The Power of the Herd (37 page)

It's also helpful to note that these unproductive power strategies are universal, existing below the surface of ideology. Even so, they're sometimes reinforced in the name of tribal tradition, religion, or social pressure. In reality, major world religions explicitly discourage most of these behaviors, but they are incredibly insidious. Over the past three thousand years or so, religious, cultural, moral, and even legal efforts to curtail some of these harmful habits have been only marginally successful, as people continue to cling to what they know. I've grappled with them myself. I've seen devout Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Native Americans, atheists, politicians, scientists, educators, entrepreneurs, horse trainers, New Age idealists, openhearted social activists, and predatory sociopaths all use them over the years, with predictably damaging results, providing short-term solutions that stir up more trouble in the long run, often causing significant suffering that subsequent generations are forced to mop up.

History has shown, over and over and over again, that telling people “thou shalt or thou shalt not” do something is the
beginning
of a long, difficult road to alter even the simplest, most mundane behaviors. As in the case of Procter and Gamble and its early focus groups, providing people with research on how inefficient a tool is, even showing them a picture of a better way, is not enough to change old habits. We need to hold the new prototype in our hands, experiment with it, move beyond the strangeness of using it, to
feel the ease and delight
in using it.

I could write an entire book on these archaic social “intelligence” skills and how they've done us wrong, providing voluminous case studies from all cultures and eras, but it's more important to make these dubious habits conscious and move on, practicing new habits, creating new strategies, some of which are outlined in the “Power of the Herd” Guiding Principles, some of which you or your colleagues might someday invent in much the same way that Continuum developed the Swiffer. In any case, here they are, in all their irritating and ridiculous glory. I've organized these juvenile, in some cases devastating, tactics into four classes of similar behaviors, offering brief definitions and examples followed by related approaches that are more productive. (You'll notice that it's
difficult to talk about any of these counterproductive strategies without bringing in at least one or two others.)

Take a few notes on these antiquated tactics, how they show up in your personal and professional relationships. In the future, whenever you use one of these clumsy power tools, notice how much additional time you spend cleaning up unforeseen interpersonal difficulties that arise as a result. But don't wallow too long in all this muck. Keep on reading. I promise you, new visions of leadership and empowered relationship are close at hand.

Predatory dominance overemphasizes a “competition for limited resources” mentality. It employs hierarchical, command-and-control leadership models combining intimidation, entitlement, violence, and fear escalation to enslave or prey upon others.

As shown in previous discussions of natural herd behavior, the dominant and the leader are often two different animals. In pastoral cultures, master herders learn to combine the roles of leader, dominant, caretaker or companion, and predator, acting for the good of the entire interspecies tribe. However, in civilized, sedentary cultures, we've lost this richly nuanced understanding of power. Through humanity's increasing disconnection from nature, many of our social structures have become unbalanced,
overemphasizing
dominance and, even more dangerous, pairing it with predatory behavior.

Carnivores and adolescent alpha-style dominants use intimidation and violence to confuse, disempower, control, and, of course, eat others. In nature, however, predators perform a valuable service. If the world had no lions and wolves, then horses, cattle, gazelles, zebras, and wildebeests would overpopulate, consume all available resources, and die of starvation. Ambitious human dominants — who are smart enough to manipulate nature and isolate themselves from it — are not yet smart enough to balance their ever-increasing appetites in service to the greater good. Emphasizing short-term, personal gain, they deplete ecosystems while preying on people in legal and illegal ways. While slavery has been outlawed in most countries (though it still exists in criminal subcultures), predatory dominance proliferates any time people use fear, intimidation, or deceit to thrive at someone else's expense, hijacking the physical and emotional resources others need for survival, in order to bolster an insulated, increasingly luxurious lifestyle.

Predatory dominance includes forms of bullying and more subtle ways of disempowering people to maintain control. As socializing factors, for instance,
fear and intimidation have been shown to inhibit intellectual development and creativity. At first, this appears to be a plus for conquerors who intend to enslave large populations and breed dim-witted, compliant worker drones for the ruling classes. Yet, as discussed in the first section of this book, these techniques don't even provide the leader with long-term satisfaction or peace. There's always someone younger and hungrier waiting in the wings, ready to pounce at the first sign of weakness. As a result, dictators — whether political, corporate, or familial — must become vigilant and increasingly mistrustful to survive, qualities that easily devolve into paranoia.

To make matters worse, descendants and innocent bystanders must also watch their backs with servants, employees, and family members who've been victimized by this system. People and animals suddenly and unpredictably become violent when they have nothing left to lose, creating land mines of personal and generational trauma. George Washington gained the dubious distinction of starting the French and Indian War when he was unable to control Tanacharison's sudden urge to massacre a group of Frenchmen, who were clearly unrelated to the sadists who had killed the chief's family forty years earlier. Similarly, the stallion Merlin repeatedly attacked me for no apparent reason during the first six months of our association. The abuse he suffered in the name of training nullified his immense potential as a show horse, which further underlines the waste of time, energy, and resources this approach reliably produces.

People who lead through fear, intimidation, and deceit must anticipate revenge and constantly manage the hair-trigger responses to minor threats that untreated trauma survivors experience
and
pass down to their children. Conquerors see themselves as sword-wielding supermen, but they spend more time mopping up blood and grime than enjoying the fruits of victory.

