The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, now touted as America’s greatest environmental disaster of all time, is expanding ever outward from its point of origin to threaten vast regions of wetlands, fish and aviary species (to begin with), and the wide varieties of land and water-based vegetation in the area.  Most of the stories in the news focus on the costs of living affected by the spill:  tourism down; economic impacts multiplying; the oil industry in the region suffering while offshore workers are laid off.

Much of the rhetoric regarding the oil spill attacks British Petroleum for its lack of sufficient safeguards and protocols in deepwater drilling and disaster management.  A recent snippet from a congressional hearing talked of other oil companies ‘cutting and pasting’ the details of a disaster management plan created shortly after the Exxon Valdez disaster in Prince William Sound on the coast of Alaska into recently produced plans.  The cut and paste scheme included providing disaster management for walruses affected in any region impacted by a large oil spill.  The absurdity was made poignant by the congressman who noted that walruses had not been found in the Gulf of Mexico for millions of years.

Many blame President Obama and the US government—the Minerals Management Service and the Interior Department’s leasing program in particular—for the excruciating and cataclysmic debacle.  One way we might gauge our ability to inhabit a sense of partnership with the Earth is to acknowledge what feelings we have for the enormous populations of wildlife and plant life that have been affected by the 30 to 60 thousand barrels of oil a day (at latest estimates) that have been flowing from the open well beneath the Gulf.  Some reports have noted the drop in the bucket the leak represents in relation to US consumption.  The US Energy Information Administration reported consumption for the country at 19,498,000 barrels of oil per day based on 2008 statistics.  That’s less than ½ of 1 percent.

Many of the above statements represent popular thinking on the oil spill, dovetailed with a few statements that lean towards partnership thinking, a biocentric worldview and the like.  Very little of the news has focused on the lifestyles of even relatively modest Americans, who still tend to own cars, tend to buy large quantities of manufactured goods and  value convenience and a multitude of choices from all over the globe over sustainability by a longshot.  I felt honored to have a president who in a recent address prioritized the shift to sustainable sources of energy over the usual blame game that most of us are—by way of being socialized to its dominance—hooked on.

With an ear to the ground, I have heard few of us talk in detail about our responsibility in the Gulf oil disaster.  Unsustainable economies, unsustainable lifestyles and the blaring dominance of social pressures aping consumerist lifestyles and demanding—if passive aggressively—conformity make up the overwhelming picture of our world.  Sustainable options remain quaint and trendy compared to the dominant worldviews we live by.

Rhetoric from news and media to most of our government representatives obscures like flag burning our overwhelming complicity in human-caused catastrophes such as the Gulf oil disaster.   Our dominant way of thinking, socialized further by what is polite, politically correct or socially popular to talk about, deters real and meaningful inquiry and commentary on the root cause of such disasters, our addictions.

As partners with the Earth as well as citizens in dire need of a sustainable world, we owe it to each other to take responsibility for these kinds of disasters and initiate further changes towards sustainability, whether by meaningful conversations or by actions and example, by hook or by crook, to foster a more sustainable world.

An old friend of mine, one I’ve often thought of as a type A personality, early on became a high level executive.  By age 40 he had succumbed to severe heart attack, resulting in intensive surgery.  Statistics show a strong correlation between pronounced type A personality behavior as it was known when researched most extensively between the 1950’s and the 1990’s and risk of heart attack from hypertension.

On the one hand, the stereotypical type A who tends to become hostile—or in the case of my friend expressed impatience easily—could be said to be exercising dominance over themselves.  This dominance may have been accompanied by continuously higher levels of stress hormones than many of the rest of us over a period of decades.  The key aspect of this internal dominance of note tends to be the self talk or internal thinking that may accompany both stress and aggressive achievement.

Our self talk is usually learned from our primary caregivers and others around us, especially at an early age.  Without conscious attention and compassionate listening, we may never really be fully aware of those messages—what we are saying to ourselves—and their effect on us.  If we do pay attention to these messages over long periods of time, we may find that they are different when we are under stress than when we are relaxed.  Different when we are trying to accomplish goals than when we are just being in the moment.  Different when we feel obstructed or wronged—or dominated—by others than when we are in flow or are harmonizing well with others.

