Memphis — Lord of the Flies Redux And Why the Power Paradigm Must Change
Issue 220 — January 30, 2023
I recall a car ride where a male professional colleague and I bantered about our different perspectives on a serious issue. I don’t remember what we were arguing about, but I can’t forget his closing argument. “Estrogen logic!” he declared, as a way of diminishing me and my point of view. To which I lobbed back, “Testosterone poisoning!” stereotyping male ways of thinking that seemed to me based on ruthless use of power rather than consideration of the needs of the people who would be affected.
We both laughed and parted friends, but now, years later, the dichotomy seems relevant and deadly serious.
Yesterday, walking in the park with a woman friend, I was reminded of that polarized description of male and female genders. My friend and I were both distraught over the horrific murder of Tyre Nichols by what amounted to a legitimized gang of five Memphis police officers. She asked, only partly rhetorically, “What is it about men?”
I asked her if she had read William Goldman’s classic novel Lord of the Flies when she was in school. It’s the tale of what happens when a group of teenage boys are stranded and must fend for themselves on an otherwise uninhabited island. Metaphorically, the boys created their culture, exhibiting forms of male dominated leadership they had experienced in their previous lives. (The book was published in 1954 after all, when few women held formal positions of power.)
At first in harmless ways and gradually devolving into gang-like behavior, the boys ridiculed and ultimately killed Piggy, the sensitive intellectual one who tried to persuade them not to become violent, arguing instead for cooperation and peace as the best survival strategy. The leaders who most exhibited the kind of toxic, so-called “strongman” behavior destroyed the island by setting fire to it before they were rescued by a naval ship.
My friend hadn’t read the book. But I remember that assignment being the first time I had seriously considered the question of why such behavior — what I call “power over” as contrasted with “power To” — occurs in the first place, and why it is usually men who exhibit that behavior with or without apparent reason.
I’ve written before in the wake of mass murders that solving the problem of violence in society has to start with changing the narrative of power from oppressive power over to generative and creative power TO.
It’s easy to believe that power is inherently corrupt, perhaps violent, since history has typically been interpreted through the lens of war and the assumption of scarce resources that we must fight over. That’s no wonder since history is usually written by the victor who wants to glorify his, usually his, prowess.
The research I did and wrote about in my book No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power caused me to conclude that women are socialized to become ambivalent about assuming power and leadership because they have borne the brunt of so much of its negative impact. And so they have a very different view of power’s value. Often they say it is bad on its face.
Yet when I share with women in Take The Lead’s leadership development programs that power has no attributes of its own; it’s like a hammer that you can build or break things apart with, there is a big “aha.” Then we can talk about shifting the paradigm of power in our own minds to power TO, with which we can innovate and create, with the goal of making life better for ourselves, our families, the community, our workplaces, and the world.
It is seriously hard to change a culture while you’re living in it. The underlying power structure will reinvent itself as needed to retain control unless it is replaced with a better paradigm that includes everyone.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman on MSNBC explains the phenomenon with precision.
Writing for the California public television station KCET in 2020, Dana Sherrod and Marley Williams titled their article, “Shifting the Power Paradigm: Centering Community to Build a Healthy, Equitable, and Just Future.” They noted that “policing and the criminal justice system more broadly has been used as a tool for racialized violence and ongoing systemic oppression; Black men are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by the police than white men.”
And if you think that racism and sexism are unrelated, the article cites A. Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez data showing that Black mothers are especially impacted by structural racism and generational trauma: “As Black mothers, grief is embedded in our being. It accumulates and manifests as body aches and pains. But many of us have never been taught how to deal with it so it doesn’t become yet another risk to our health…”
A recent study published by researchers at Ohio State University noted that Black and Latinx mothers exist in a state of “high alert to the possibility that their child will encounter unfair treatment.”
Sherrod and Williams proposed three ways to combat these injustices, all of which boil down to actionable ways to change the power paradigm. They include centering solutions in the community which are usually the best source of wisdom; unlearning behaviors and attitudes that have created the power imbalances upon which injustices are based; and embracing “a collective, expansive vision of what could be and maintain a steadfast commitment to transforming our shared vision into reality. It requires us to disrupt the status quo and embrace a shift in power…”
Women who assume powerful positions by merely adopting male models of power and leadership don’t advance the cause of gender equality, just as the Black Memphis policemen who murdered Tyre Nichols didn’t advance the cause of racial equality despite their positions.
The misuse of power has reached the unbearable level. But let that be a turning point to shift the power paradigm. The cumulative effects of leaders who operate from a power TO framework can shift the culture to greater justice, empathy, and innovation to solve humanity’s problems. It’s up to women to lead the way.
GLORIA FELDT is the Cofounder and President of Take The Lead, a motivational speaker and expert women’s leadership developer for companies that want to build gender balance, and a bestselling author of five books, most recently Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good. Honored as Forbes 50 Over 50 2022, and Former President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, she is a frequent media commentator. Learn more at www.gloriafeldt.com and www.taketheleadwomen.com. Tweet Gloria Feldt.