honourable dissent..in awe and gratitude to RBG

“Her dissents were not written for today but for the future.” These words were uttered moments ago from Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt while presiding over the commemorative ceremony in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol for the first woman and the first Jewish woman to lie in state in that place.

Dissent, the opinion of the minority on a panel of judges, does not carry the day, at the time the decision is rendered. Dissent merely records views and their reasons held by others not bending to the majority opinion. And, while issuing ever more “dissents” in recent years Ruth Bader Ginsburg, nevertheless, prophetically shines light, wisdom, insight, vision and hope down the dark tunnel of now. Henry David Thoreau wrote: “ I think it is enough if 9resistors0 have God on their side without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbours constitutes a majority of one already…..(and) wary of the majority, he advises the minority that it is “powerless while it conforms to the majority…but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. (Civil Disobedience)

Another historic and supporting quote, often attributed to Jefferson and also to Andrew Jackson, (without evidence) puts it this way: “one man with courage is a majority”

The revered writer, Mark Twain teaches: “Whenever you find yoursele4f on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).

And Tolstoy, too, the Russian literary giant takes a different perspective: ‘Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”

Playwright Henrik Ibsen: I don’t imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over.”

British philosopher Bertrand Russell: That fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

Mahatma Gandhi: The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still small voice within me. And even though I have to face the prospect of being a minority of one, I humbly believe I have the courage to be in such a hopeless minority.

Samuel Adams: It does not take a majority to prevail…but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.

Cornel West: Of course, the aim of a constitutional democracy is to safeguard the rights of the minority and avoid the tyranny of the majority.

And W. B. Yeats, the renowned Irish poet and writer:

In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority> In the little towns, and villages there are no minorities; people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce. Every man is himself a class; every hour carries its new challenge. When you pass the inn at the end of the village you leave your favourite whimsy behind you; for you will meet no one who can share it.

Soren Kierkegaard: There is a view of life which conceives that where the crowd is, there is also truth. There is another view of life which conceives that wherever there is a crowd, there is untruth.

Prophetic voices, by definition, are not in conformity with the majority, given that for the majority, to belong has a higher premium and value than to be an outsider. There is another irony that those whose eyes are fixed on the future have no connection with the past, when, precisely the opposite it true. Only those, like Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who have steeped themselves in the tradition and history of both the law and the Jewish faith, know deeply, feel even more deeply, and take extreme care to posit thoughts, opinions, views and prophesies that can and will withstand the onslaught of incoming tides of opposition that are inevitable.

Entrusted with the position, the podium, the library, the history and the reverence of being the second woman to serve as a Supreme Court Justice, Madame Justice Ginsburg, took on the robe and the mantle of both authority and responsibility in a manner honouring the office, while at the same time giving voice to the millions, who, like her, have experienced rejection based on identity and deeply rooted unconscious and systemic bias (a woman, a mother and a Jew) when she was unable to find employment in a law firm upon graduating at the top of her class at Columbia Law School.

One of the most elusive, and yet at the same time, rhetorically and ethically pursued notions or ideals in the democratic state is this thing we call equality: between men and women, between and among races, between the rich and the poor, between the educated and those excluded from a higher education, between rural and urban, between farmers and industrialists. Nevertheless, while rebounding in the echo chamber of the media, the political campaigns, and the protest movements, as various groups seek legitimate redress, someone like Madame Justice Ginsberg offers a living example of marriage, motherhood, professional career success, grandmother-hood, and ultimately social and political icon. The cliché, she not only talks the talk, but also walks the walk. And in doing so, she exposes the many who prefer the talk over the walk, as the easier and less dangerous path.

It has to be at least considered as something of a cosmic “synchronicity” that only a few weeks after the deaths of civil rights hero, John Lewis, and his compatriot Elijah Cummings, the nation mourns the death of “RBG.” These three, almost completely ignored in death by the president, and often ridiculed in life (especially Mr. Cummings) offer a dramatic character foil for the current occupant of the Oval Office, whose words and walk never concur.