A sample of key dominance-based self talk to look out for might include strong or unhelpful self-criticism; inordinate self-blame; rarely being satisfied with one’s performance; or other general recriminations.  There may be times when, as with an athletic coach or a drill sergeant, we may feel the benefits of some dominance-based verbal behaviors outweigh the detriments.  Many people certainly would attribute their success to characteristics like a strong (sometimes relentless) discipline, or never giving up or giving in (as opposed to perhaps monitoring and cognitively re-thinking high-stress related negative or critical self talk).

We might frame a partnership practice with foremost a compassionate ear.  When I’m striving for a goal these days, whether an athletic goal or a complex life goal, I listen closely to my self talk and observe how it naturally changes during states of fatigue, hunger, injury, obstruction and freshness.  These states for me all induce different kinds of self talk.  Prolonged stress and fatigue are states of consciousness that seem especially prone to strong and often unbeneficial negativity.

In reviewing this self talk—which, because of its frequency and intensity is highly likely to influence how we talk to others, especially under stress—I attempt to offer myself compassion and very supportive coaching.  To find the self talk of the voice of your own internal supportive coach, you may need to journal or otherwise listen to the voice of support you carry with you at the freshest part of the day.

You may need to listen and notice if you use that voice to nurture others but not usually yourself.  Finally, if you find it impossible to come up with a list of frequent supportive messages you naturally use with yourself, you might listen to others or ask an especially supportive person to share with you what messages of support they hear when they talk to themselves.

Some of us might believe or simply feel that we are slaves to our emotions.  We may feel compelled to react as our emotions dictate.  Reactive behavior may have been behaviorally programmed into us by parents, authorities, or others who may have been our models for the right way to behave.  Like any disciplinary regime, the behavioral programming—whether associating a whipping with a certain action or language, or associating shaming and humiliation with a certain behavior or attitude or expression—pairs a certain stimulus with a certain response.  When the response is behaviorally programmed, then the stimulus can trigger the response:  shame, humiliation, or more complex emotions that may arise due to the presence of unanticipated or unconscious shame or humiliation.

Models such as primary caregivers; attractive, successful, powerful and attention-getting people of status in our human environments; older siblings, bosses and the like can offer very persuasive models for dominance—or partnership-oriented—behavior.  If these models utilize harsh discipline and create a morality for how you dress, talk, and behave, then strong dominance-based emotions are likely to have been programmed into us, especially if these people are around us very early in life, or hold enormous power over us.

Cueing, a term that refers in psychological research usually to visual or aural cues or environments, can trigger state-dependent behavior.  A simple way to describe this is, if someone speaks to you in a certain tone of voice that for you has been repetitively associated with strong negative memories, then the chance is it will elicit certain responses associated with how you defend yourself from or acquiesce to the accusations and demands (or respond to the nurturing and support) of that tone of voice.    Some of us have had a sufficiently supportive and nurturing interpersonal and work environment that cues of this type don’t generally bring up shame, self-blame or humiliation.

In the restaurant and hospitality industry of a destination tourist town where I had the opportunity to nurture and watch closely a range of people, ages, work and social environments and behaviors, you could plainly see with respect to a number of people the mechanisms of dominance at work.  For years I worked with, for and had others working for me who I listened to, dialogued with and got to know beyond how they simply behaved while doing their job.  Occasionally, customers for instance came into a busy workplace and launched a tirade when their needs were not instantly met on their own terms.  It was not unusual, for example, for the teen-age hostess serving the front lines of customer service to bear the brunt of the customer’s performative behavior.

If a person is brought up in an environment that models healthy self esteem as well as maintaining a consistent nurturing environment for healthy self esteem, then often one’s reactions to the surly customer—who may be acting out quite personal attacks—is very different from the one who is raised to fear or subject themselves to dominant personalities.  What appears to happen in Freudian terms (my apologies to all those who see no value in Freud) though I have not thoroughly investigated contemporary research to find if notable correlations have been discovered (or the hypothesis disproven), might be described as follows.

A person brought up in a dominance-based environment, where actions beyond necessary morals and ethics are moralized in a strong ought/ought not, should/should not way, is that we seem to internalize and aggregate the voices of authority.  The aggregate voice of all the authorities we have submitted to, especially those who have created intense emotional experiences to remember the discipline by, seem to become the voice of the superego, or internal policing voice.  This voice—and the emotional experiences it is remembered by—may react in rapidfire fashion to a verbal cue, or even perhaps a body language cue.  The reaction results in releasing the feeling of shame or humiliation, though none may actually be warranted, appropriate or even healthy.

