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.

There’s something about Bush declaring a smackdown of Hezbollah that reminds me of the Pharoah Ramses II and his truthiness version of the battle of Qadesh. In 1273, Ramses declared victory over the Hittites despite massive Egyptian casualties and the loss of Syria. Lo and behold, as Bush does his hamster dance of hegemony, here comes Hezbollah’s announcement of historic, strategic victory.

It’s exceedingly difficult for the average person to draw rational conclusions about what’s going on between Israel and Lebanon. The pundits have placed almost as much emphasis on the meta-analysis of the media war as the actual, physical, bullet-wound-causing conflict.

In the Israeli corner, we have doctored photos and cries of Hezbollywood.   In the Hezbollah corner, we have Israel’s obsession with getting out the message and Israeli propaganda pamphlets raining from the sky (I saw this on the news last night - sorry, no link).

Israel’s “right to defend itself” is countered by the bodies of civilian martyrs. The reluctance of Lebanon to recast their freedom fighters as terrorists is countered by the tarring of all Islamic countries as tribal throwbacks that condone such hideous practices as honor killing.    

As I watched the news last night, it was clear that the terms of the cease-fire were dictated by Israel. They issued the demands, and they were keeping all the Lebanese prisoners. Was my first thought “Israel won!” No, my first thought was “this will never be over”, because the focus is on defining the winner instead of solving the problems. Anyone who has been watching the news from the Middle East for the last couple of weeks knows that it’s highly unlikely that Hezbollah will allow Israel just to count coup. Egregiously inaccurate spin is just likely to crank up passions-of-no-return on both sides.

It’s time for someone to say it: framing is the same thing as spin - in fact it’s spin on the word spin that helps the people working on your campaign to see their efforts to manipulate the media as somehow more morally righteous than the “smears” and “swiftboating” coming from the other side. Framing is about positive partisanship, the alternative to wishy-washy compromises of civility - but it also enables way too much asshattery.

In the political realm there’s a very thin line between spin and an outright lie. There’s nothing so disheartening to the voting public as an opportunistic lie (except maybe a nest of cronies dedicated to propping up an obvious lie). Standing on a lie is a standing invitation to merciless mockery.

PR spending DOUBLED under the Bush regime. Honestly, there’s a point where all the words and images don’t even have any meaning anymore. I swear every time I turn on the news now, all I hear is “blah, blah, blah…” I’m suffering from spin-exhaustion.

Israel is currently in a conflict with neighboring states. There is a complex history behind this conflict that involves numerous wrongs by all parties. Israel is now making hard decisions about when to attack and when parry: whether these decisions are righteous, necessary, or Machiavellian is not for the American TV audience to decide. The only thing the “media war” can achieve is public pressure for the U.S. to throw its weight around on one side or the other. It seems to me the U.S. shouldn’t be throwing its weight around at all here. This is something that needs to be worked out between the parties involved, and with all the media manipulation at hand, U.S. intervention on behalf of the side with the best “message” is likely to a) make the situation worse by inflaming passions over media misrepresentation, and b) encourage even more manipulation of the media now that the media has proclaimed itself a crucial arena for “warfare”.

If Israel runs roughshod over Lebanon with their superior armed forces, then they may have to deal with strained relations with their other neighbors. Or maybe those neighbors will prefer to make nice with Israel, downplaying Islamic ties in favor of practical statecraft. This is Israel’s call to make. Turning this into a “media war” in the U.S. is just another way to make global affairs all about “us” (and our Media Power) and not “them”.

One of the problems with establishing dignity as a fundamental value is that everyone’s idea of dignity is different. My friend Bob Fuller has been attempting to define it in the breach as the removal of rankism. Recently, I’ve been trying to supplement this abstract approach by enumerating specifics. As I jotted down images and ideas, a common theme emerged. I realized that the one thing I needed most to be able to maintain my sense of dignity in life was the ability to preserve my integrity.

The idea that I put integrity first explains a lot in my life, and the constant pressure to sacrifice my integrity explains why I never feel like I’m living in dignity. I often feel like I’ve been asked to choose between integrity and survival: choosing the former threatens my survival, while choosing the latter guarantees my indignity.