Madame Justice Ginsberg’s often repeated words about the equality she pursued between men and women, resound around the world, underlined by the recent, brutal, racially motivated death of George Floyd, with a police officer’s knee on his neck: “I ask no favour for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” The metaphor of feet/knees pinning another’s neck to the floor/concrete is once again being held as a magnet uniting those forces among both blacks and women, at a time when the chief executive office of the most powerful nation on the planet, daily exhibits contemptuous attitudes to both groups.

She warns other women, and all those engaged in the long road of struggle for equality, dignity, respect and the opportunity that accompanies those rights, in these words: “Yet what greater defeat could we suffer than to come to resemble the forces we oppose in their disrespect for human dignity.” And, for those thousands of women who, in living out their dreams and their ambitions, have fallen in the very trap of thinking and acting in a manner similar to those men (mostly in navy suits) who, themselves epitomize the antithesis of respect for human dignity, these words are a worthy and notable caution.

Watching those political, legal and cultural icons mourn as they processed around the coffin of Madame Justice Ginsberg, one could not but take note of the notably missing: Senate Majority Leader McConnell, House Minority Leader McCarthy, and the president himself, who, upon paying respects yesterday at the Supreme Court, was booed and harassed by the crowd outside: “Vote him out” was their chant!

Leadership of what amounts to monumental social and cultural change, a subject that finds itself at the top of the currently political theatre playing out in the presidential campaign, as well as around the world on behalf of racial justice and equality, and certainly on behalf of environmental protection and security. And while the instruments of the law, the courts, the institutions and the establishments within, have a significant role to play in moving the prospect of a safe and healthy and respectful future for all, the voices of the outsider has never been more needed.

Once again, Madame Justice Ginsberg offers insightful guidance:

“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”

It is her demonstrated and proven ability, creativity, sensitivity and empathy to work with those whose views were and are diametrically opposed to her’s that qualify her as a role model for the process of evolution, and not revolution. Her caution that change that will last can and will only come slowly reverberates in the streets, as well as in the control rooms of many radio and television stations, themselves glued to the latest uprising engendering the most listeners and viewers, not to mention social media ‘hits’ and ‘likes’. The concept of instant gratification, while inordinately powerful among especially the young, in their private lives, does not have a similar application in the public square. Nevertheless, the legitimate demand of both women and racial minorities for justice and equality is finding resonance around the world in ways and places previously silent and out of mind.

Madame Justice Ginsberg’s personal and professional kinship with Antonin Scalia, the far-right justice who shared a seat on the court with her for most of her tenure, attests to her incarnating the adage, one can disagree without being disagreeable. At a time when political rhetoric in too many quarters, especially south of the 49^th parallel, has slid into the slough of both despair and contempt, her breath of clean and healthy oxygen into the most contentious of deeply rooted issues and causes, carried by the most diligent, penetrating and cogent research into the most intimate details of each legal precedent could only inspire her critics. She not only out-worked them; she out-shone them in her command of the intricate details of each case, both the precedents and the current cases.

Justice Ginsberg argued, for example, in the United States v. Virginia case, that VMI* failed to show “exceedingly persuasive justification” for its sex-based admissions policy, violating the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Claus. By providing a parallel program for women (Virginia Women’s Institute for  Leadership, VWIL), Ginsberg argued that it would not provide women with the same type of rigorous military training, facilities, courses, faculty, financial opportunities and/or alumni connections and reputation. The argument was so deeply and soundly rooted in the constitutional argument, not merely on the special needs of women, (in fact taking such a wide berth around such stereotypical arguments) that she won a surprising 7-1 decision in the court. (Justice Thomas, a  graduate of VMI, recused himself.) (Wikipedia)

And now as the sun sets on the lives of American icons, human examples of the best the human spirit can and will offer to humanity, the world is holding its breath that the sun will also set on the worst of the American leadership examples, and remove the occupant of the Oval Office permanently, without doubt, without rancour and without violence. 