The self-blame response follows, perhaps because according to the science, cognitive functions interlaced with emotional functions, particularly the hormonally and neurochemically charged fight-or-flight mode of our brains and bodies, tend to have longer response times.  The short of it is if we’ve been behaviorally programmed in a strong dominance-based environment, and the majority of observational modeling has reinforced dominance-based reactions—submission or retaliation, for instance—then we are likely, we are primed, to blame ourselves for the attacks that occur from for instance irate customers.

How often would a teen-age hostess likely stop and think, ‘this person has frustration that needs venting’?  Or, ‘its okay for this person to behave the way they are behaving, and I (and my organization) am not necessarily responsible for it’?  How often would a teen-age hostess likely stop and think, ‘I am not the person driving the customer’s blame, shaming and emotionally pitched dynamic’?

The problem with rapid firing times for fight-or-flight emotions that have been behaviorally reinforced is that we perceive the emotion and all the validating thoughts and senses that go along with it long before we are able to assess whether the incident we relate those emotions to is actually responsible for part or all of those emotions.  In old World War II movies a common scene showed aviators, gunners or concerned citizens in Civil Defense organizations learning to identify enemy airships by their outline.  Posters of various outlines of planes would presumably help the vigilant separate friendly from enemy aircraft.  It may be worth while to imagine the fight-or-flight emotions responding in a similar way to a perceived circumstance of dominance:  shame, blame or coercion.  Behavioral programming may have primed us to feel guilty or to feel shame even when we are not responsible, or are limited in what courtesies we can extend.

When was the last time you questioned the validity of especially negative emotional states?  When thoughts of self blame (or retaliatory blame of others as a form of ego defense) have arisen, when was the last time any of us questioned these reactions, or had a successful, attractive model for observationally learning such questioning?  Instead—and as per a feminine and beneficial way of treating our emotions I would not want to limit—we tend to give supremacy and carte blanche validity to emotional states, even when our primed reactions may lead to fallacies in judgment.

While we can work to dismantle the kneejerk assumption—that if we feel a certain way, the thoughts that rationalize that feeling are necessarily true—a difficult obstacle may exist in the form of a strong dominance-based environment that cues shame, blame and coercion in order to control.  Such an environment can be the hallmark of a strong type A personality, someone who themselves have been wounded, or someone who has simply been socialized to treat others that way.  If the organizational or social environment is saturated with such dominance-preferring personalities, then the likelihood cues obstructing such thinking and promoting reactivity are all the more stronger.

The work that really needs to be done in investing ourselves socially in the partnership model, whether at work, at home or in social and international relations, is to begin to observe and acknowledge how people are using their power.  Are they setting up a nurturing environment ripe for creativity and supportive of the whole?  Are they using shame, blame and coercion justifiably, or are these tactics used simply to exercise the utmost control with the utmost power?  The goal is not to moralize against those who are using dominance-based behaviors to control the environments around them.  Rather, the goal is to simply witness and make conscious.

By setting these behaviors apart and aside we can begin to practice partnership-based alternatives, while showing up fully prepared to acknowledge the dominance-based behaviors that may be our social inheritance.  Beginning with our internal dialogue and feelings, we can question where our emotions are leading us to think, and whether those thoughts best serve us and a nurturing, partnership-oriented environment.  With that in mind, we may yet, in a strong dominance-based environment, best serve our health and wellbeing by tuning into what works to protect ourselves, and respond accordingly.  If we cultivate awareness, we will be able to provide for ourselves a rich, nourishing environment, as well as become acute at identifying the issues with dominance-based environments.  We will be able to counterbalance the shock of shaming, blaming, manipulative negativity and hostility with cognitive re-thinking and compassion towards ourselves.

For now, I’d like to take a moment to reiterate some broad generalizations in regards to e-mails and the partnership model, as well as dominance.  In case you’re wondering, I’ve owned my own business, worked as a mid level manager for two large corporations and a number of smaller organizations.  I’ve taken on a variety of service industry roles—carpentry, cooking, cleaning, maintenance, waitstaff, delivery and the like—as well as volunteering on the steering committee of a local non-profit.  Additionally, I have done a variety of group and individual work under professors while working on most recently an AS in Psychology, undergraduate work in an Environmental Studies program, and an Environmental Humanities Masters Program.  I earned a BA in English and History in the early to mid-1990’s.