A recent conversation gave me cause to ponder the order of my values. We were discussing how job interviews work, with an eye to why I compulsively sabotage myself. The fact I hate job interviews like the plague was no excuse. Everyone hates job interviews, but since people have to work 99.9% just bite the bullet and do it. What makes me different from them? Why should I be the exception to the hazing that everyone else has to go through?

I hope my very smart friend won’t mind if I quote him exactly, because I think he nailed the common outlook:

I am not a good interviewee. But having sat on the other side of the table, I have become better. Because I realized that it’s a game, and what we’re looking to see is that

1) you are competent
2) your personality is agreeable and isn’t going to piss everyone else off.
3) you are socialized well enough to corportations to play the bullshit game. For example, one question we always ask is “do you prefer to work alone or as part of a group?”

The correct answer is “both”.

We know it is BS, the interviewee knows it is BS. But the game is to say it sincerely, smile and tell us how you like both.

Now despite knowing this I’m still not very good, because I have an allergy to BS that I can’t entirely control. But that’s the game.

Competent, likeable, socialized.

For a long time I’ve wondered why the current employment system persists. If everyone hates job interviews, and everyone understands the reason is the distortions mentioned above, why don’t we find a better system? Is hazing more than a metaphor here? Are we just all struggling to get to a position where we can put others through what we went through?

This is idle speculation on my part because I’ve never been a hiring manager. All I know is no matter how much I want the job, I find some small way to rebel against it every time. I always find a way to express my discomfort with the very circumstances of the interview - from admitting I put integrity first to just looking very uncomfortable about “probing” questions.

Choosing integriy goes against the advice of all my friends. They see my choices as quixotically impractical, self-defeating, or at least self-punishing. Everyone accepts that people need to “get along” first, and to refuse to do what you have to do to get along is the equivalent of asking the rest of the world to pick up your slack. (For instance, if you can’t afford insurance, society ends up picking up your tab when you go to the county hospital). As a very good friend put it recently, I’m not in a place where I can afford the luxury of integrity. I should put integrity off until I have a safety net.  

So why do I put integrity first? I have some theories based on my personal history which I’ll spare everyone. There’s another aspect of my last-ditch defense of integrity that I think may be a universal reaction to this day and age. We are all being asked to constantly adapt to change, constantly chase the cheese. Most of us are in debt (student loans, mortgages, car payments) and this compels us to submit to others so they will “give” us work. Our skills don’t determine the compensation for that work - the market determines are compensation. Furthermore, corporations have the power (through lobbying, litigation, and PR) to jimmy the market in ways that decrease the power of the individual. In other words, everyone feels the rug can be pulled out from under them at any minute. Under those circumstances, the only thing individuals can protect is their sense of self. Integrity is the primary component of a sense of self. To be treated with dignity is for the rest of the world to respect your ownership of yourself. To be forced to sacrifice your integrity just to survive is slavery.

Back to the problem of the job interview: when push comes to shove I believe, with all the power of the deepest spiritual belief, that the job interview itself is a test of my integrity. Every interviewer is asking me whether I would put “fitting in” before everything else. I can’t say “yes” to that, either directly or indirectly.

Worse, if I feel everyone who “passed” the interview did say “yes” to the implied question of whether they would put their integrity second, that means the entire workplace will be populated by people of questionable integrity. Every wonder why we end up with so many psychopaths at the top? It’s because the interview process screens out people who put integrity first at the bottom. This also explains groupthink and turf wars - the interview process selects for people who are either utterly conformists or fantastic liars. I don’t want to work in an environment where I feel surrounded by people who put “fitting in” first.

I apologize if everyone who has a job now feels insulted: I do think that there is a widespread gut instinct about this problem which is reflected in the fact that most everyone hates job interviews. I don’t think people are evil because they need to get a job.

So what makes me different? Am I just so special that I don’t have to do what everyone else does?

