Maps

Intentions can be the light that guides us, and they can be the light that blinds us. An idea I have been ruminating upon recently is the idea of internalized authority; a corollary to the idea of internalized oppression. These are ideas that are, as with buddhism, rhetorically lofty yet profoundly experiential in nature. Internalized oppression is an idea I encountered in psychology which posits that contingent upon where you are on the continuum of identities in a culture, you may well absorb some of your culture's attitudes about your identity, and as such internalize ideas about yourself based on those attitudes. Not buying-into society's hierarchy is to not be a member of society, which is in-our-bones-threatening, so it serves us to play along with these notions, both internally and externally. As such, If you are on the "lower end" of that continuum--meaning, you are a part of a marginalized group of people within your culture--you could be forgiven for buying into the idea that you actually are less-than all the folks walking around with internalized authority. Hierarchies necessarily demand someone to be at the top disseminating order and structure (and meaning, I would argue). In doing a quick google search, most of the hits about internalized authority came back to Michel Foucault and how we internalize ideas from authority figures that later govern our behavior and moral attitudes, and (i think) our sense of shame and goodness. For the purposes of this entry, I am using the term in a slightly different way. What I wish to explore via this writing is the phenomenon in our country that is primarily manifested by (very average!) white men and their relationship to self and other. Historically speaking, following early genocidal behaviors of our settler forebears and the pandemic of smallpox they incurred on the native people, a hierarchical system of society was implemented throughout the colonies that would later become the United States of America. This hierarchy situated the men at the top of the structure, "their" women and children just underneath them but still within their sphere, other people's families below their own, and placed indigenous and people of color at the absolute bottom. One of my treasured professors from graduate school termed this structure "the sociogram" and encouraged us to view it as divided into thirds, featuring Ones at the top, Twos in the middle, and Threes on the bottom. Because of the nature of hierarchies, this structure naturally (and necessarily) forms a pyramid, with the broadest segment of the population on the bottom, seething with rage at being governed by the Ones, or numbing their feelings about being subjugated in some way. They are oppressed, they know they are oppressed, and most react by numbing out (via intention/volition, or ignorance; and the compounding pain of ignorance is you don't know you're ignorant, which leads to further ignorance, which keeps you grasping/punching), plain/enthusiastic acceptance; or by punching each other by punching down, and in some rare cases punching up. Or they work to climb up the pyramid. Lo the joys of middle management! All the pressure from the top, and all the emotion from below; lots of *responsibility* with no actual power. This is the hell of the mediator between the Ones and Threes, the Twos, who are situated in the middle of power and oppression, experiencing a fuller array of both to be genuinely ambivalent about their position. They have limited authority in that they are merely a conduit. A circuit that functions of transmit a carefully meted-out amount of just enough of what is necessary and no more. A hit dog hollers, and a hungry one runs faster. If the Twos are hungry enough, they can climb to One status. Ones are the gatekeepers unto themselves, and they alone (in their eyes) possess the power to dictate who is a real One and who is not. Ones get to decide who gets marginalized and how. And they use their power to define to limit the degree to which the Twos and Threes are afforded access to the tools of marginalization--violence, knowledge, and power. (To wit, an interesting phenomenon to me is the degree to which female officers are frequently left unprotected by traditional channels of police protection, and are frequently held to account for mistakes in a way many of their male colleagues otherwise manage to avoid. Ultimately, Ones are incredibly protective of policing the borders of their identity because they alone govern who gets to decide for another what is and what is not, and where anyone's given place is in the order of things.) Power and violence is to my mind the only economy in which trickle-down economics arguably works as advertised. The idea in trickle-down economics is that the Ones at the top hold all the money/power/violence by the virtue of the will of god and history (that they wrote), and that the more money they make, the more they will drive investment and spending, which will grow everyone else's position and status because of the wealth/"water" trickling down in larger streams throughout the population. The Ones alone are the eminent and wise disseminators of that which is deemed valuable and important; again, perhaps more succintly: real. Based on the merit of the candidate for said position or object of value and import, they will allow an ever-tentative entrance into the fray of lording over others, towing the historical line of postwar glory; women were in the kitchen, gays were in the closet, and POC knew their place. They have internalized this authority over the course of generations in an unquestioning way, and have convinced themselves of the righteousness of the order of things based on the pleasing self-evident results for themselves. They are convinced they are magnanimous wielders of the heavy weight of ruling over others, and that they are in such a position because they have earned it through the glory of their forebears. The stage is set for everyone they say, all you need to do is audition. Everyone is welcome to apply for the position of authority, and pull themselves up by their boot straps, with no care for color nor creed.* "We" will evaluate you wholly objectively. When some people matter more than others, most others are marginalized. And who gets to choose who is othered has a direct relationship to this idea of internalized authority. The systems that govern our outsides tend to govern our insides. Our relationship to ourselves is of utmost import to the way we treat others, and we all suffer from the identities and positions that systemic forces bestow upon us. I think it is beyond dispute that things are complicated, and getting more so by the day. Deconstructing colonization (of ourselves and others) is the work of a lifetime, and doing so is our only means of obtaining something that resembles a sustainable means of living on this planet (imho).

If you are a sincere practitioner, I hope you are asking yourself questions about authority, and from where you are deriving it and how you are wielding in your own mind and life. *Why* are you engaging in this practice, and how? Authority is generally something that is obscurated by our conditioning; passed down from warm hand to warm hand, by warm (conditioned hands) to warm (conditioned) hand.

Paying attention to our grip on things is essential, and knowing when to accord with actual history, the true rightness of things and of nature, and when to buck up against forces like patriarchy, racism, sexism, and a culture of othering and abusing, rating and judging. We tend to delude ourselves into thinking our way of living is the only way to maintain our current ease and "progress," our sincere sophistication. Technocrats will convince you that technology is the salve to all our ills, market-idealogues will tell you to trust the market above all, fascists will say it is they themselves that is all that stands in the way of you and destruction. Religious practitioners will also show you a way based on tradition and culture.

The document I chose for the thumbnail for this column is a Zen buddhist lineage document, charting the transmission of the dharma from practitioner to practitioner, extending from the historical Shakyamuni Buddha to the current day (of this photo/practitioner). People tend to think that their ego is essential to their functioning in the world and assuring their place in it. Egos conditioned by culture prevented women from being included in this lineage document. That is a travesty we would all be wise to bemoan. We are all profoundly less-than-whole as a result of the exclusion of some from the felt-sense of belonging because of the bodies into which they were born.

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*So long as you persist in abnegating said color or creed in the service of power's agenda of relentless self-interest, we will tentatively approve your application submission contingent upon behavior