Читать книгу Cordite & Testosterone - Why Men Should Not Be Running the World - Cecilia Boone's Tanner - Страница 8

With the male pecking order system, we end up with a dangerous concentration of power that results in the impoverishing of most of the people.

Look at every country in the world to see proof of this pecking order in action–EVERY COUNTRY in the world, some in extreme, a few at near workable levels.

Men have a strange respect for the status pursuits of other men–an awe, perhaps, or a spectator respect to see how far the game is going to go even if they have to sacrifice their own lives for these other men's gains. It gets tangled up in honor that seems to be a motivating feature of the pecking order, that there is honor in performing your role without question when you are given a role in the order, even if it is a miserable role. War is the most obvious example.

And men can't seem to intrude on other men's games or limit the stakes in other men's games even when it hurts their own lives.

For example, look at fraternity hazing events. Ordinarily compassionate decent loving young men will sit and watch while other not-so-decent men humiliate and damage others, often women.

In war, when a group commits atrocities, the other men are often unwilling to intrude and stop the action because they "are following orders". Women, too, fall into this respect-the-alpha-leader mentality, but I think the women are simply following the male lead in these times and are not actually participating in any pecking order allegiance.

Men like the hierarchy system where they know their position, be it alpha, beta or omega, when their duties are clear, their allegiances are clear, their loyalties are blocked out for them.

I often say, don't follow others–they may be going to the dentist. They may be going where they really shouldn't be going, and they may be taking us all into our peril. Men don't find this to be an honorable attitude, however, and are willing to take the whole world into extinction in their allegiance to any presiding leader.

The pecking order system works to keep the alpha males, the King Rats, in power. This is the ultimate condition for procreation and survival of their own superior genes, controlling others to provide for themselves. The alpha males at the top of the order then ensure that the rest of the group is subservient and quiescent using any means that become necessary, more and more brutal if challenged. They will persuade, cajole, lie, cheat, bribe and then kill without remorse when answering their undisciplined primal lust.

Men create enemies when necessary, in order to rally the troops into a cohesive form that can be controlled and manipulated. All leaders know the power to be had in the creation of a dreadful common enemy that all must cooperate to defeat. [Pol Pot in Kapuchea (Cambodia) managed to make intellectuals the enemy.] And with that unquestioned cooperation, they are free to do whatever they like without criticism. Often, they have to manufacture the enemy or the fear or set up a Tonkin incident or a Weapons-of-Mass-Destruction fear or spread the rumor that some uneasy alliance group has committed an atrocity that must be avenged. Then you have a situation ripe for the glorious leader to take the dominant oppressor position.

The boy's club is the linchpin of the whole system that keeps the wheels of the machine turning over so that their King Rat stays in power. The alpha males need the King Rat to ensure their boy's club survives in order to keep themselves in the status (wealth) position. The members of the club usually do not take public office, and we don't always recognize these members in their day to day activities, but it works well, and the honor system is not violated without serious consequences.

One example of the workings of the King Rat and the boy's club happened in Canada when one of the richest families in Canada wanted to take several billion dollars out of the country in direct violation of the law. Mulroney's government turned a blind eye, and might have instructed the Income Tax dept to do so also. We will never know. The crime was pointed out to the succeeding Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, who promised an investigation, which, of course, dragged along, if indeed it was even started, and the whole issue dropped out of sight by the time the time limit for blocking the move was up. The media, being one of the major movers in the Boy's club, and the RCMP, at the time being reduced to a beta position under the direction of the boy's club, all assisted in losing $6M of the people’s money in taxes in that instance.

So we may think we have democracy, that our governments will serve the people, that we have the right to vote the bad guys out and put good guys in, but it doesn't work that way. We get to vote for different-looking guys but they all do the same thing because they don't get elected if they don't sit down to brunch at the boy's club.

Women have been conditioned to uphold the male hierarchy system as well. They have their place and they don't break out of it. Some of us that do are either firmly put back into our place or we are dismissed. But women can rise to the occasion when their contribution is valued.

When doing research for this book, one small example of female conditioning became apparent. I went to the Women's Studies department at the university where I was lecturing, and asked the secretary for some help. She asked me what I needed, and then she offered some very useful directions and suggestions, writing down titles and names of authors for me. She was very self-assured, forthright, and well versed in everything I wanted to know.

When I went to the science departments, the secretaries upheld the male hierarchy order by trying to think of which professor would be able to help me, not offering any help of their own. There are certainly female professors in the sciences, but I was forcefully struck by the acceptance of "place" in the hierarchy of the science secretaries who showed no personal sense of their ability to contribute, in marked contrast to the women's studies' secretary who was fully actualized as a person.

This surely is what this male-dominant society is doing– it is undermining a female's sense of competence, and it is distorting and crippling males as well. The whole system is destructive to all its inhabitants, human or not, as well as the planet.

We have been brought up to follow the leader–we even had childhood games of Follow the Leader–and thanks to that edict, we had good church-going men and women in Germany torturing and killing Jews by the millions. Did they think Hitler was god, he who must be obeyed, the divine leader who must be followed?