You may think I’m running down my pedigree and list of credentials to tout my authority and expertise.  Certainly if you look from the dominant way of thinking why else would I run down these things?  Another way of viewing this information is to see it in terms of varieties of collaborative experiences.  Another possibility is the list suggests it’s likely I’ve worked with a broad range of people in a fairly broad (though there are much broader) array of experiences, organizations and roles.

Moreover, I’ve spent my free time over the years immersing in readings as varied as depth and personal help psychology and managerial and organizational behavior, especially on ways to improve the health and wellbeing of persons and organizations from those points of view.  These perspectives have informed a range of practices.  Non-judgmental awareness and acute observation are two crucial practices.  I also have worked on formulating ways of communicating and guiding others that allows for a great deal of independence while offering alternatives in situations where people are stumped or seeking input.  Cultivation of problemsolving strategies and communicative styles has been complemented as well by the cultivation of general wellbeing-oriented communication.

To put it in the terms an expert in the communications and negotiation field has used, while we are used to, perhaps even in need of, performative communication when experiencing conflict—expressing anger, hurt, rage or a sense of injustice in the most pejorative, polemic or victimized language available—other types of communication become valuable as we move towards attempting to manage for instance conflict in a way that preserves or re-establishes sound, workable relations.

Riane Eisler in her chapter “Work and Community Relationships:  The Widening Circle of Caring,” in her book The Power of Partnership, sees as the primary goal of managing our perceptions and our communicative and behavioral responses as a way to maintain a strong sense of wellbeing.  Because we spend so much time in the workplace, there is no more valuable place to manage our consciousness.  Statistics show that however much we try otherwise, the sheer volume of time we spend in work relations, including our personal relationship with ourselves and our work, the feelings and mindset that are cultivated in the workplace will bleed over into other social and personal theatres of our lives.

Returning to the topic of e-mails, a few givens are worth remembering.  No matter how sure we are of what we are attempting to communicate, the party on the other end may receive what is said differently.  By the same token, what is read in an e-mail, no matter how clear the e-mail may seem to be, may not be what the author intended or what is most in need of being heard or communicated.  As I see it, especially when a sense of conflict or disrespect emerges, it pays to investigate.  In the partnership model, these might serve as golden rules.  As a person who has been a student of communication and interpersonal psychology for most of my life, regardless of how well I actually communicate across all instances, the cardinal rule of communication for me is to confirm with the source that what I have heard is what was intended, or what the respondent meant.

This guideline has been highly valuable for me in insuring that communication is working at a quality level.  So why aren’t the majority of us practicing this guideline?  If you are, more power to you.  I want to suggest some partnership versus dominance reasons why some of us might not be invested in practicing this guideline.

First of all, in many of the places I have lived, socialized and worked first in Texas and later in Utah, to ask a person to repeat what they have said, or to re-state what one has heard, is considered dumb.  Honestly.   This is a prime example of how dominance has socialized wise communication practices out of us.  In some instances, one or the other party may just not care about the other party.  In that case practicing communication conducive to maintaining flow between co-workers may take more effort than we want to put out.  In the dominance mode, we may act out passive-aggressively just because we’re stressed or the whole idea of being imposed on to communicate well is something we’re not interested in putting effort into; something we resent having to do.

In the partnership model, we might—might—eschew passive-aggressive communication in favor of more caring communication, even with strangers or in the workplace.  I believe such a practice is favorable, and cultivates respect among humans that has the potential to bleed over into how we treat the natural Earth environment and its inhabitants.  On the other hand, it may be more than we can expect of ourselves under stress, or when coping with a trauma.  An alternative might be to acknowledge our less partnership-oriented behavior to the other party.  “Hey, I just want to let you know I’m not being as partnership-oriented as I could be, because I’m feeling…” for instance.

I sometimes think that when partnership behaviors aren’t practiced, especially when committing to an interpretation of an e-mail, without investigating whether the ascribed meaning was the one the author intended, the intent is to reinforce the sense of power that comes from the dominance-based way of doing things.  Retaliation, passive aggression, and behavioral enforcement of discipline through outrage or deep victimization can be—though we must be very careful when assessing messages of victimhood, because these can be very complex—ways of exercising power and getting what we want manipulatively.

