Our time has come 

Lately everything sounds like it’s about pointy things, guns, rockets, or bullet points. 

Is it just me? I’m avoiding it all like the plague. We know how well that worked out.

It just seems like it’s all coming to a head, like the political arena is a place Freud might have pondered penis envy. Or, perhaps our power politics are just a great big Freudian slip in full swing? 

Presidents’ discussions resemble Peter Piper picking something, maybe a peck of pickled peppers, while getting pickled. Maureen Dowd, columnist for the NY Times, skewers with feisty delight many politicians. She juiced up her reporting in the book Are Men Necessary? There she tells us: enter at your own risk. She spoke to the reality that women keep getting the short end of the stick. 

That problem seems to be rising up again, if you’ll excuse the pun. Why does this topic have so much play on words? Guess it just comes with the territory. 

Females have fought long and hard for our freedom only to have abortion rights back on the chopping block. Don’t leaders have anything else to do with their time? 

NPR’s Terry Gross interviewed Dowd about the book, “Has feminism been defeated by narcissism?” 

Dowd snickered with her usual dry wit, adding that women have to get over Botox and get more engaged in government and changing our systems. Hey, we women aren’t perfect either. We females have also been habituated to a patriarchal system that teaches us to veer toward pleasing, anger, criticism, backstabbing, or being coy. 

Back to the main point: our politics are getting out of hand, oops, there we go again. But, seriously, Brian Klass, in his studies, asks why we continually end up with power hungry leaders. He’s studied how psychopaths often end up being heads of countries or organizations. Evidently, they’re drawn to it from anthropological instinct. 

He says in his book Corruptible that prehistoric societies needed physical prowess and strength, so the “big strong man” was instinctually the choice of command. The upshot of his research is that we still have that template in our brains! The caveman is ingrained in us, grunting and hunting. 

The solution? Design systems to more carefully evaluate and interview people in leadership, assessing them – systematically and thoroughly. Ya’ think mental health could be a criterion for the people we give our power over to? What a concept. It might have helped me with dating. 

Klass confronts us: “Are we to blame?” Why are we “drawn to people who want to abuse, conquer, and dominate rather than serve?” In times of crisis in the very distant past, it helped us survive to turn towards the loud male character. 

This narrative has failed us. We are too often separate egos competing in a meaningless, materialistic world, in societies that must grow or die. We are no longer cavemen grunting and thumping, but we’re acting like it. 

I vote for putting down pointed arguments, pillaging, and greed. Isn’t time up yet? 

Katy Byrne, MA, LMFT, licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in the Bay Area for over 35 years. Author, The Power of Being Heard. ConversationswithKaty.com. 707.548.8982