The Authority Quadrant

Some years ago, in a blog titled The spine of patriarchy – lack of inner authority, I described a lack of personal authority as one of the building blocks of patriarchal society.

Patriarchy functions on the simple premise that personal authority is given over to group authority in the interests of collective prosperity. Humanity has become conditioned to functioning in this way through what I call the Patriarchal Operating System.

Those who thrive in such a system become leaders who wield immense power and enjoy immense benefits. These individuals continue to exercise self-authority while functioning within an authoritarian system. History shows that such power has been largely misused—hence the phrase, ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely.’

Doubt

But for many, patriarchy replaces self-authority with self-doubt and reinforces the doubt with unconscious shame. In that earlier blog I wrote:

Joseph E. Illick, Professor of History at California State University, writes in the essay Child-Rearing in Seventeenth Century England and America: “The attitude to be fostered in a child would have to be one of constantly questioning himself, making him feel inadequate, engendering self-doubt.”

In Childhood and Society, Erik Erikson dubs doubt “the brother of shame.”

This constant doubt surfaces in our lives as low self-belief, what’s colloquially known as a ‘lack of spine’. Patriarchy guaranteed the survival of your genetic line, your tribe, for thousands of years. Do you honestly think that you know enough to replace it?

And so we cling to our small lives, our small dreams; our anaesthetics—while the lumbering dinosaur of patriarchy inflicts its toll on the latest generation.

Understanding authority

Yet while most people plod along without ‘rocking the boat’ of patriarchy—which they may not even be aware they’re doing—as I mentioned above, not everyone is afflicted by a lack of authority.

Some people—despite obvious trauma, such as American president Donald Trump—rise to positions of great power and authority within existing patriarchal structures which they attempt to shape, often abusively, to their own ends.

Others have the confidence and self-authority to ‘plough their own furrow’, creating individual careers where they become their own masters.

Universal lack of authority, while widespread, is too simplistic an explanation.

My experience of resolving trauma is that we need the simplest possible explanation that allows our minds to make sense of the situation. If the explanation isn’t precise enough, we can’t fully unpick the mechanics of the situation. But if the explanation is too complex, we get pulled into our left brain, our feeling centre disconnects, and we can’t access the trauma—even though we may understand it more clearly.

The authority quadrant

Recent events have shown that my understanding of authority wasn’t precise enough. I now perceive it as a quadrant determined by our relationships with and acceptance of two forms of authority, internal and external.

Internal authority relates to our acceptance of our own authority. Its attributes are confidence, self-belief, vision, energy, drive.

External authority relates to our acceptance of the authority of others. Do we accept and trust the values, beliefs, and decisions of external authorities—our families, our employers, legal systems, religions, political parties.

Whether internal or external, trust is a huge factor in our relationship with authority. Based on the presence or absence of trust in childhood and trust patterns inherited from our parents, trauma can push people into any of these quadrants.

The quadrant quiz

These are not pigeonholes; the quadrant denotes a point determined by the crossing of the vertical axis (internal authority spectrum) and horizontal axis (external authority).

When people have a reasonably high value on either axis, they can build a life where they feel at home somewhere. Only the low-low combination (lower right-hand corner) leaves people feeling marginalised—the classic ‘black sheep’ or outsider. Every path seems closed to them, like the ‘Do not enter’ sign in the image above.

Which quadrant do you favour?

If you’re reading my blogs, you’re probably struggling with low values somewhere.

I’m, of course, in the low-low corner. Just like the Family Stability Index, where I score 0, I’m in the least functional category. Yet there’s always a flip side.

Evolution happens in the margins. Those who fit into the existing paradigm have little to gain by changing it. Those of us who are currently marginalised are those who will drive change and improvement for future generations.

Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash