| « | Watcher's Council Results |
»
|
|
Friday, February 23, 2007
Acceptances And Severances Part 2: Affiliations, Associations, And Allegiances
Acceptance is not merely the middle level of the psychic hierarchy; it's also the "bridge" element, which connects survival imperatives to the drive to individuation. Acceptance by others provides the accepted one with a "rear guard;" he and they are committed to one another's defense and sustenance. Equally, acceptance by others pre-ratifies one's acceptance of oneself: since those others find one worthy of such a pact, there must be some justification for one's self-esteem. Without acceptance by others, one's defense against the world feels incomplete, and one's exploration of one's own worth feels shakily founded.
Clearly, this is a space one must fill. But of the many ways one might attempt to fill it, some are greatly inferior to others.
Many writers on love and marriage have emphasized how the acquisition of a spouse can provide an otherwise aimless individual with a charge of energy and purpose. This is indeed so, and fully half the reason why the nuclear family has been and remains the essential building block of society. But that observation does not exhaust the subject.
Societies founded on polygamous marriages have proved to be less stable than those that ratify only monogamy. Some of the reasons are easy to see. For example, in a society where there's an appreciable degree of wealth inequality, the wealthier men will sweep up disproportionate numbers of marriageable women, which will produce an unmated male surplus that's all but guaranteed to cause unrest. Alongside that, the progeny of polygamous households tend to bond less firmly to the paterfamilias, and by extension to the family itself, than do the children of monogamy; this weakens the family's cohesion and reduces the probability that it will have a significant impact on the larger society.
But there's more. The polygamist is less secure than the monogamist. Polygamous households are notorious for their intrigues -- most particularly, the intrigues of the wives against one another, as each maneuvers to secure most-favored status for herself and her children. The paterfamilias is seen more as an asset to be won than as a loved and loving partner against the vicissitudes of existence. Wives who find themselves being left behind in the intra-familial competition often turn to men outside the household, weakening the family still further. The paterfamilias cannot help but be aware of this, and sometimes resorts to cloistering ("purdah") to ensure that "his" women are reserved to him alone. All this is consistent with the sociodynamics that cause polygamies to form in the first place.
Monogamists, if they treat their bond seriously, have a far easier and more fulfilling time of it. There is no other spouse competing for attention, or scheming to elevate herself over the one and only. He has one back to watch; so does she. Betrayals, if they occur, are intensely personal and inherently localized. In the usual case, the spouses are instrumental in building one another's fortunes, even if he does all the breadwinning and she never leaves the home. Their children bond to them with an intensity comparable to their attachment to one another.
We see here one of the poles of a general rule of acceptances: the smaller the accepting group, the more intimate, intense, and constructive the acceptance can be. Acceptance as a spouse by one's beloved is the pinnacle of the phenomenon; the other pole, acceptance by all of Mankind as "one of us," is nearly worthless, cases of invasion by alien species notwithstanding.
He who seeks acceptance from substantially larger groups will not get the same degree of commitment to mutual defense and support; neither will his sense of self-worth prosper nearly as much. For the larger the group, the larger the number of individual agendas, each one of which places its holder at the top of its priorities and relegates each of the others to a significance proportional to their number. It is entirely fortuitous for a very large group -- thousands or millions -- to take particular note or show particular concern for one of its horde...unless he wields power over others.
Men sometimes affiliate in large groups; more often, they merely associate in them. Their allegiances to such groups and the others in them are rarely strong; the converse is equally true.
I employ the term affiliation to indicate an attachment to a group that has inherently weak to moderate emotional import, and association to indicate an attachment of purely instrumental import -- no emotional attachment among the members at all. A good example of an affiliation would be a group of persons who became friends through their trade. These like each other at least enough to share their company, but the point of attachment was their common service at Acme Corp; they might not have bonded otherwise. A good example of an association would be a commercial association such as a Chamber of Commerce, or a special interest lobbying group or political party.
(German has a pair of words of greater punch for these applications: gemeinschaft and geselleschaft. But English will serve us well enough.)
I use the term allegiance to indicate a depth of commitment to an affiliation or association. Formally, "allegiance" means the acceptance of the authority of a government or a body of laws. In a motivational setting, the strength of one's allegiance to a group would be the intensity of one's determination to see that the group's principles are observed and its agenda carried through. It follows that strength of allegiance varies directly with emotional investment.
There appears to be a law of symmetry about such things. If Smith's allegiance to a group is modest -- if he's only moderately concerned with furthering its interests and those of its other members -- he cannot expect other members to feel a more intense allegiance toward him. Perhaps a combat scenario is most illustrative. If Smith has little to no interest in the well-being of his platoon-mates, they're likely to sense it. More, they're likely to take no greater interest in him. In which case Smith had better not get his ass shot off and need to be retrieved from no-man's land while the lead is flying. If such a situation occurs, and Jones does risk life and limb to retrieve Smith from mortal peril, it won't be because of Smith's value to Jones, but because of some higher, more compelling ethic to which Jones has pledged himself.
Weak allegiances contribute only weakly to one's defense and security. They're no more useful as platforms on which to found one's self-esteem.
Many persons unable or unwilling to commit to the sort of intense, private bond of mutual acceptance that provides strong security and conduces powerfully toward self-regard will try to make their affiliations and associations serve the same purpose. This is near to the heart of our current political problem, and the greater part of the reason I set out on this topic.
Affiliations and associations possess an us-versus-them character. The dividing line between members and non-members is definite; it's supposed to determine some fraction of the member's attitudes and behavior toward other individuals. That's the whole point of joining such a group. But whatever the privileges of membership are, this outlook lends itself rather easily to treating "them" as somehow inferior, or as enemies.
Strong bonds of acceptance are free of this effect. Intense commitments aren't intense because they partition the human race into insiders and outsiders, but because the committed persons have found unusual value in one another and have learned to celebrate and cherish it. A husband doesn't regard all women other than his wife as inferiors or enemies, nor does a wife regard all men other than her husband that way. Similarly, close friends, regardless of their commitment to one another, are unlikely to treat other persons as inferiors or enemies simply because they're not the greatly valued friend. They derive the benefits of their mutual acceptance without incurring any us-versus-them downside.
Given that many millions of persons are apparently without the sustenance of genuine mutual acceptance by others, whether by conscious decision or by the inability to form such commitments, doesn't it seem inevitable that their substitution of allegiances of less personal kinds, particularly allegiances to political associations, should give rise to a range of public pathologies and destructive social currents?
There's much more ground to cover; indeed, I despair of doing it all. But there are at least two more subjects to which the framework of pathologies due to acceptance deficits must be applied.
More anon.
Comments
Y’know, it’s stuff like this that keeps me coming back. Whether or not I agree with them, the essays I find here are just plain worth reading. In some ways Eternity Road is filling the gap left by USS Clueless.
By the way, in case it wasn’t clear, that was meant as a compliment…
Posted by on 02/26/2007 at 12:19 AM
Comment Form
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.
