Queen bees and wannabes
A lot of discourse these days is about how it’s time to topple power away from the rich, old, white, male power-brokers, who run the world.
This will work as well as finding the queen bee of every hive, destroying her and expecting everybody else to keep the world of plants pollinated and growing and the food network of birds, and other wildlife, to continue unabated.
Soon, no food would be available and everything dies.
Despite what you may have heard, no thinking person wants to end old, white guys — the very people we love and embrace as family. What is wanted is a chance to share power and have all voices heard.
At our best, we can all be queen bees for a day, at worst, we all become drones used by overlords to keep us enslaved and buzzing.
The analogy to bees breaks down here because whereas we are a eusocial species, and although in a sense we are in a super-organism like bees, we have very different programming to that of more established insects.
We have some ingrained instincts, but our more arbitrary hierarchies are marked by social constructs such as rigid gender, wealth, political control, faith patriarchy, and the creation of ‘races’.
Bees have no such made-up obstacles.
Human beings, by nature of our brains, act on social programming, stories we share and believe, and very often cultural and religious traditions.
Practical reasons to appeal to those in control
Human beings are wired to belong.
If a person is marginalized, or demonized, for any reason, they will fight back defensively.
Certain conservative men are proclaiming victimhood and a threat to manhood and masculinity itself. But none of these very loud critics has yet been shown not to have an ulterior motive, such as power, wealth, or influence.
On the other hand, fighting purely for the motive of morality and fairness shows that a masculine, and strong man, is truly fighting to protect what he loves, and all he values.
This is a characteristic of men we must emphasize and celebrate.
To share power with those who have it seems to be a practical way to help older, white, people — especially men — to realize we love and accept them, but they have an obligation to help improve the world.
Appealing to their sense of heroism and goodness is practical.
No man is afraid of feminism, for example, if he understands that it is about equality and non-abuse. When words have a definite meaning, people can comprehend them. Exploitation is bad. Exploration is good.
If he believes equality is about “man-hating” why on Earth would he — or his wife and daughters — wish to help out?
The new world is not the old world
The old world, and now our multi-national entities and nations, were often built upon harsh hierarchy.
But that world is crashing. It did not work out as expected. Oppression and exploitation of people and the planet did not work out.
We now know in science, also in social psychology, and in everyday outcomes, that the working world is actually built on cooperative networks.
Without cooperative networks, we are destroyed.
Systems that share, but that also sometimes compete, are natural. There is no great chain of being or supreme entity, that shows a preference for some while rejecting others.
Therefore, even if just for practical and natural solutions alone, we must admit that no one “team” can possess the sole truth or supremacy.
The rich, white, male, and powerful are not the enemy
We do not have to say that everything good about civilization was created by them, but it is just as silly to say they did not contribute in any way except as oppressors.
All of us perform many roles.
All systems we create have some degree of exploitation in them, but no system has ever existed (for long) without the bottom of the pyramid supporting the top.
Hitler didn’t forge a racist, sexist, militaristic Reich. He needed cooperative people in order to do that. They had to believe they were moral, determined, and powerful.
More than anything else, they had to believe their way of life was threatened by less worthy enemies. Scapegoats.
The fact is that for as long as people have existed, power struggles have happened. It is far more often that the extremely rich elites who create and demand support for serfdom and slavery will use others, especially those who feel threatened, to achieve their ends.
Let us be clear
Old, white, “Boomer” or non-boomer men are powerful allies, not enemies. A very strong and courageous man is not threatened by fairness, he will welcome it and fight for a less hoarded world.
We wish to help males have better lives allowing them to celebrate magnificent masculinity and supporting them as we edit out any lingering toxic masculinity. When old programming arises, we need to be there for them. When a human being needs to express fear, grief, or grievance— any feeling at all — we have to listen.
Are we tired? Yes, but that makes it all the more crucial that we hear one another because the exploited Earth and her children are at stake.
Binaries, and black and white thinking, us versus them, is backward thinking. Let us be clear.
To realize that inclusion offers fairness has power.
To realize that feminism is for gender and sexual equality, has power.
To realize that rejecting supremacy and racism has power.
To realize we all belong to Earth, not Earth to us, has power.
We do not want to strip the power away from those who have it because we need their power, their strength, their goodness, and their contributions to make all the difference.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Wade Austin Ellis on Unsplash
“The rich, white, male, and powerful are not the enemy”
Some are the enemy, and some are not– but the point you don’t seem to appreciate is that being ‘powerful’, or rich, or male, or white just isn’t a reliable indicator of one or the other. Nor are the characteristics themselves interchangeable.