Superiors vs Inferiors: No One Wins
One time, a child in my son’s 5th grade class walked past him and slapped him in the face for no reason. There was a lull in the classroom action and my son was staring out the window in a moment of reverie; one of his ‘friends’ took advantage of this vulnerability to violently bring him back to the moment.
This wasn’t malicious; it was a spontaneous act by a disinhibited 10-year-old boy. In this case, my son’s shock and pain became the basis of the other boy’s hard lesson (teachers observed; parents were called): you can’t hit people, even in fun.
However, that does not mean we don’t want to.
Many people would love the chance to retaliate, literally or figuratively, without consequences, if we could: against the person who cut ahead of us on the highway, the sycophantic colleague who got the promotion we wanted, the local official who opposes our vote, the banker who screwed up our mortgage paperwork, the delivery person who dropped and broke the new furniture…you get the idea.
But we can’t. And we don’t. Few of us are independent enough to be able to alienate others and isolate ourselves and still sustain an illusion of community, even if a gated one with security guards. So, most of us do nothing. Sometimes we write letters that are never sent; other times we have one-sided conversations in the shower or in the car on the way to work. But mostly, we learn to live with the inequities of life; whenever possible, we find positive outlets for our energies such as our families, our own personal development, faith, community.
However, it is true that life in the 21st century can be very frustrating. There are fewer reliable social structures than ever, a significant level of ambiguity in daily lives, and so much of what we are able to achieve seems out of our personal control.
Then, in the midst of this, along comes the kid who can slap someone with impunity and get away with it, AND he asks us to sit at his table at lunchtime. He moves through the world in unrestricted ways we can only imagine, AND he offers to share his “juice” with us, if we just join his crew. He manages his frustrations by lashing out in ways we only wish we could, and never seems to suffer the consequences. He speaks to our vulnerabilities and offers to protect us. He promises to make things easier for us, the way things are easy, come easy, to him.
People across the entire socioeconomic spectrum — from deepest poverty to extreme wealth — feel disconnected, isolated, and fearful. As such they less inclined to respond to their logical, analytical and factual left brain and are increasingly driven by the emotional functions of their right brain. They are looking for relief — and their unconscious self is less likely to consider the consequences of a society based on self-protection.
At a time in history when people increasingly feel there is an external locus of control over their lives, opportunities, and potential for success and happiness, it becomes very easy to align behind the person who articulates your frustrations and seems to live without the same restrictions or barriers to impose their will on others.
Managing the vagaries of modern life can be exhausting. The fact is managing the vagaries of life have been exhausting since the beginning of time; things must be especially bad if we are willing to return to a medieval model of fealty.
In the Middle Ages, there was little value in reminding a vassal that their overlord was a horrific bully, because the benefit of the bullying was always going to accrue to them. Similarly, today, reminding people that those they support are bullies, or bigots or liars serves no purpose because that’s what they want to be — or accrue the benefit of being.
However, in modern society, it is magical thinking to believe that the power of an authoritarian leader is going to accrue to you. You will still be held to account for your behavior even if your poo-bah seems to get a pass (or at least avoids repercussion).
Songstress Eartha Kitt sings a song called “I Want to Be Evil” in which a “prim and proper girl” declares that she ‘wants to be mean, nasty and cruel”. There’s no point in trying to convince her otherwise; this is her big chance to experience a way of life that offers something that resembles freedom, even, as she sings at the end, at the risk of losing everything.
However, it is a false assumption that aligning yourself with the powerful will get you power; the reality of pledging your devotion to the baron is not freedom, but servitude. The problem we face is that many citizens already feel like servants to our current political system and can’t differentiate between politics and democracy.