Doubtless, however, we can not expect that the removal will be without litigation, already marching through the lower courts, on the most banal, trivial, specious and narcissistic of issues. One blatant example, concerns the Depart of Justice’s contention that all naked ballots in Pennsylvania be removed from the count as ineligible. (Naked ballot is one not inserted inside the second, interior, anonymous envelope prior to mailing.)

Unfortunately, given the army of jurists already appointed and affirmed under the current administration, the likelihood of a decision that would be adverse to the administration is becoming less with each passing day.

How do we hold such platinum human spirits in our minds and hearts while having also to face the despicable details of political insurrection on behalf of a demonstrable unfit presidential candidate?

 

*VMI Virgina Military Institute 

Paranoid Patriarchy...toxic masculinity...on the ballot November 3

 While both anger and angst mount in the prelude to the presidential election in the U.S., pundits muse over polls, personalities, ideologies, platforms, and coffers. A penetrating ad here, a surprising endorsement there, a rally here, a virtual speech there…all of it engineered to capture both the imagination and the voting “X” of millions of voters.

And yet, from the perspective of an outsider, inexplicably and clearly irrationally glued to the many screens, there is an underlying dynamic driving the United States of  America that, unless fully undressed, laid bare, declared anathema for the last time, grieved, mourned and then cast overboard, will continue to haunt the nation, and by proliferation, much of the world. That dynamic is paranoid patriarchy, toxic masculinity, and the venal seed of  “intimidation” at its core.

For decades, it has been clear that how one perceives the male, both ideal and less so, has played a significant role in determining who occupies the Oval Office. In 2000, when advisers put Al Gore in a tan suit, as a way to soften his image as ‘preacher,’ in comparison with George W. Bush’s Texas swagger, something happened in my reporter’s gut that told me this was not a good sign for Gore, my clear choice for president. In 2004, when Kerry was pilloried in the swift-boat ads, once again the Republicans strutted their capacity, willingness and surgical precision to ‘go for the jugular’ of the Viet Nam vet and eventual war protester. Even in the midst of the Iraq war, yet still not recovered from the devastation of 9/11, Bush was victorious. And then came Obama, the Roman Candle of prophetic promise, the first black candidate with so much charm, charisma, intellect, grace and an almost mythical aura and after John McCain defended his integrity, authenticity and legitimacy in the face of a racist Muslim charge, he triumphed over the former prisoner of war. The over-reach by the McCain camp in selecting Palin contributed negatively to his demise at the ballot box.

In 2012, when Obama faced Romney, and outed his recorded embarrassment at a fund raiser, there was a tension between the masculinity/power/ of the corporate elite against the intellectual elite on the heels of an economic recovery on the horizon, following the 2008 collapse. However power is perceived by the people is an integral, if highly subjective and amorphous component, of the eventual outcome of the presidential race. Whether that ‘power’ is deemed to be strong enough to stand on the world stage in the face of world leaders, both allies and enemies, is more than a minimal determinant of the result. And should one candidate actually ‘score’ a lethal blow on the opponent, in the eyes of the people, as if the race were a re-enactment of the traditional western movie, his poll numbers almost invariable rise. That blow might come from an especially pungent ad, or from a debate line that stops the opponent in his tracks. The candidate who both “wears” the uniform of power in a manner than is congruent with the expectations, needs, aspirations and fears of the majority of voters and expresses and incarnates both the image and the words and the projected promise and hope of the people has an edge in the campaign.

The race for the White House is the apocryphal epitome of how power is envisioned, how power is about to be deployed and how that power is to serve, ironically and paradoxically, as a surrogate for the profound feelings of powerlessness of the majority of people. Naturally, this symbol of power, especially in a culture that is personality-addicted, star-gazed, gossip-driven, and even if merely cardboard-cut-out sketched, takes on to a large degree both the aspirations and the fears of the people.