In the end, proactive communicative strategies, especially with e-mails, is a vital partnership-oriented practice.  Such a practice can pay off in the long run, since how we behave and perceive we are being treated by others today will largely affect how we perceive we are being treated and hence how we behave towards others tomorrow.  The overwhelming preference for us as human beings is to turn to automatic pilot.  Heuristics, mental shortcuts that may have been embedded in our emotional memory from previous, especially unpleasant situations, may be used to judge and prosecute what is happening and who is behind it without sufficient inquiry.  The fight or flight mechanism is designed to protect us, and has fallen to protecting our egos.  That same mechanism can react too quickly to guarantee that what we believe is happening to us is actually the whole truth, much less what was intended.

I’m not convinced that we are living in a world where we should no longer risk communication in a fairly new communicative environment, one perceived to have a rapidly evolving syntax and currently limited in terms of reasonably high expectations of common interpretation to basic, disinterested communication.  On the other hand, the only way to evolve a new form of communication to the point where it can serve we humans—with our complex and  increasingly multiple worldview ways—is to experiment with it, work with it, and remain open to learning from our experiences.

Recently I was involved with a short term goal-oriented team working on a project out of a longer series of experiences that this community shared.  I noticed what appeared to be a new pattern emerge in terms of how one community member responded to me after seeing a variation of it occur three times.  At that point, I thought it was useful to check in with the other person involved and see if there were deeper issues, or if perhaps I simply hadn’t seen that community member use the same behaviors towards others in the community.

One of the potentials I’ve been exploring is the possibility of cueing in e-mails—by description—the kind of voice I want a recipient to listen for.  Here is an excerpt from the first e-mail I sent as a query:

As you read this, I ask you to imagine the tone of voice I used at the table yesterday when addressing your concerns.  I’m hearing myself use an inquisitive tone and a considerate tone, because I do carry genuine concern that any issue gets worked out in such a way that we remain community members in good standing with one another, meaning we retain the open two way street (at least that I find preferential) that affords cross-influence.  To me this is built on respect, for instance my respect of you and your thinking, even if it is genuinely oppositional.

I have held the person I directed this e-mail to in high esteem for the nine months I have known this community member, as well as all the other persons on my team and in the larger community of which we are a part.  Still, conflicts may arise that we have to consider discussing, at least according I believe to the partnership model.

Chances are the community member in question may not have been exposed to any cautionary material on the use of e-mail in a situation like the one I was addressing where a potential conflict may have existed.  None of the literature I’ve seen has yet suggested the partnership model of communication, which would respond with questions when meanings seemed to be open to harmful interpretations or difficult feelings.  Clarification is paramount.  Perhaps this kind of communicative discipline is recommended—avoiding rapidfire judgment and a firestorm of politicized and/or polemical language—in literature I have yet to discover.

You may wonder why I didn’t talk to this community member on the phone or face to face, and the reason I would offer is we had no established custom for addressing potential problems with these lines of communication—and no prior history of conflict that I was aware of.  I’ll be returning to this situation and example again in the following weeks, because I believe it stands as a very important opportunity.  The problem posed by the series of e-mails and the conflict I shall discuss, as well as the evidence provided by the originating e-mail I sent, may offer clues as to how partnership and dominance has played out in Utah in the work and personal relationships I’ve known.

I never received a response back from the party in question.  Instead, I received a reprimand from an authority that read the e-mail, judged that it was condescending, and launched into a criticism of my (‘wrongful’) behavior.  The key question addressed in the e-mail was:  was there anything that I had done in the past nine months of community and work affiliation to cause that person’s behavior to change from the way it had been with the rest of the community, to the way it was towards me in the three instances in question of late.

My desire—based especially on the way the matter unfolded and the coerciveness of the dominant framework and language used to interpret my original e-mail—would be to label the actions taken as wrongful, putting a should/shouldn’t spin on the communicative tactics that unfolded.  From there I could make a pitch in standard win/lose debate form (a root of dominance-based communication) for the partnership model of communication as Riane Eisler and others characterize it, denouncing dominance while praising partnership.

Consider another angle.  As far back as the early 1980’s I was studying perspectives on psychology that were based on how people and processes are, on witnessing, rather than moralizing or denouncing.  The witness or observer’s role is to simply characterize what is going on.  As Riane Eisler talks about her historic experience in her book The Power of Partnership, it seems likely that she too had the experience of looking deeply in an alternative way at the world around her and finding underlying patterns emerge, patterns that were not being identified, discussed or scrutinized for what purposes they served and what harms they may be creating.

