A Middle Asks for Permission, and 1000 lives are lost

It may be futile, but I cling to a dream in which Top, Middle, and Bottom are part of our reflexive understanding of our human nature, and of the difference such awareness would make. Today's New York Times gives further information on the sinking of the Egyptian Ferry that took the lives of over 1000 people.

"When smoke filled the ship, witnesses said they begged the captain to turn around. Reports said that the captain in turn begged the ship's owner to let him. But the owner, reports said, told him to proceed."

If these reports are accurate,the captain was in the middle and he did what Middles often do: instead of using his own judgment and doing what he felt needed to be done, he asked for permission. It's possible that he never saw any choice. In the middle, if we are aware (a huge if), we have choice.We can make ourselves Middle: play it safe by asking for permission; or we can make ourselves Top: take the risk of acting on our independent judgment. Had the captain chosen to be Top, many if not all lives might have been saved; and there was the risk that the captain might have lost his job. This is the universal dilemma of choice in the middle. We can choose Middle which will make us both weak and safe; or choose Top and be strong and vulnerable.

This news comes just as I am working on the manuscript of "What a Way to Make a Living: The Dramas of Organizational Life." I had just written the following as part of an analysis of the play "Get Carter!" Carter is Top in relationship to the unit he is leading, and Middle in relationship to his Top (Fine), who is Middle in his relationship to the Chairman, and on it goes.

It’s Middle upon Middle upon Middle all the way up. So there is no Top…unless, that is, you make yourself Top.

For more on the dilemmas and choices of middleness, see In The Middle by Barry Oshry.

Me and Betty Friedan and the Power Lab

It was 1969. I was working with the National Training Laboratories; my assignment was to create an experiential training program that would focus on institutional racism. (That program eventually morphed into our current Power Lab.) Betty Friedan agreed to join our staff, which also included David X. Spencer, a central player in a community controlled school district in New York City; James Kunin, a recent graduate of Columbia University whose book - The Strawberry Statement - described the student uprising at Columbia; and several members from the Baltimore Race Institute. Betty was just a few years away from having turned the country upside down with her book - The Feminine Mystique - and N.O.W., the National Organization for Women, the organization she helped to found and whose first president she was. [This is an aside to all those women doctors, CEOs, engineers, police, firemen, film directors, news anchors, military personnel, tenured college professors, and myriad others who insist they are not feminists. It is striking how such conservative commentators as Rush Limbaugh have given such a bad reputation to a movement that has liberated and empowered so many.]

The program we created was like nothing any of us had ever experienced. We created a Have/Have Not residential society that was to last for ten days. Upon entering the society, the Have Nots gave up all their money, their belongings, their car keys, and then were sent off to live in relatively shabby cabins with limited food supplies. The Haves maintained their cars, money, and belongings; they lived in quality quarters with a nearby game room, sauna, exercise facilities; and they enjoyed fine food three meals a day.

The program was explosive from the outset;within twenty minutes the Have Nots disabled every car in the conference center parking lot, including cars of folks unconnected with the program. (It's another story how the Have Nots negotiated a car for themselves in return for allowing those unconnected folks to escape.) The Have Nots boycotted the society's "social" programs and launched their own non-violent, yet frightening terrorist actions.

It is in this context that I have my cherished memory of Betty Friedan. (This story also demonstrates  the principle: Wherever we go, we take ourselves along.) One night the the Haves - Betty is a member - are planning a constitutional convention which was to give the illusion of democracy but which in fact would be a sham. Somewhere in the middle of the meeting, the Haves notice that the Have Nots, carrying torches,are parading around their building in protest. This brings the rebel in Betty to life; she pops us and announces to the rest of the Haves, "This (planning meeting) is boring; that (the protest) is where the action is." She promptly leaves to join the rebels.

Betty may believe she is joining the rebels; the rebels, however, have other ideas. They take her hostage, get on the phone with me, demand a meeting or else there will be "serious consequences." I meet with them at their cabin where they make their demand: Either I return all their belongings, money, car keys within the next twenty minutes or else they will take Betty (with the one car they negotiated for) to the intersection of two major highways, strip her naked, and notify all the major news agencies where they can find her. What do you say, Barry? Twenty minutes. Quite frankly, I didn't know what to say. Fortunately, Betty broke the silence. "Don't sweat it, Barry!" That was that. Let them do whatever they were going to do. And so we sat and waited. In case you missed the news of a nude Betty Friedan, stranded on the highway, it's because, after a bit, we noticed that  no one was watching us, so we escaped and made our way back to the Haves compound.

Betty's other contribution was the creation of the Male Beauty Contest, a real eye-opener for us men. The women were the judges, the men the contestants. We did our parade; we performed our talents (thankfully I can't remember mine), and we had our two minute speech as to why we deserved to be Mr. (Conference Center). What struck me was how much I and others wanted to win this stupid contest. The women convened, announced the winner who was jubilant while the rest of us moped and groused about the unfairness of it all. The shock came when the criterion for judgment was announced: foot size; biggest foot won. It was an experience women have known well: being judged on dimensions that are irrelevant to what is essential about you.

Thirty-seven years have passed since that program, yet the experiences and their messages are still fresh with me. Thanks, Betty.