pinkfloydpsw's Blog

In any relationship the person who cares the least has the power to dominate the dynamic, the power to make the other person abide by their vision of how the relationship will pan out.

In any business the ambition is to failure and leadership is a position the deserved are mostly excluded from.

I am going to try to link these two concepts together with a few explanations of what I mean. If this seems like a postulate that is problematic, examine it, it is more than anecdotally true. Previous to the 20th century relationships were nearly universally male-dominated in a structurally misogynistic society where women bent to the will of their husbands; this was reflected in nearly every facet of the social world from power in the political arena to power in the market place as well as the home. As the 20th century shifted the dynamic between the sexes to become more equal and more egalitarian it has had a definite effect on the relationship of spouse to spouse in that we can now observe a stronger and more independent woman in play who doesn’t submit but can in fact dominate through her independence and through new opportunities of validation within society that would have previously been contingent on male affirmations. I do not contend in this essay that this dynamic in any way inhibits happiness as a utility, in the animal kingdom the subordinated are happy and unconfused, and the structure breaks down when there are too many wills to power, to many potential leaders. We see this also in businesses and schools where there are too many followers believing themselves to have valid inputs where they obviously have no real experience or credentials, we however institute in them the idea that they are all valid, that they are all leaders. When was the last time you were sent on a followership course in work? You may have been on a leadership one quite recently…

Strong individuals will challenge domination in the home, this challenge can only play itself out in a race to the bottom, with both parties trying to establish the position of most power which will by association be also the position of least care, and this is problematic. Imagine if you will a relationship where each party is willing themselves to care less than the other, what can be the outcome other than ever diminishing aggregate care? This performance will play itself out to a point where neither care enough to continue and neither is willing to acquiesce to the demands of the other, if they stay attached we may move further down this trajectory to find the point where neither is at all willing to meet the needs of the other and if continued further then we will inevitably reach a point where they are actively inhibiting the other party’s happiness. Both will seek utility outside of the relationship and that utility will enable them to see externally the futility of what they have both ruined, a split or perpetual unhappiness is inevitable.

Contrast this with the situation where two parties actively seek the position of greatest care, of least power, what way does this play out? For this example care spirals to a point where spousal dependency takes the place of independence and the individual is weakened in many ways, but not by the other party where they are validated. What are the downsides? well if validation, happiness and utility are gained in over abundance from the relationship and dependency is too high upon one another the two members may fail to seek their individuality and their independence from outside in the social world, they may not achieve, they may harm their relationship by not being alpha enough to provide to each other that which they wish to have as far as affluence is concerned and social standing rewards. The relationship may endure but outside forces may act to pressure it such as the need to be the dominated party not being met sufficiently as each party seeks a submissive role.

The master slave relationship may not seem on the surface to be equal, preferable or morally acceptable but not everyone wishes to be the boss, not everybody wishes to be a leader, some folks actually wish for strong leadership to be imposed upon them (look at politics, firms, and sports) in everything, right from government to the home. There may be no better dynamic that provides a more rewarding, for both parties, relationship than that of a person who wishes to be the dominant figure and dictate coupled with a person who wishes to be led and seeks validation through being the greater force of care. you will notice I have said person in this part of the essay, I point this out because I am not a sexist and I do not believe that his leader I propose be necessarily the male or the female in a heterosexual encounter (which I am talking mainly about here, the dynamics of homosexual or polysexual relationships are another subject altogether). These roles can be fulfilled by either party; I myself know matrimonial couplings where the male is dominated by the female and as long as it provides them both with utility then it works, simple as…

What we must avoid is a race to ruin, a modern equality based relationship maybe just doesn’t work, unless you count the multitude of persons who form relationships that do not progress as normal, those where do not give up their independence but stay at an equilibrium point where no ground is, or is encouraged by the other to be, given. Normally people get married and move in together, they join their assets and liabilities together and this is where problems can start, if we give up our independence and in every part of our lives we must consider the other, we necessarily lose rather than gain, this willed loss must be accounted for, it must have utility and from the point of view of those that will to maintain their previous power they need acquiescence from the other, those that seek security will their own newly acquired submissive position. People should know who they are before they couple, dominant cannot work with its equal and neither can submissive, there can only be one rooster in the henhouse and there must actually be a rooster. Not a rooster in all things, that would be silly, I don’t propose dominance in all things but in each individual process there can be a dominant and a submissive, let’s say in financial decisions or sexual preference or schools for the kids or religious/spiritual matters etc. This is a naturally occurring dynamic that we as a society have tried to fix, yet made worse instead, the animal is still present in humans and animal relations are not equal, there are more followers than leaders in every pack, school, murder, pride, gaggle etc..

In workplaces we may look around and see a distinct lack of natural leaders in power because, although they may be apparent in their leadership ability, they may not possess the ambition nor the selfishness necessary to achieve power or come to the attention of those who promote, the effective use of power is best utilised in the hands of the intellect that is capable of wielding it rather than that of the person most focussed on gaining it. History records many philosophers that were aware of this, Plato wrote of the good society being one where power was necessarily separated from greed, Machiavelli proposed that the traits of benevolence and care were rarely those of the ambitious man. Power tends to be in the hands of the those who are willing to compete to get it, rather than those who could potentially use it well, and the most useful employees are those that are good at what they do because they have to be by virtue of the very fact that they hold no power, theirs is a wage truly and honestly earned and the longevity of that situation is not contingent on anything other than throughput.

“Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power” George Bernard Shaw

The Peter Principal comes to mind, this is where a large employer promotes the most productive employees to the point where they prove themselves incapable of bettering their position, and that is where they stay. So from the point of the British Army for instance the best corporals will be stuck as sergeants, the best sergeants will be stuck at Warrant Officer and the best Captains will find themselves stuck at Major. This isn’t always the case, there are forces that work against this such as the Dead Man’s Shoes theory, this is where progression is prevented by there not being a position to promote the individual into since it is already fully subscribed, firms are lucky when this is the case, efficiency is served by preventing the ascension of the most productive labour. The traits of supervisory suitability may be apparent in workers who are less than at the median level of production, this prevents them from being identified as anything other than bad workers and inhibits both themselves and the firm from realising their potential or being rewarded for that realisation. In this way a business that rewards hard work with positions that incur higher remuneration are engaged also in a race to the bottom. This is not always the case though, if we consider some examples where this is not so, like where productive labour is higher or equally paid compared to managerial or supervisory labour such as football or the production centres of the middle 20^th century, we find workers without the incentive to progress to leadership being led by those without the productivity of labour but with the skills that organise said labour. In this way the division of labour finds its most efficient expression by removing the possibility of higher remuneration and revealing the best person for the job, power seeks the best individuals to use it, for who would will power without reward if not the benevolent and who would seek reward above benevolence if not the selfish?

Is it power or reward you seek, or both? Are you in fact in a race to the bottom, aren’t we all?

Paul Simon Wilson