I just read the NYT article about the stained glass ceiling for women in the church, and I was especially struck by this comment:

…in the marketplace of ideas and values, men matter most and…by definition, women have to take a back seat…

Why do men matter most in the marketplace of ideas?

To offer some background on how I think about this question - my Dad was an ordained minister, and my Mom worked for the church for most of her working career. I know first hand what a thankless struggle it can be to dedicate your life to serving the church.

One of my strongest memories of my father relates to how proud he was to serve as a substitute minister for the “black church” in town. Now that I’m older and the post-civil-rights era has grown with me, I find myself  wondering why there wasn’t a black minister available. And for that matter, I don’t recall ever seeing a black minister substitute at any of the “white” churches in town.

The older I get, the more I’m amazed by my father’s accomplishments. He was the son of a North Carolina farmer, but to study theology he learned Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, and a little French. He had a second degree in music and later in life he taught computer science at a local community college.

My own interests are just as wide-ranging. I’m incurably addicted to ancient history and culture, particularly religion and philosophy. I don’t even consider money when it comes to making life decisions, and I care deeply about social justice. It seems like I was cut out to follow in my father’s footsteps.

However, I never considered studying theology or pursuing a career in the church. Why not?

I think, like many women, I weeded myself out early because I couldn’t envision myself in the role, and therefore I couldn’t imagine anyone else casting me in that role either. On the stage of cultural stereotypes, I was not a “good fit.”

What is that role that so many men strive for, and so many women dismiss for themselves? It’s the role of the spiritual authority.

One of the dominant themes of world history is the perpetual effort of ambitious empires to convert their neighbors. Why was conversion so important? Shared criteria for truth and justice fostered cultural stability and a sense of common interest. But, more importantly, empire was the center of spiritual authority. The agent’s of official religion were not only the “thought leaders” of their time, they had the right of reprimand. They rode in judgment over the spiritual outlook and behavior of others. The great religions of the Book were also the great religions of the Bureaucracy. The primary instrument of spiritual authority is rankism, which is why the history of all churches is rife with every kind of corruption.

While I didn’t study theology, I did get a taste of spiritual authority as a form of masculinity while I was in graduate school. While I try not to make too many generalizations about gender, it did seem to me that men were attracted to forms of analysis that enabled them to transcend all arguments and particularist “trivia.” They equated transcendant rhetoric with spiritual authority (which seems to be for men an adequate substitute for physical/material power). In some classes, I could swear I could hear the clash as the male students projected frenetic transcend, transcend, transcend mindwaves at each other.

This is the secret driving force behind a lot of the petty politics of academia. In the battle for spiritual authority, There Can Be Only One. No matter how many theories academics spout about race, sex, age, and disability - any divergence from the (white male) stereotype of spiritual authority means that in the end you will be defering to those transcend guys.

The rankism that occurs in the workplace is crude in comparison, but it seems more important because people’s livelihoods are at stake. To an unemployed single mother, academic wars seem as irrelevant and stupid as a virtual melee in World of Warcraft or a wheel war on Wikipedia. However, that’s where the all important positions of spiritual authority are decided. The people with spiritual authority require deference, tell everyone else what to do, and command astronomical consulting fees.

Lately, PR folk have been fond of the idea that markets are conversations. This implies a level playing field where people negotiate as equals and make fair exchanges. However, the spiritual authority hijacks the market. The spiritual authority stands on a platform and preaches to the masses. Spiritual authority is one (man’s) vision imposed on all others, winning pre-eminence through guile, mass mobilization. and acts of verbal violence. The spiritual authority dictates reality, recording their vision on the world as if people were blank tapes. Perhaps spiritual authority does win in the marketplace of ideas and values, but perhaps we should ask ourselves why there should be a marketplace at all. And if there is a market, doesn’t a diverse world imply niche markets of ideas instead of some beady-eyed guy shouting transcend, transcend, transcend!

My new favorite quote is by Blake:

…he would do good to others must do it in Minute Particulars; General Good is the plea of the Hypocrite and the Scoundrel.