C
ONSTRUCTIVE
A
LTERNATIVES
.
Historically, some nomadic pastoral tribes have engaged in conquest and slaveholding, including treating women like cattle to be traded or stolen. These cultures have also suffered from the noxious by-products of uncontrolled predatory behavior. (See the brief discussion of Genghis Khan in the following section.) Yet there are numerous examples of pastoral tribes that have tempered their aggressive tendencies through daily interactions with large nonpredatory animals. Master herders use dominance consciously and sparingly, for specific, peacekeeping purposes: protecting the group from predators, setting boundaries with adolescent stallions and bulls, and keeping their herds from damaging valuable crops. (Effective boundary-setting techniques are featured in Guiding Principle 4,
chapter 16
.) When larger
populations develop these leadership skills, people can use
the power of a fully empowered herd
to stand up to organized aggressors in business, education, religion, and politics. (See Guiding Principle 8,
chapter 20
, for an overview of predatory versus nonpredatory power styles in nature.)

One of the most fascinating modern examples of nonpredatory power in action involves John F. Kennedy's war-averting strategies during the Cuban missile crisis. The president's self-control, ability to model the difference between aggression and boundary setting, and inclination to reach out to the enemy, appealing to Khrushchev's humanity, arguably saved the world from massive nuclear destruction.

Retaliation includes all kinds of knee-jerk reactions to physical violence, insults, and disrespect, including revenge and grudge holding, as well as hair-trigger responses to minor threats that cause some people to overreact, sending them into disorganized fight-or-flight modes that stir up more trouble than necessary.

Retaliatory behaviors initially seem like justified reactions to the physical or emotional violence proliferated by predatory “might makes right” leadership models. Revenge in particular, however, turns victims into perpetrators, channeling creative energy and ingenuity into destructive pursuits. Cultures that fall into the conquest-and-revenge cycle produce erratic innovators who never reach their true potential.

Genghis Khan and Andrew Jackson are great examples of brilliant, charismatic leaders whose skills were compromised by intense childhood exposure to war and abuse. Exceptional horsemen, their mastery of the “other 90 percent” made them formidable, highly influential agents of social change — for better
and
for worse. Hailed as saviors by some and devils by others, Khan and Jackson were both, wreaking immense, unnecessary havoc that still breeds resentment and grief in the descendants of those who suffered most.

These troubled geniuses were products of a defective worldwide belief system, still prevalent yet slowly eroding, one in which survival-of-the-fittest, “power over” leadership models are giving way to mutual aid and mutual empowerment. When we look at the pastoral roots of the Judeo-Christian tradition, at nonpredatory philosophies like Taoism and Buddhism, at Kropotkin's long-ignored observations on mutual aid as a factor of evolution, and at recent research on the biology of the human-animal bond, it's easy to argue that, from a cathedral-thinking point of view, aggressive, opportunistic social structures are constantly being challenged by multiple sources. Despite human attempts
to find ever more clever ways to use religion and science to justify the continued use of predatory dominance hierarchies, God and nature appear to be on the same side in tempering these destructive practices. Still, there is much healing to be done, a process continually interrupted by revenge and all the toxic waste that results from indulging this counterproductive response to injustice, violence, and pain.

Khan grew up in a culture where tribes were constantly raiding, pillaging, and exacting revenge upon each other as men were killed, women kidnapped, and children orphaned. When his father captured his mother in one such skirmish, Khan himself was produced by rape. Mother and son later endured abandonment by their “adoptive” tribe when Khan's father died. As a teenager, Khan himself had to rescue his own young wife under similar circumstances, never knowing if his first child was truly his own.

Still, modern historians puzzle over Genghis Khan's dual nature: his ruthlessness in war was offset by a certain amount of generosity, religious tolerance, and cultural innovation compared to the behavior of other kings and conquerors. This suggests that the nomadic pastoral lifestyle offered him some support in developing empathy and self-control amid extreme circumstances, perhaps because of the oxytocin produced while caring for large animals. Mongolian creation myths also emphasized a union of predatory and nonpredatory characteristics — the first man was believed to have arisen from the mating of a wolf and a deer. Khan's ability to fluidly move from savage fierceness to thoughtfulness and sensitivity appears to be as much a cultural and philosophical influence as a personal talent.

Andrew Jackson's fits of rage, predilection for revenge, and extreme sensitivity to insults hindered his ability to govern fairly as America's seventh president. Yet considering his background, it's amazing he was able to function at all. As a fourteen-year-old prisoner of war, he was beaten for standing up to his jailers, and forced to live in a room filled with dying men and rotting corpses. His mother, upon hearing that both of her sons had been captured, talked British officers into releasing the boys; but after their grueling journey home, Jackson's brother and mother both died, leaving him an orphan.

Like many wartime trauma survivors, Jackson was counterphobic when it came to fear, able to face extreme physical pain, danger, and violence, while at the same time he alternately exploded in response to and retreated from the emotional challenges of peacetime relationships. This seriously compromised his ability to collaborate with others, respectfully air differing opinions, and negotiate thoughtfully.

Where revenge was concerned, Jackson's destructiveness was overt. He was
like a bull in a china shop. If you offended him, he challenged you to a duel or came after you in some other obvious way. Equally difficult to deal with, however, are covert forms of revenge, particularly grudge holding. People who use this tactic are more like vandals who visit the china shop at night, break a few items, then loosely glue them back together, hoping a pricey plate or saucer will break apart in the owner's hand when he shows it to a customer. The floor looks clean, of course; no violence seems to have occurred. But like more obvious forms of revenge, holding a grudge also compromises our ability to collaborate with others, respectfully air differing opinions, and negotiate thoughtfully.

Studies on grudge holding in the workplace suggest that women use this technique more often than men. Members of either sex who favor this strange little power tool feel disempowered or simply lack the crucial emotional-intelligence and negotiation skills to use their power effectively. Trauma survivors and highly sensitive people who experience hair-trigger responses to minor threats can rack up a long list of grudges in no time at all, moving from job to job in extreme cases. At the very least, they're sometimes passed over for promotions despite high IQ and great ideas.