The Power of the Herd (26 page)

Fulani tribes come together once or twice a year for festivals that include music making, dancing, cattle exchange, courting or matchmaking, and clandestine romantic liaisons. One of the highlights is a celebration of a different sort, an exhibition of power enacted through ritualized public beatings. Young men between ages fifteen and twenty-five challenge others of a different clan to an intense and oddly egalitarian contest that has little to do with fighting skill and much more to do with demonstrating each individual's ability to endure fear and pain without cringing, crying, or lashing out in response. Lott and Hart report,

During the sharo ceremony, blows are delivered
(with a stick that is typically ¾ inch in diameter and 3 feet long) to the torso of the person who has been challenged and who stands with arms upraised. The blows are given with the challenger's full strength. They produce large enduring scars of which the Fulani are very proud. The object, as far as the beaten boy is concerned, is to accept the blows without any sign of pain, and preferably no change in facial expression. In fact, to assure himself that he has not shown any sign of emotion, the individual being beaten holds a mirror to his face throughout the contest. At another sharo ceremony as soon as the next day, or as long as a year later, he is expected to beat his challenger in turn.

The boys are taught from a very early age to expect this contest, to meet its challenge, and to cherish the honor and the scars it brings to them. The traditional sanctions for failure to participate include social disgrace, humiliation from relatives, and a distinct disadvantage in obtaining wives.

The beating of the herd's dominant bull by a six-year-old is therefore couched in the knowledge that one day, when he approaches manhood, this same boy will volunteer to be whacked repeatedly and much more ferociously by a peer, who will by that very challenge invite the same treatment in return. The reciprocal nature of the sharo keeps it from degenerating into the hierarchical hazing rituals college fraternities promote, where older classmates abuse freshmen who have no recourse but to submit to the domineering behavior of elders or be expelled from the community.

But what else can we learn from the Fulani's dynamic passion play? About power, dominance, fear, courage, competition, and the violent surges of testosterone and vasopressin that every male — whether human, carnivore, or herbivore — must grapple with to reach his true potential? The sharo itself seems to supply an emphatic answer: one must face the aggressive acts of others, feel fear and pain without panicking, ultimately commanding and purposefully channeling one's own power and aggression for the good of the tribe.

That, in essence, is what the herd's dominant bull demonstrates with every new crop of six-year-old boys he encounters: that his massive power, while valued and admired, must be contained, that he must show respect to and collaborate with those obviously smaller and weaker than he — because the long-term survival, enjoyment, and evolution of the herd depend on it.

In the sharo ceremony, a boy becomes a man by taking on the role of a fully socialized bull, demonstrating his readiness to endure pain without fighting back. That willingness to be vulnerable at a more accomplished stage of life is what allows the community to trust that an adolescent will be able to develop his own power for the good of the tribe. After all, a bull who lacks self-control, who must dominate others at all costs and never back down, cannot be allowed to roam freely, let alone mate and be trusted to nurture his own children. A Fulani boy's bravery may be awakened through standing up to the herd's scariest, most dominant animals. But a man's worth to his future family involves the voluntary exhibition of his willingness to take the blows life hands him with self-control and pride, realizing that the tables
will
turn, and that soon enough, maybe tomorrow, maybe next year,
he
will be in the more powerful position.

In this way, generations of Fulani have been engaged in the mystical act of socializing power itself — not practicing how to
be
aggressive, but mastering how to
use
aggression in partnership with dominance, leadership, and daily acts of nurturing and companionship. The lessons they've learned over the past thousand years apply to modern sedentary people, male or female, who propose to use power effectively to support a larger cause.

As a parable for the development of visionary leadership, the Fulani life cycle suggests that no matter how old you are, when it comes to stepping out of your comfort zone and into the unknown, you will at times feel small and extremely vulnerable, like a six-year-old standing up to his first bull. The willingness to face life's challenges
before you have the skills in place
— without shrinking from the fear and pain involved — is courage personified. But it's certainly not the last act of bravery you'll ever perform. In fact, just when you think you have the answers, when you're clearly in your prime, some rangy, hot-headed teenager holding a big stick will call you out, and that's when the real challenge begins.

Our culture is defined by a severely limited understanding of dominance, leadership, and nonpredatory power. As a result, most adults operate from a state of arrested development,
especially
when it comes to the juvenile power plays we encounter at work, school, and church, and most definitely in politics. Even attempting to turn a duel into a sharo — in our case without the support or recognition of the tribe — demands
incredible
intelligence, courage, and self-control. But it's a skill we must hone and cultivate in society at large if we ever hope to develop the high tolerance for vulnerability that allows us to move beyond adolescence and into true mastery. (Techniques for updating the sharo, using it to develop
emotional heroism
in modern leaders, are featured in Guiding Principle 11; see
chapter 23
.)

There's little information on pastoral women — what they think and feel, how they experience life transitions, how they interact with their animals, what they're taught about love and power. Perhaps it's because most researchers are male, trying their best to keep an objective distance from tribal life. Perhaps it's because tribeswomen are shy around strangers — or actively sequestered from them. Probably a bit of all three: Lott and Hart, for instance, faced significant hurdles in gaining the trust of Nigerian herdsmen, relying on local veterinarians to provide introductions. The idea of two foreign white guys interviewing the herders' wives was either nixed or never broached to begin with. Articles by Lott and Hart focus exclusively on Fulani men.