I think the difference is I subconsciously made the connection between integrity and dignity. I realized my life had no dignity, and I haven’t figured out how to get it back. Hopefully this won’t sound like hyperbole, but I’m not sure life is worth living if you’re obligated to live in a state of indignity. Since I’m living in indignity now, I guess I’m just waiting for it to be over.

I wonder how many people out there feel the way I do?

After reading about various interesting events that had taken place in virtual venues within the world of Second Life, it finally sunk in. This might have a potential as a civic space, where I could talk to people all over the world about the idea of dignity as a human right.

Second Life is a massive virtual reality environment. It’s not so much a game as a global conference call that takes place in fantastic imaginary settings. All sorts of activists could set up kiosks around the virtual public square. People with common interests could meet and coordinate for political action. One day there might even be ways to facilitate voter registration. Enthralled by the vision of cyber-democracy, I set up an account.

It was very easy for me to get started with Second Life because I have some experience with 3D apps. These skills are more common to people under 30, so I’m sure that for the present participation will skew fairly young. I spent a few minutes twiddling with my character - here she is wearing a “Fight Rankism” t-shirt!

When I did my initial recon, I was a bit disappointed. A lot of the development of Second Life has been commercial, which makes much of the world resemble MYST: The Sleazy Vegas Edition. It didn’t take me long to figure out why a world of virtual casinos was inevitable - in fact it’s necessitated by the game’s economic model.

The number one obstacle to developing civic space within Second Life is its exploitative economic model.

The first thing I wanted to do in Second Life was build a landmark to stand for the cause of dignity while my character was offline. You can’t do that in Second Life unless you own land. Unfortunately land is very expensive within the terms of the game. If you don’t want to indenture yourself to labor some established character, your main option is to collect cash from Money Trees (largesse from the wealthier denizens of Second Life). It took me a few hours to collect $100: this isn’t a fraction of what I would need to buy land: definitely not worth it.

I did try just building a few small objects with a note about dignity attached, to leave on tables and benches. Apparently this is regarded as the equivalent of littering in Second Life, and my objects were quickly returned to my character’s inventory. Suddenly I understood why there are whole sweatshops devoted to farming for game money for online games: since the primary activity of the game (building) costs money, the players themselves enforce a money economy within the game so they can pass on their costs to the next person who comes along.

While Second Life is a really cool idea, I think the business model is questionable. People can get game cash to buy land by paying a subscription fee to Linden Labs (the owners of Second Life). This means that people are paying to contribute their creativity and labor to develop an attractive game space for the profit of Linden Labs. This is worse than Wikipedia, where people just donate their time to the crowdsource the greater glory of Jimmy Wales. Also, you lose the fruits of your investment and efforts if you are banned for any reason (serious legal thought has been devoted to this issue).

If anyone from Linden Labs reads this, my tip would be to subsidize people who want to build. Just make people pay to buy prefab objects, when they want to be conspicuous consumers instead of producers. From the level of advertising that already infests second life, Linden Labs will be able to find plenty of marketing departments willing to play for bling.

My gripe about the exploitative economic model aside, there is potential for Second Life civic space. I’m certainly not the first person to think of it. After searching through the  Second Life group listing, I discovered that adventurous students at New York Law School have been developing Democracy Island. I’m not sure what activities they have in mind, but I joined the group just for the heck of it.

I couldn’t find any other obvious political fora, but it could be that I just didn’t hit upon the right keywords. There’s no question there’s room for much, much more development around the concept.

Despite the proliferation of cheesy casinos, there are lots of places within Second Life where you can almost feel the love poured into the landscape. Some of the creations are as sophisticated as any professionally designed game (in fact Second Life might actually serve as a proving ground for designers). There were all sorts of geeky in-jokes from working stargates to the occasional Tardis to a wreck of the Enterprise.

I probably won’t do very much with Second Life for the time being. As mentioned above, I’m not about to pay Linden Labs to develop their product for them. I do think there’s a lot of potential for community-building and fostering civic discourse (on a global scale) within Second Life, though. I am going to wander around a bit more tonight just to see what’s where - if anyone wants to join me, I’m the one wearing the “Fight Rankism” t-shirt.