In the world we live in today, I would be lying if I didn’t admit I’d rather experience partnership than dominance in my work and personal relationships.  I believe we all deserve the kind of dignity, freedom and equality that partnership communication styles and behaviors attempt to afford.  That said, the Western as well as the Buddhist psychological perspectives that have informed my perceptive framework have suggested that the best thing we can do as people is to start where we are, and identify how we are; the pros and cons of our behavior, what purposes they serve and the potential harms they can create.

I want to offer an additional caveat.  When I’m pulled into a dominance-based dynamic I am likely to resort—especially after the last 15 years of increasingly dominance-based social dynamics with the people and workplaces I’ve known in Utah—to aggressive self protection and identification of what is going on in the dominant language or worldview.  My experience suggests what Michel Foucault discusses in his body of work on dominance and social systems. I’m a product of the relationships I’ve experienced and the social dynamics I’ve been steeped in over my lifetime.  I would argue this is especially true for the relationships I’ve worked and been socialized in over the past 15 years as I have experienced them in Utah.

While I feel certain that some readers will find this essay somewhat vague and abstract, please bear with me.  In following parts of this essay I will attempt to describe in detail how responses unfolded in the situation I’m describing here, as well as how responses could have unfolded under the partnership-based worldview.  Such partnership-based responses could have had very, very different consequences for all involved.

So a guy in my neck of the world (Utah) looks into a woman’s eyes, and she changes the way she looks at him—because she’s mad or just for the fun of it or just to see what happens—and she changes the way she looks at him to a look of scorn or harsh judgment.  I wish I had something comparable to offer women on the way men look and are interpreted as looking at women here in the places I’ve spent my time in Utah.  It may be something well worth paying attention to.

So the guy looks down in shame, or maybe he’s insecure or maybe he’s wondering what it is he’s done to earn that look.  Behaviorally, we’re shamed like that by our mothers, so the research suggests, and we automatically come to react to the cue, somewhat like Pavlov’s dogs.  So the guy falls into himself, so to speak, paying attention whether wanted or not to his internal experience, his thoughts and feelings.

When he awakens from this drama, he notices his gaze has fallen to the place where her top breaks and gives way to her skin; lifts his gaze from the curves of her partially exposed breasts, from her cleavage—because he isn’t interested in projecting onto her his sexuality.  At least, not without her permission, her interest, her desire.  And he certainly isn’t interested in fantasizing about her, especially if he wants her as a friend, and wants to support her as a worthy, valuable human being beyond the sexual politics of our day.

So he looks up, past the necklace with its curious, unique, attention-riveting object of fascination hanging there, past the shoulders with the spaghetti straps, up past the continuity of her neckline that appears as beautiful as any landscape for its uniqueness, its aliveness, its presence.  Perhaps he’s long ago let go of thoughts driven by dominator, objectivizing scripts that once noticed these features purely for their sexual potential, purely for their strict adherence to some constructed and enforced ideal of beauty.  And lo and behold he looks up to see her looking at him with even greater furor!  Now what was she thinking?

II.

A woman, a friend, who a guy hasn’t seen in a week or so gathers in a crowd where a guy is standing.  In the intervening days, the temperature has gone from chilly to overcast to warm and sunny, and she arrives dressed in a way that makes her comfortable, as well as making her feel good.  She steps into the circle and he turns his gaze to her, perhaps to acknowledge her as she walks into the circle, and finds when he turns his gaze to her, who happens to be shorter than he is, he’s inevitably looking down her top.

So he looks away.  Riddle me this:  was he looking for her top, down her top, fantasizing about her, indulging in a sexual fantasy, projecting his sexuality onto her?  Or, did she step into his gaze, like a car or any animate being in nature, and when he recognized where he was looking, did he just…turn away?

Did he turn away in shame, or did he turn away out of the potential that his gaze may be misread?  Is his turning away read as an act of respect, an admission of guilt, disinterest?  How is it read?

It’s the first day of Spring.  Guys have been shooting sidelong glances all day long at the girl, it’s late in the afternoon, and it’s warm.  The other women in the group maybe see his glances, and may be primed by similar glances all day long—perhaps now read with the doubtless certainty of leering and predatory viewing.  If you ever spent time with the males of the various generations in Utah I’ve known, that reading is more often accurate than not, but not all males I’ve known in Utah are prioritizing predatory viewing of females, either.

