Why It's Pathetic that People Are Trained to Never Humiliate the Patriarch
It's not a meritocracy if leaders don't live up to the standard they demand of others
The problem with the patriarchy is that it forces everyone to tiptoe around the fragile male ego. Bullies tend to be the biggest crybabies of them all. Although they'll sneer at the idea of respecting anyone's feelings, they're the first to cry foul when their own feelings are hurt.
They can dish it out but they can't take it.
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From a distance, everyone likes the idea of being a revered figure. Up close, the situation isn't as good as it might seem. The problem with cultivating a reputation of infallibility is that it guarantees you're going to be exposed eventually.
Infallibility is always a lie.
Everybody makes mistakes and we should stop allowing ourselves to get coerced into maintaining a mythology that defies reality.
So, how does it work?
The answer is that we get an expectation imposed on us that we never have the opportunity to reject.
There's nothing worse than having to pretend you believe the lie of a thin-skinned patriarch because he can't admit he made a mistake. I've lived that life. Every day gets perpetually worse until you find yourself in a suffocating cesspool of abuse that is nearly impossible to escape.
The key to happiness lies in practicing accountability. Yes, it's a bruise to your ego to admit when you are wrong, but it beats the alternative of forcing the people you love to lie and say you're always right.
Once you acknowledge that forcing your loved ones to lie represents an example of abuse, it becomes a lot easier for fundamentally decent people to choose the correct path.
It becomes even easier when you recognize the benefits of living an honest life, even if that means having to acknowledge your own imperfections.
When you admit fault, you become enriched by the talents and abilities of the people around you. You can appeal to them for help when times get hard.
When you can't admit fault, necessity forces you to oppress the people in your life so that they don't threaten your power. You're obligated to suppress their development so their capability never exceeds your own.
It's one of those cases where the flaws of a theory are exposed through practice.
The patriarchal family model consists of a father who is the unquestioned head of the household. He's the most significant figure in that family unit because only he is allowed to own property, get credit, seek employment, and so on.
Right away it's obvious that this system isn't derived from merit. The other members of the household are prohibited from making contributions. The patriarchal model is an artificial construct.
More often than you'd think, the patriarch is aware of this. Human beings are smart enough to recognize when they're living a lie, and it nags at them. In a lot of families, this cognitive dissonance manifests in a father who appeases himself by bullying his spouse and children.
In order to maintain the illusion that he's the patriarch, he needs to fabricate some artificial evidence of his supremacy.
In my family, my father constantly pestered me. He brushed it off as “friendly teasing” but his comments were designed to crush my ego and put me in my place.
I became less inclined to endure this as I got older, and I began to answer his needling with barbs of my own. I could tell when I'd crossed his imaginary line when I said something that caused him to sulk. If I attempted to sulk, his attacks became unbearable. But he insisted that I had to apologize when I went too far.
There's never any honest discussion about what constitutes hurtful language in a relationship like this. This interaction isn't truly about feelings, it's about maintaining status. It's about control.
In truth, his feelings were hurt because I'd made him doubt his right to be a patriarch. That was a truth he was incapable of consciously recognizing.
“If you're right, even once, that means I'm not right all the time. I can't live with that.”
As a consequence of this weakness, patriarchs coerce the people closest to them into abiding by the expectation that the transgressions of the patriarch must never be mentioned.
The patriarch imposes his will, and the family is compelled to obey.
You see it happen all the time.
A husband can pester his wife about her appearance. But if she turns around and mentions his physical abuse, he responds by acting as if she's the one who violated a convention.
He's protected behind a wall of absurd expectation that he's carefully constructed. He's able to use that mechanism to deflect away any sense of shame, and turn the situation into another attack on his wife. “Tut, tut, tut, now is neither the time nor the place to discuss such a thing. We've been over that.”
In a healthy relationship, spouses are inclined to treat each other with care and kindness. It's not about breaking each other down for the sake of eliminating a perceived threat that might expose a false ideology.
Both parties are willing to admit that they need help every now and then.
We see examples of toxic patriarchal relationships play out on the national stage all the time. There are politicians who regularly ridicule their opponents with offensive nicknames. However, if those same politicians face challenging questions, they act as if the reporters have violated some unwritten convention of decency.
Again, it's not about decorum, it's about protecting the fragile ego of the patriarch. He insists he's allowed to insult others, but when anyone challenges him, he calls them “rude.”
The rest of us are coerced into accepting the absurd mythology that the patriarch holds his position through merit rather than injustice. If we tolerate that, we're subjected to a lifetime of oppression so that the fragile patriarch never has to endure any threat to his position.
If you turn the tables on a patriarch, he sees it as a challenge to the crown. From his delusional perspective, the patriarchal model is the only possible system. Therefore he assumes challenges are inevitable and everyone is a threat.
He therefore becomes a bully even though nobody has provoked him.
The patriarchal model compels fathers to see their own children as enemies. They hold them back because they don't want their children to depose them.
It's a tragic failure of reason. The only effective model is to practice accountability. It's possible to have healthy relationships of support and mutual nurturing, but achieving this goal requires the absolute rejection of flawed patriarchal thinking.
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"...in the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit..."
Notice that it's not "in the name of the mother." Ever.
The Bible is the taproot source of patriarchy. In it, the deeds of men are celebrated, with only token coverage for the women most of the time. Christianity spread the mythology of the patriarch around the world; Jewish and Islamic culture, for which it is also central, spread it further.
The first non-Indigenous people to settle the United States were practitioners of a harsh and unforgiving brand of Christianity. So, too, those who expanded it elsewhere and governed its institutions. Including the country's original sin: slavery.
So long as Christianity is allowed unbridled rule over the affairs of nations, this tradition will continue. But many of us know for a fact that the world can function just as well without it.
I couldn't agree with this more. So many men fall into this category, and we know the carrot is this way. I still remember years ago when the creep ran the first time, he made fun of that reporter who had a disability. I don't know if you remember that, but honestly, that has struck a nerve with me ever since. He doesn't like to take it, but he dishes it out with no problems. Anytime it is given to him, it's either "fake news" or it's "rude." What a moran. Sorry, keeping it real. Great post, as always, Walter. Blessings :) :)