In our society, people follow the leader with great devotion and force their children to do so also. The Jehovah Witness children are actively discouraged from pursuing an education–very very few go to college or university. One student told me of a young Jehovah Witness girl to whom she was giving piano lessons, which the girl loved with all her heart. The girl's family stopped the lessons for the girl's own good. The leaders did not approve. And it goes on and on under the oppression of ignorant men and their allegiance to the hierarchy.

On the larger scale, we have Pakistan and India and Iraq and Iran following the lead set by the West in developing nuclear bombs. Better they follow us to the dentist.

They all need a new direction to follow. Peace–it used to be a word people believed in.

Women in the Pecking Order

While many people gain a sense of belonging and a sense of their place in the social structure by following leaders, women and many men as well feel terribly undervalued in this oppressive hierarchy. Their worthwhile ideas are ignored because they are only "workers", and the lower administrators are at the mercy of some intimidated or mean-minded higher administrators who are themselves disillusioned with the Board of Directors they must answer to, and up and down it goes.

Many creative men and women are not hustlers by nature and are at a terrible disadvantage in a world constructed on the pecking order where only the hustler gets heard and hired. If they can't find someone to hustle for them, their talents are never utilized, and some of the best minds and most talented artists are wasted because the hierarchy has only 2 directions, up and down.

Men are generally very uncomfortable in the presence of really strong women since these women are not part of the male strata system, and they don't know where the women fit. They would just as soon eliminate them from the decision-making equation and many actively try to do so. This is much like the English with their class system in which the English don't know where North Americans fit in their class structure, so some of them put us all on a lower rung since we don't have a "place" clearly defined; others treat us with amusement.

Similarly, men feel that women intruding into the male zone is a threat to male supremacy: they fear being dominated in an order that is not conforming to their established system. But having strong women in the society does not mean female domination. Women don't particularly fear very intelligent male leaders (when they come across one)–they respect them. Women fear the thugs, the powerful ego-centric male who has bought the Big Lie, and who does not respect the female status or contribution.

Also, men should rejoice in the presence of strong intelligent women because those are the women who will make sure the children are well brought up, and who will ensure the men's dignity will be respected in ill health and old age.

Testosterone and Decision Making

In April, 2008, researchers at the University of Cambridge released a study of traders in the City of London financial district that showed that male traders made bigger profits on days when their testosterone levels were high. This study suggested that testosterone may help focus the mind but constantly high testosterone levels are likely to make traders foolhardy.

“Rising levels of testosterone and cortisol prepare traders for taking risk,” said John Coates, who led the study. “However, if testosterone reaches physiological limits, as it might during a market bubble, it can turn risk-taking into a form of addiction, while extreme cortisol during a crash can make traders shun risk altogether.”

These Cambridge researchers found that daily testosterone was significantly higher on days when traders make more than their one-month daily average. Whether the higher levels contributed to the success outcomes or whether the levels were higher because they were so successful was not mentioned in the news report of this study. It could be either way.

However, the Cambridge researchers did report that their work suggested that the rapid decisions the traders were pressured to make may be biased by emotional and hormonal factors that have not so far been considered in any detail. Coates said that this bias may help explain both rational and irrational behavior.

Can we extrapolate this to apply to government leaders? Because this could account for the almighty necessity to maintain the political leaders’ seats in government for which they sell their souls. They are addicted to the hormonal effects of high-level decision making. But these decisions can be compromised by their emotional and hormonal levels.

Power corrupts says the old cliché, which is absolutely true; however, power both compromises and corrupts. Former US President Bill Clinton started out with good intentions–health care that got squashed as a consequence of a huge campaign of lies by the insurance companies and the medical industry who are getting fat on sick Americans. In 2007, a report showed that the US has the most expensive health care system in the world and it does not provide the best care. Clinton was trying to do a good thing. Then several years later, President Clinton ended up handing over the digital air wave spectrum to the media giants for nothing when it could have been leased for $70Billion which would go a long way in getting the health care program up and running.

Speaking of the lies that the insurance companies and the health industry propagated in that health care campaign. Advertisers on American TV are not allowed to broadcast lies about the products they sell, but the political candidates and their super-paks can broadcast blatant lies in their TV attack ads with impunity. The Swift Boat ads against John Kerry when he was running for President stand out. This is another case where the leaders and would-be leaders can be as corrupt as they choose to be.

It would seem that the stronger the male dominance, the more corrupt the society. In India, corruption is rampant. Edward Luce wrote that nearly a fifth of parliament members have been indicted for at least one crime,

“Many people, especially foreigners, do not appreciate the extent of corruption in India…they think it is an additional nuisance to the system… in many parts of India it is the system.”

Very few people can resist the temptations of power. We think fondly of former Prime Minister of Canada (now deceased) Pierre Trudeau because he was a man who was strong enough to withstand the destructive addiction of power. He never lost sight of the fact that the man in the limelight was a dramatic role he was playing on the world stage–not his real life person.

So men are not better decision makers than women. Indeed, they have conflicting hormonal influences at work in their decision-making. Surely the Cambridge study by Dr. Coates helps us understand how men in power can get so far off the rails with their original decent intentions, and why they need women who are not testosterone driven to participate in the leadership of the communities, cities, and nations.