The women may or may not—after a long day of looks and self consciousness—harbor resentment, I cannot say.  Resentment over the inability to control the male gaze, the instinctual gaze, and/or the thoughts?  Is he indulging?  Is he ashamed?  Is he ashamed because that is the behavioral programming that has been socialized into him, and is triggered rather than by guilt, by judgment?  Is he defensive?  Is he acting out dominance?

Is he reacting to shame over an actual act of sexual colonizing, sexual appropriation?  Is he reacting out of resentment for having been shamed and framed for an act that cannot escape the mutually agreed upon fact of the gaze?  Because the gaze is incontrovertible, whatever it’s meaning or use.

Still, far different consequences are possible if the shame is based on indulgence, on reducing a friend, a woman, to a colonized and appropriated sex object, versus an instinctual reaction that, when noticed, is adjusted for and let go of.

What if the guy is used to dropping his thoughts, for the benefit of supporting the women in his community, conferring respect and an evolved practice?  What if instinctual, reactive behavior, whether out of stress or biological desire—rather than projected desire—occurs and is adjusted for, but the women in the community have had enough of guys projecting their sexuality on them, treating them as objects of their dirty little fantasies, dehumanizing all in the course of making them their sex objects?

And vehemently inhabiting the self-fulfilling prophesy seems to have been the way that many of the guys I’ve known react to the socially manufactured shame and dominance enforced against a natural biological response.  It seems we sometimes may rebel against the shame and dominance, by indulging in it.

When the question of whether to maintain strict adherence to the rules set forth by a superior or to submit a proposal to allow some leeway for the benefit of the organization, well in line with the higher goals of the organization, what do you do?   Given the question—of whether your superior is more apt to want discipline strictly adhered to, or is open to a proposal of sufficient merit proceeding cautiously with her/his approval—has not been tested, what do you recommend to the others in the group?  Is there a good enough reason not to test this, not to let your superior have the final say?

In a group setting recently I was faced with just such a dilemma.  Having worked in management in a number of organizations, having had extensive experience with a wide variety of people as well as the ethical dilemma this sets up, I almost always leave it to my superior to decide.  After all, if the working group has aligned itself with the highest mission and goals of the organization, then there is a strong likelihood that a good idea or process may get thrown out if the rules are enforced simply to enforce the rules.  If the superior knows something we don’t, or if she must protect procedure over any other interest, she is in the best position to know.   If your superior has to take responsibility for the outcome, he may find the proposition very unenticing.

So what if the opposing position is a woman?  Consider the question carefully.  Female leadership has been under-represented, female empowerment has been resisted by patriarchal institutions for as long as anybody can remember.  Even today in more developed countries women tend to earn less than men for the same or even better quality of work.  This equation does not factor in all the women who don’t have this level of privilege, who are still subject to actual and virtual enslavement, high risk of domestic violence, rape, victimization by their culture and all the insidious inequalities that we in more developed countries find egregious and inexcusable.

When I think of feminists such as Patricia Ireland, who gave me my sense of vision for a partnership-oriented future, I think of feminists who put consideration—and criticism—of a good decision before power politics.  After all, given both decisions have the potential to affect us greatly, doesn’t it make sense to consider all the pros and cons carefully between choosing to adhere to the strict letter of the law without question, and choosing to offer a proposal that may cross cautionary boundaries, yet reap a large return in terms of process, substance and future available patterns of behavior?

In my experience, however, there are feminists as well, and I have a hard time invalidating them, who believe that power and female empowerment is more important than the quality of the idea that leadership backs.  The outcome is certainly beneficial to the furthering of female empowerment and equality, which if not obvious has certainly been a guiding principle throughout my entire life.

I would hope that partnership feminists will differ from those who are competing for power just to be in and hold power.  The implications for the health and wellbeing of all could not be any larger.  The global climate crisis is but one ecological and social justice crisis that demands we all pull together and look for the most valuable ideas whether in lesser practices or in grand problem solving.   Would you, as a woman, be willing to accept the catastrophic destabilization of the climate, because it happened to be a guy that came up with a solution, and it was your choice, because it didn’t come from a woman, not to implement or explore it?