Historically, our culture doesn't fare much better. Researchers in Western industrialized countries have been slow to consider the needs, perspectives, and contributions of women — physically, psychologically, and culturally. Women literally had to
become
scientists for science to understand women. Kerstin Uvnäs Moberg had to experience childbirth to notice that, in addition to causing uterine contractions and milk release, oxytocin affected behavior and mood, creating the “calm and connect” response. While a number of male researchers, including Cort Pederson, Barry Keverne, Keith Kendrick, and Tom Insel, added key elements to the study of the hormone's effect on social bonding, Uvnäs Moberg was a pioneer in studying oxytocin's antistress effects. Other female researchers made significant contributions to the field as well. In 2000, University of California, Los Angeles, faculty members Shelley E. Taylor, Laura Cousino Klein, and colleagues published an extensive study on the “tend and befriend” response to stress, which, they argued, women employed more often than “flight or fight.”

Before 1995, stress studies were heavily based on male subjects, both human and animal. In their paper “Biobehavioral Responses to Stress in Females: Tend-and-Befriend, Not Fight-or-Flight,” Taylor, Klein, and colleagues explained this bias.
Female hormone fluctuations “present a confusing
and often uninterpretable pattern of results” for clinical trials on diseases, drugs, and so on. This led scientists to believe that stress reactions would also be affected by reproductive cycling. And indeed, “evidence concerning a fight-or-flight response in females has been inconsistent.”

But Taylor, Klein, and colleagues had the nerve to submit another theory to explain this discrepancy, one based on their own experience as women commiserating with and supporting each other during times of stress. Their theory coincided with research on oxytocin's “calm and connect” effect.
What if, they
asked, inconsistencies in the female data were
not
due solely to hormonal fluctuations “but also to the fact that the female stress response is not exclusively, nor even predominantly, fight-or-flight?”

Taylor and Klein's review of scientific literature on this subject is both extensive and fascinating. But survival-of-the-fittest logic alone supports the view that women developed a tend-and-befriend response to stress for one very good reason: Pregnant women with small children don't fare well in a flight-or-fight context. Fighting puts both mother and child at risk, and running off isn't easy when you're carrying babies or wrangling small children. Strategies favoring mutual aid are simply more effective — for sedentary and nomadic women alike.

Studies supporting this theory show that when female mammals feel threatened, oxytocin amplified by estrogen does in fact inspire tend-and-befriend behavior. Women, in essence, are designed not just to
rely
on the power of the herd but also to
create
and
cultivate
it through biochemical impulses that

1.   buffer the flight-or-fight response;

2.   encourage affiliation;

3.   leave survivors basking in warm, expanded feelings of connection after the emergency passes; and

4.   solidify the bonds that lead to mutually protective social behavior the next time a crisis occurs.

In pastoral cultures, this effect seems to be enhanced by the human-animal bond, allowing men who lead and care for unrestrained animals to benefit from the oxytocin effect, heightening connection and affection between human tribe members. Not surprisingly, it was a woman researcher who first connected the oxytocin response to the development of the human-animal bond.

In 1992, Meg Daley Olmert, an Emmy Award–winning documentary film creator and writer, was developing a series on this subject. Her interdisciplinary findings and original insights into the role oxytocin plays in the formation of the human-animal bond — and its therapeutic effects — were so intriguing that she was asked to join a research team headed by Dr. Carol Sue Carter of the University of Maryland and Dr. Uvnäs Moberg, who was then based at Sweden's Karolinska Institute. Olmert's lack of formal scientific training allowed her to think in ways that PhDs devoted to narrow fields are often unable or reluctant to do. Her vast experience integrating history, anthropology, biology, and animal behavior for television, including such series as
National Geographic Explorer,
Discovery Channel specials, and PBS's
The Living Edens,
allowed her to make a leap of consciousness that brought to light a significant new theory on oxytocin's role in fostering the mutual domestication of humans and animals during the Ice Age. Olmert's years of dedicated research into the biology of bonding and, more specifically, the multifaceted biological and sociological nuances of the human-animal bond, eventually produced the 2009 book
Made for Each Other,
which I highly recommend reading for its amazingly accessible discussion of interspecies evolution.

It was Olmert who wrested Lott and Hart's 1970s studies of the Fulani from near obscurity, bringing them to a wider audience and, eventually, to my attention as well. Lott himself took an interest in Olmert's quest to find evidence of oxytocin's role in interspecies socialization, and he was impressed with how she reframed the Fulani in this context. Her recognition that the hormone creates the glue that holds the herd and tribe together pointed to the compelling biochemical basis for the power of affection and connection to alter consciousness and inspire leaps in evolution not just within but also
between
species.

The Fulani are fierce, to be sure, but their understanding of power is much more sophisticated than that of the average modern city dweller, perhaps because their social structures are intertwined with those of prey animals who are also fierce yet trusting, sociable, and affectionate. For Fulani tribesmen, the courage to feel vulnerable is exercised explicitly in the drama of the sharo. Yet, as it turns out, this strange, counterintuitive ritual (and the interspecies lifestyle that gave birth to it) encourages these young men not only to endure hardship but also to experience love, beauty, and connection in ways that one researcher found immensely intimidating.

In his 1971 article “Defying Official Morality: The Example of Man's Quest for Woman among the Fulani,” Paul Riesman describes what he learned from living with the Fulani, befriending them, and attempting to conform to their rules and customs. For nineteen months, he and his wife traveled with a tribe that became family, drawing him into an experience of emotional intimacy so powerful the itinerant anthropologist almost couldn't bear it. To be clear, Riesman remained loyal to his spouse, but his writings suggest that he had to become more poet than scientist at times to communicate life through Fulani eyes.

The young men especially, he reported, spent a large amount of time composing and singing songs combining the beauty of the landscape, the seasons, and the weather with the beauty of individual women, merging personal attraction with the timeless, archetypal ideal of romance in all its earthly and
heavenly forms. In a few loose translations of lyrics, Riesman illustrates how nature, nurture, and love combine in the Fulani mind: