Transforming power
Last week the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, the world’s oldest and largest Islamist organization, a group that has been banned, off and on in Egypt since 1948, won 47 percent of seats in the lower house of parliament.
Which leads me to ponder a question that has always intrigued me: how does a political party, or an individual for that matter, make the transition in identity (and action) from a radical activist position, outside the mainstream, to the head of government?
Major political transitions are seldom considered to be psychological as well as political events, but how could they not be? The citizens of the former east bloc countries didn’t just wake up one morning with a democratic understanding, attitude and behavior. Growing up in a totalitarian regime results in a state of mind, a set of behaviors that doesn’t shift when government does. Being a member of a banned, radical extremist group to suddenly being the party in the seat of power is a profound shift in identity. Looking at history, the track record for making this transition is not good. Many radical parties entered through revolution and proceeded to jail, torture, ‘re-educate’ or assassinate opponents.
It takes people years to grow into their sense of power, to grow from a young adult dependent on others to being the one responsible for others. Companies grapple with this all the time. Someone is promoted from front line or factory floor into a management position but doesn’t or can’t fill those leadership shoes: they see their new staff still as colleagues, and react competitively with the people they are meant to develop. And this is true everywhere, not just in the business world: parents struggle with this, often failing to recognize their higher rank and resorting to yelling, screaming, even violence when provoked by their children. Teachers who feel insecure or who need their egos stroked are every student’s nightmare.
Sometimes that shift in identity never happens. I wrote about this phenomenon a few weeks ago, with Steve Jobs’ tendency to view Apple (and himself) as a radical outsider, even as Apple had dominant market share and was rated the most valuable company in America. And it seems to be the modus operandi for everyone who runs for public office, seeking to distance him or herself from “Washington” as the underdog/outsider/dark horse, etc.
Why is it so hard to make the shift from underdog or outsider to leader? Using power to fight against something and using power to create something are different skills entirely. Here are some of the challenges activists face in making that transition:
- Can you transform your ideological principles into collaborative leadership? In a low rank position, you haven’t had social or positional power, but a different kind of power: the power of justice, moral outrage, sense of history. Activists feel that they are on the right side of history (and in many cases, history proves them correct). This moral certitude is righteousness, and ultimately ideological. Being able to put the common good ahead of principles you’ve risked your life for is a major psychological transformation.
- Can you share the stage with your former opponents, jailers, or torturers? Can you put aside or work through the trauma or abuse you endured, the desire for revenge, and move forward with your former enemies? Can you identify with the role that your enemy occupied?
- Can you communicate your vision positively? The activist by definition, is against something. But she is also for something. And it’s so much harder to communicate what something is than to communicate what it is not. This is the source of the famous means vs. ends problem: it’s harder to embody what we believe than to criticize what we’re against. So we don’t always model what we are for, but it’s opposite. bell hooks called this praxis, the art of walking your talk, living your political beliefs and theories in your own personal life.
These are questions for everyone to ponder who steps into a leadership role, not just activists.
I love the things you ponder out loud
. I wonder if those who truly transform power from a place of integrated sense of fight and creativity, are the one’s who, historically, have not lived long. That in sitting with the truth and then embodying it, while both recognizing from the inside what it is like to be the underdog and therefore an outsider and then transforming it to being more connected to what unifies us, is just too advanced for us humans? That’s so bleak isn’t it? There aren’t many who have lived that I can name. But there are sure a lot of writers who invision such a person. And it is and does require a huge pschological transformation. I think of how we are taught by are parents in both an intentional and unintentional way. Some of us are lucky and get a lot of good things. Some realize, woh, I want to do it differently, and just personal growth requires so much effort. How does someone who is working to change a culture integrate so much of all these conflicting aspects and truly be able to represent within and then lead outwardly from such an embodied place and position?
Well, I suppose I am answering a question with a question. I think the word within your piece, collaborative catches my attention. In order to collaborate, we have to be able to conflict with others and stay with it, to integrate all the positions. There is my toe in the water for such a big, beckoning questions.
Mary
Thanks for the pondering, Mary. I think at the root is the question of effectiveness. And to be honest, integrating all the parts and being able to embody both sides is one kind of change agent. but so is deciding the bigger impact is to die for a cause. Looking back through history, change has not always happened non-violently. I’m not advocating that, but it’s impossible to know if some changes would have happened without a fight.
Are you familiar with Jonathan Haidt? He wrote The Bright Future of Post-Partisan Social Psychology. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt11/haidt11_index.html
Bill Moyers was interviewing on his show, Moyers and Company. He was talking a lot about “sacralizing” one thing, which demonizes another. It sounds like Jungian psychology and it sounds like what you are talking about. In his own way, he too was suggesting, that when we demonize something we are blinded to that within ourselves, or in this case, within the political party we are associating with. Bill Moyers than showed a great clip of Gnewt Gingrich post humously putting down this man,as a part of his campaign spin, and then in another clip how Gingrich was saying the same think as this man, I believe his last name was Alinsky and that he was a significat activist in helping poor people.
I realize in my last post that I was being very skeptical of “walking your talk” as possible. Yet, I see somebody like Bill Moyers, with his power doing it.
I just know how hard it can be for me and I am not even playing with the level of power that you are speaking of.
You might enjoy Haidt’s work.
Love,
Mary
You’re thinking of Sal Alinsky, great social organizer and activist for social justice. I have heard of Haidt’s work, and will check out that interview with Bill Moyers, thanks Mary.