Projection of both the ideals and worst fears of the mass of people are, of course, the stuff of attitudes, beliefs and behaviours that pull levers, mark ballots, write cheques and staff phone banks for candidates. And projections are, by definition, unconscious, rendering the whole process much more than is ever depicted by the empirical data in which the national media tread water.

After seven decades of working for, beside, among, and sometimes with various male teachers, coaches, principals, bosses, CEO’s, bishops and archbishops, it is clear that the quality, the resilience, the androgyny and the sheer confidence and spine of the male leaders, and thereby their respective organizations, have been and continue to be in a struggle to either replace or to find for the first time their individual spine.

Males, over the last half century, in families, schools, churches, colleges and especially in corporations including the military, the justice system, and the medical profession have demonstrated a missing and balancing trait. Call it spine, or call it courage, or call it confidence, or call it equanimity. And we/they have built their little empires on the quick-sand of their paranoia. Of course, the degree and depth of this paranoia varies significantly. Yet the most significant aspect of its ubiquity is its denial by the very men whose deportment, attitudes and beliefs reveal it.

While the culture of the education edifice has tended to integrate both men and women, at least in the classroom, to a far higher degree than in many sectors, the culture of the military, the church and the corporation is so tilted in the direction of paranoid patriarchy as to justify the formal charge from a Canadian writer and law professor. Resurfacing in the website, The Ink (September 22, 2020), the website authored by Anand Girdharadas, Joel Bakan, author of the previously famous book and documentary entitled The Corporation, in which he called big business psychopathic, Bakan has resurfaced with The New Corporation  in which he argues that the psychopaths have learned fraudulent kindness.

Picking up on a story from a woman attending a book signing, Girdharadas heard her words: What you are describing in your book-these moves by corporations to hurt society while making show of doing good—this is what abusive men do. They hurt you while telling you they love you. I know this because I survived one.

He then recalled those words, upon learning of Bakan’s latest project. His website pays tribute to Bakan in these words:

(Joel Bakan) has reported a sweeping story of how corporations began to recognize  their reputation as abusers and began to hug their communities tighter while hurting them more and more. The hugs enabled the hurt. The promises that things would be different helped keep things the same.

The excerpt from the Bakan project on The Ink website focuses on the huge sums of money being spent on an industry that teaches corporations how to deal with the first signs of discontent among workers, in order to ward off any and all initiatives that might lead to worker organization, especially unions. In addition, it details the development of highly sophisticated technology that monitors every move of every worker, in a determined thrust to get more work out of every worker with, even chiding them for going too slowly. Corporations have even generated computer games in which each worker is placed in competition with his/her co-workers, on a screen displayed in a supervisor’s office. They have also installed vending machines with individual packets of pain killers on the workplace floor, so that workers can continue to work, while in pain.

Patriarchic paranoia is such a radio-active component of the North American culture, and is so embedded in the very ‘soil’ of that culture, that given the public discourse about all things visible, measurable, empirically verifiable, including poll numbers, profit and loss statements, share prices, class sizes, parish sizes and collection plate numbers, sales data, views and likes on any webpage, it is little wonder that it is rarely mentioned in polite company. There are other reasons for its meager exposure. The power structure is dominated by male figures, not only in  numbers of persons, and in size of incomes for the same work, but so are the premises on which the culture operates.

These observations, while exposed in Bakan’s The New Corporation, have been carpeting the television and phone screens in epic proportions since the day trump slid down that escalator to announce his candidacy. One can reasonably assume a similar parallel culture in which he operated his business venture bore the same signature of paranoia, mistreatment of workers, tenants, potential purchasers, investors, and casino patrons. All the while seducing the customer with the promise of care, trump has become the master of not the deal, as he would have us believe, but rather the “seduction”. And there are millions of Americans, polls put their numbers as high as 40%, who have been steeped in the koolaid of this highly patriarchal, yet also profoundly paranoid, masculinity.