I know it’s a cliche to say that women a more immanent and relational than men - and I’m the first one to chalk this up to nurture rather than nature. However, I think this is, for the time being, the  basic truth of the Stained Glass Ceiling. Women don’t want to be spiritual authorities. They don’t see themselves as spiritual authorities. Women want to help people, and it doesn’t really help people to transcend over them or subject them to your vision. At some point we, as a community of citizens, have to decide whether we want to devote our resources to promoting a few spiritual authorities or cultivating every member of the human community as a worthwhile individual, each with the potential for boundless contribution.

The American lifestyle is all about the yoyo. I’m not just talking about nostalgia toys, rap slang, or trendy cellists. Oprah just trumped Clinton with a $12 million dollar advance for the wisdom she has gained from her lifelong struggle with yoyo dieting. The underlying philosophy of our political leadership is yoyo economics.

What does the American romance with the yoyo mean? Isn’t America supposed to be about Frontiers, Rugged Individualism, Big Dreams, and Apple Pie? How did this turn into compulsive lurching from one extreme to another, reaching one minute and then fleeing the next? What is the thing we’re continuously seeking, but can never find? It seems to me we’re all playing an endless game of Who Moved My Dignity?

Three hundred years ago, a Chinese scholar in exile named Pu Songling said, “Men must put on false, ugly faces to please their superiors - such is the hypocritical way of the world…But a man who dares to reveal his true self in public is almost certain to shock the multitude…” This issue itself seems to be one of the yoyo tricks of history, bopping from the Renaissance courtier to our modern ketman conformity. The organization of society continually spawns hierarchies, and those who obtain decision-making or administrative powers quickly forget we are all equal in our humanity, and that every human being has dignity.

Americans aren’t addicted to the yoyo, they’re tied to the yoyo by social and economic policies that reduce them to a state of perpetual indignity.

This morning I read a child a book about African culture, and I came across a delightful remedy for rankism. When an Ashanti king took the throne, his elders delivered (and apparently enforced) the following wishes of the people:

We do not wish greediness.
We do not wish that he should curse us.
We do not wish that his ears should be hard of hearing.
We do not wish that he should call people fools.
We do not wish that he should act on his own initiative.
We do not wish things done as in Kumasi.
We do not wish that it should ever be said, “I have no time, have no time.”
We do not wish personal abuse.
We do not wish personal violence.

Wow! I wish that was the first advice given to every top executive and political leader today!

According to Benjamin Farrington’s Greek Science, the rankist practices of the empires of the ancient world blocked the development of science until the Greeks came along. To manage colossal irrigation and temple-building projects, the old empires fostered superstition. The various and sundry god-kings sought to “accustom the masses to obeying any command that was given to them by their superiors…[because] he could rely on those who displayed their piety to be equally law-abiding in every other particular.”

In the free-wheeling merchant states of presocratic Greece, on the other hand, relatively independent men were encouraged to study industrial techniques and speculate on the way things work. Later as the Greeks came to rely on slaves and the upper classes distanced themselves from manual labor, the spirit of scientific inquiry declined.

Hopefully people will keep the origins of Western civilization in mind as political and religious interests maneuver to redefine science.

The ancient nomadic tribe of the Nabateans (who resided in the area of modern Jordan) understood a few things that apparently went right by the denizens of the modern world:

They live in the open air….It is their custom neither to plant grain, set out any fruit-bearing tree, use wine, nor construct any house….They follow this custom because they believe that those who possess these things are, in order to retain the use of them, easily compelled by the powerful to do their bidding….They are exceptionally fond of freedom…
Diodorus Siculus (c. 80-20 BCE)

This will be very much on my mind while I review all my bills tonight. People are enslaved in proportion to what they are obliged to shell out.

Last night I read one of the classics of war satire called The Adventurous Simplicissimus. In this book I found a wonderful metaphor for rankism as a tree.

The peasants and vagabonds on the lower branches suffer enormous hardship, though people on slightly higher branches try to boss around and rob the people below them.

Above the level of the commoners, there is a smooth, slippery part of the trunk that no one can climb. Above the smooth part are the various perches for the nobility. A bird flying overhead occasionally shakes out a pan of gold over the tree. Those sitting in the “highest and happiest” places catch all the gold, while little or nothing sifts down to the bottom where the commoners fight over scraps and die of hunger.