Take for example the idea of being rude.  In a culture like the one I inhabit in Utah, being rude is just one of a dense collection of moral transgressions to watch out for.  But I look at calling someone rude as a way to morally leverage what we want.  I mean, is there a standard for rudeness that is universally accepted?  Instead of saying “Hey, I don’t like it when you do x,” or “when you do x I feel y, and I don’t like it”, negotiating on the basis of egalitarian plurality, we create a moral rule and assert that rule and in the process enforce conformity or sanction punishments, while avoiding real relationship.

Then comes the time where we enter society and we’re programmed to shame ourselves for being rude.  Rudeness may be appropriate in aggressive or assertive settings, but we act aggressively or assertively, and then our sense of shame may kick in.  Here we have done the appropriate thing for ourselves, and now we have to confront feelings we work hard to avoid.  I wonder sometimes if perfectionistic behaviors come from this desire to avoid shame at all costs.

But we find in some circumstances that we have done the right thing, and we still are feeling shame.  What then?  Is it possible we react to that shame with resentment, and then have only narratives of victimhood or retaliation to play out?

While most of us don’t have the time or the training or example to watch our minds closely, and see where our feelings are arising from, the possibility exists it seems to me from my own experience that in the legitimizing of our feelings, we must find some cause that is suitable.  In an overly moralized world, every utterance and action, silence and inaction become a place that is over-controlled to manage our feelings.  Ideally we would have the final say over which actions and utterances were truly in accordance with our ethics.  The partnership model begins when we are willing to watch closely, compassionately at where our thoughts and feelings are arising from, and choose whether to be dominated by shame, or simply sit this one out.

If we don’t find satisfaction, tolerance and contentment, much less fulfillment, how can we be expected to afford the additional time and energy necessary for cultivating partnership behaviors?  How can we imagine the desire, much less cultivate the patience and afford the experimentation necessary for initiating and responding with partnership communication?

Alternatively, if we are waking up looking forward to the challenges and social interchanges ahead, if we are traveling to work in recognition that our transportation choices are closer to sustainable for our environment, if we enter the door smiling; that feel-good mentality offers something in addition to the health and wellbeing of working in an emotionally nurturing, satisfying environment.  Emotionally supportive environments tend to draw us out of fight or flight anxieties and reactivities, opening us up to more holistic, creative, motivated solutionmaking, designing, planning, task work and management.

While much has emerged about how urban environments can affect brain development and the emotional intelligence framework that underlies the partnership model, little of this information has been brought into our popular conceptions of physical community and the workplace.  Poverty has been found in a growing volume of research to correlate strongly with the likelihood of inhibited brain development.  Ongoing and intensive stressors such as out-of-work breadwinners, the uncertainties of food, shelter and clothing can contribute strongly to a family environment dominated by stress and the need for control, for venting.  Freeway pollution has been shown in a number of studies to correlate strongly as well with impoverished neighborhoods and inhibited brain development in children.  Inhibited brain development, especially the executive brain functions, mean less opportunity to cultivate emotional intelligence practices and neural pathways, and a greater tendency for fight or flight, reactive-defensive patterns to become established and strongly entrenched.

Studies of the brain too have offered much in terms of the potential—given a nurturing environment—for a stronger sense of fulfillment, happiness, satisfaction, compassion, and not least, performance.  Little of this evidence has been cross-networked into our mental frameworks for workplace organization, communication and productivity.  Partnership-oriented workplaces are ones that lay strong emotional foundations for the executive brain to function, the frontal part of the brain that develops late and develops last, and can be inhibited from growing at all when we are exposed to dominance-based, disciplinarian organized social surroundings, whether family, school, work or peers.

On the eve of the 40^th anniversary of Earth Day, recognition of the potential for partnership-based workplace relationships—which begin with our relationship to ourselves and our work—has never been more important for transforming society into a more sustainable era of co-habitation, from the ground up.

There are no guarantees that we will love every job we have, especially with current and future economic uncertainties.  Recession fallout, coupled with the addiction to growth that our dominant Capitalist economic system currently refuses to acknowledge as a grave threat to sustainability (much less surrender), make for greater difficulties in guaranteeing fulfillment and love for our work.  All the more reason to cultivate adaptability, foster remaining in the present moment when we are working through tasks, thank ourselves for a job well done, and recognize that our internal dialogue is as important in our transformation to sustainability as our interpersonal dialogue.