Promises that vastly exceed delivery, character assassinations that trumpet pugilistic muscle, pronouncements that prophesy premature end of COVID-19, and the warped-speed delivery of vaccinations, the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine and ingesting bleach, encasing children in cages, trumpeting violence while masquerading as the law and order candidate…the litany will be the subject of doctoral theses for decades…all of this as evidence of an empty, frightened, paranoid man the worst representative of masculinity to have sat in the Oval Office.

And yet the travesty of this paranoid patriarchy is not confined to the Oval Office. Like COVID-19 itself, it spreads itself through masks, meetings, phone calls, video conferences, over dinners and drinks, across social media and into the stock markets, the corporate board rooms, and into the ecclesial offices of priests, bishops. It is not detectible by any known instruments to science, including even the most advanced technologies tracking the movements, and even the emotions of corporate workers. It is not measurable on the radar screens of aircraft controllers, nor on the MIR machines in the most advanced hospitals, nor through their CAT-scans. There is no therapeutic that mediates its influence, especially among cells of men that congregate around the images and the personages of power. There is no research project that is dedicated to producing immunity to its ravages, and there is little hope that the millions of men currently imprisoned in its leg-irons will even search for a key to unlock their own encasement.

 

The NRA while not totally funded by paranoid patriarchs, nevertheless, has a preponderance of paranoid patriarchs at its head as does the current Department of Justice, led, tragically, by one of the more surprising cultists. Clearly, the Department of Health and Human Services has fallen prey to the overt and covert seduction, as has the COVID-19 task force, along with the Republic male Senators who will confirm their hallowed leader’s nomination for the Supreme Court. According to the latest revelations from the inside of the Mueller Report, that group of investigators too fall victim to the self-imposed emasculation in failing to probe trump’s tax returns and to subpoena the ‘great man’ himself, in order to fully declare his obstruction of justice.

Self-emasculation, among males, is merely the opposite side of the same coin that carries the stench of the macho, narcissistic alpha male. And the emasculated men are themselves, like many women, victims of the paranoid patriarchy. They have become frightened that they will be exposed as wimps but those very men who are themselves, addicted to the masking of their own paranoia with bravado. And they give in to both the radical feminists and the paranoid patriarchs.

 “Real Women,”  are those evangelical Christians whose subservience to men is biblically based in their literal interpretation of scripture and who cheer-lead their patriarchs blind to the paranoia that infects their male identity. Radical feminists, on the other hand, so frighten many already emasculated men in positions of authority and responsibility that they can and do demand a kind of absolute, zero-tolerance set of rules and regulations as their way of securing the personal safety and sanctity of their sisters and their professional reputations and careers. Relationships between men and women, in all formal and informal organizations, at the individual level, take both parties to exist. And for the notion that inevitably and predictably, in each case in which a complaint is filed, the male is the perpetrator, without full investigation, is unconscionable. And too many men, whether emasculated or pontifical or more likely both, want to escape any messiness that would attend any investigation. Shame, embarrassment, public scorn and contempt is one of the primary, if not the sole, avoidance of paranoid patriarchs. And that shame can be either or both personal or organizational.

It would be unfair to the paranoid patriarchy to divide the emasculated from the pontifical given that each trait depends, darkly and sadly, on the other side of the coin. Domination as exhibited by men like trump only masks deep and abiding insecurity and fear, while emasculation prefers a more ‘contrite’ and potentially even more seductive an approach to the world, to their careers and to the women in their lives.

Only if and when men come to full acknowledgement of their/our fear, insecurities, and yes even paranoia, will they/we open to the gift of authenticity that needs no bravado, dissembling, false promises, and suffocating sycophancy. Nor with they/we depend on a mask of emasculation as our way of saying we are not like those others who currently govern the United States. Authentic masculinity, without doubt, is definitely on the ballot on November 3 and the world is watching.