The Terrible Dance of Power

There is a dance of death and destruction we humans have been engaging in from our earliest history. The Terrible Dance of Power. It is a dance in which oppressor and oppressed, moderates and radicals, accommodaters and extremists have been demonizing, attacking, and destroying one another in great numbers and always in righteous cause whichever side of the dance one is on.  In each case, the dancers experience the dance as unique to their circumstances when in fact it appears to be a murderous cycle we fall into blindly.

A BBC news item this morning points to the evolving dance this time in the Ivory Coast.

It begins with the oppression of Muslims by Christians,

which leads to emergence of a radical Muslim force,

After much struggle, out of the radical force emerges a Moderate Force In the form of Guillame Soro who has been a leader of the rebel group. Mr. Soro, in a move toward accommodation, agrees to join the government in a power-sharing role as Prime Minister.

This morning his plane was shot down presumably by members of the rebel group he has led.

from the Dance: 

Enter the Radicals

A new force develops among the Low-Power people—
a radical force.
The Radicals call for more drastic action—
not accommodation,
but fundamental change;
overthrow the power structure
or separate from the nation.

The Radicals become a "We,"
and all who are not "We"
are "Them."
The High-Power people are "Them,"
but so are the Moderates.
And you can do to "Them"
things you would never do to one another—
you can hurt "Them,"
maim "Them,"
bomb "Them,"
torture "Them,"
annihilate "Them."

The Radicals can do all of this
without guilt or shame
because they see the High-Power people as "Them,"
and they see the Moderates as "Them"—
as lesser,
insignificant,
dirty,
dangerous,
or evil.

Who wouldn't do this to such people?"

And the Dance goes on.

The Universal Civics Course

In a classroom phone conversation the other night, a student asked what Tops can do to generate trust. I offered a few thoughts – increased transparency, share the big issues – but my heart wasn’t in it. Then I said maybe the issue isn’t about trusting Tops; it’s about us and our ability to live without trust. Tops, living behind impenetrable walls, can give the impression of transparency in the absence of real transparency, they can share the big issue while hiding the really big issues. All we need as evidence is Enron and other corporate scams and the run up to the Iraq war. There are just too many instances in which Tops have their agenda which would be threatened if they shared it with us. There is a wonderful Power Lab incident described in Leading System (See Lost Hope, Last Hope.) A fired up Middle demands that the Tops open their books to her; a Top agrees and proceeds to describe such a convoluted picture that the Middle, not quite getting it, trudges away blaming her confusion on a history of math anxiety. One more instance in which they told us the truth and we were just to stupid to get it. So, maybe instead of trusting Tops we need to be more skeptical, at times cynical, always doubting, questioning, and challenging. And we need to inoculate ourselves against slick talk.

I continue to slog my way through Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilization. It doesn't hurt to know a bit of history to put today's blind trust in the context of yesterday's and the day before's.

"Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators."
Lieutenant General F.S. Maude, Commanding the British Forces in Iraq.  NOT 2003, BUT 1918.That little quagmire cost Britain 40,000 men. (Fisk, pp.  141-142.)

"The Arab will see you as liberators; he will beg to be our ally."
Lieutenant General Comte de Bourmont, commanding the French expeditionary force to Algeria. NOT 2003. A Christian crusade aimed at regime change. The French spent the next 50 years battling an insurgency. A prolonged war leaving thousands dead, at times threatening to tear France apart. In the end the French ignominiously withdrew. Another grand vision turned to ashes.

And then of course there was 2003 and the U.S. noble crusade with once again the promise of being received as liberators.

Soldiers go off to war because they trust their leaders. Thousands die because they trust too much.

My small offering is The Universal Civics Course. It's a course for members, not for leaders. It's about saving ourselves and others by learning to live without trust.  Feel free to download and distribute it.

Antioch Closing: Tops Suck Up the Big Ones

In a stunning announcement, the trustees of Antioch College announced that they are closing the college (New York Times.) The decision itself was less surprising than how it was made given Antioch's long-standing tradition of  community government meetings where students, faculty, and administrators discuss a range of issues. It begs the question why this all-important decision was made at the top without traditional community involvement. It is possible that, regardless of how the decision was made, the outcome would have been the same. Maybe yes, maybe no. In one of our Organization Workshops a similar tale was unfolding: the organization was in a mess, customers were dissatisfied, funds were not coming in,  there was no way to pay employees, morale was rock bottom. The Tops, meeting in their private office saw the situation as hopeless and in a rushed decision decided to declare bankruptcy. The decision appeared to be set when one Top raised the key question: Why are we deciding? The others were quick to dismiss him: We're the Tops..It's our responsibility...Let's end the pain...To do otherwise would be to abdicate our responsibility. The dissenting Top stuck to his dissent until the others reluctantly agreed, and so the issue was brought before the whole organization. The initial response was negative: You tops have failed...this is your problem not ours;  but in time other voices were heard: Maybe it's not hopeless...Maybe there are things we can do. This story ended well; Customers were served, money for salaries came in, workers felt powerful and valued, the organization was saved. the Top decision to involve the others in this most critical issue mobilized the resources of the entire system far beyond the limited resources of the Tops themselves.

What do we know about Top/Bottom relationships? In the face of problems, Tops tend to suck up responsibility to themselves and away from others. This often happens without awareness or choice; it's a dance of blind reflex. As Tops, it's simply clear that we are responsible. The more critical the issue, the more likely we are to suck that one up to ourselves.

It may be that the decision to close Antioch was inevitable; still one wonders what might have been the outcome had resources beyond the trustees been brought into play.

(For more on The Dance of Blind Reflex see Seeing Systems: Unlocking the Mysteries of Organizational Life, new edition, August, 2007.)