In this episode we explore a bit more about the drivers behind paediarchy, ‘rule by, for or on behalf of the most childish’…
All the way throughout history, we’ve been plagued by self-declared ‘rulers’ like this:
You’ll recognise them by their gaudy grandiosity, their bombastic blather, and their relentless bullying and belittling of others. You’ll usually see them surrounded by their enablers, their followers, their cult. And everywhere they go, everything they touch, they cause enormous damage, to everyone - sometimes right around the world:
The writer Ruth Ben-Ghiat, in her book ‘Strongmen: Mussolini to the present’, seems to make out that it’s solely a male problem - yet sadly we’ve suffered all too many of the female version too. One of the more infamous examples would be England’s self-styled ‘Good Queen Bess’, Queen Elizabeth I:
And we see them not just in politics and the like, but in business, in schools, in music, or just about anywhere. Again, both women and men. The ‘ruthless and cynical’ fashion-editor Miranda Priestly, the brutal antagonist of the book and film ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, was nominally-fictional, yes - yet in reality the character was drawn directly from the bullying behaviours inflicted on everyone in an entire organisation by an actual real-world person.
A more personal example, too: a century or so ago, one of my ancestors started out his career as a veterinarian, diverged into dentistry, then slipped sideways into psychiatry so that he could bully the city council into giving him unquestioned control of the city’s asylum. He then ran the place as his private fiefdom, treating everyone like animals, and, on the basis of his own untested, imaginary theory that mental illness was caused solely by sepsis, removed the tonsils and teeth from all of the patients in his so-called care. He destroyed hundreds, maybe thousands of lives that way - and yet seemingly no-one in the city had any authority to stop him.
People like these will present themselves as strong, powerful, virile, ‘in control’ and more; they’ll assert that they alone have the right to lead, the right to rule - indeed, that by their very nature, they are entitled to rule over all others. And yet, in reality, well-concealed beneath the surface, what’s actually going on would look a lot more like this:
Sure, on the surface, it’s big, tough, loud, strong and all the rest. Yet behind the façade, what’s actually there is nothing more than a covert crybaby, truly terrified that anyone else might ever find out that that’s all they are.
Yeah, we’re back to paediarchy again, aren’t we? - ‘rule by, for and on behalf of the most childish’. But in this kind of case, rule by a really dangerous child-in-adult-form. Not A Good Idea…
Remember, these are people who’ll seem to present as full-blown adults, yet whose emotional development, for various reasons - sometimes by trauma, sometimes by choice - has stalled at around two to three years old. That means that they’re as strong as an adult, as intelligent as an adult, as skilled in certain ways as an adult, yet also every bit as scared, vindictive, vengeful, manipulative, possessive, violent, abusive, selfish and self-centred, callous, careless and prone to rage and temper-tantrums as the worst of the ‘Terrible Twos’. And on top of that, but again driven by the life-long two-year-old, you’re also likely to get the very worst of the adult: the same manipulativeness, vindictiveness and inability to forgive even the smallest slight, now taken to the absolute extreme - and also, all too often, an absolute mastery of the old Game of ‘let’s you and him fight’.
None of these are characteristics that we can safely ignore… because if we do ignore them, and let them run rampant, unchecked in any way, then lives will be destroyed. Sometimes very large numbers of lives. All too often, these covert-crybabies are literally deadly - particularly for everyone else…
Let’s take the real example of Elizabeth 1, at the time of the threatened invasion by the Spanish Armada in 1588. Arriving at Tilbury, adorned in a silver breastplate over a white velvet dress, she presents herself as the grand leader of her troops, and gives them all a rousing speech:
I assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people ... I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a King of England too…
She exhorts them to fight on, fight on, to fight for her and for the country that she alone possesses, and that she will be with them always at the very front of the fray. Yet as soon as the event is over, she immediately runs away into hiding, somewhere out in the back-end of the country, without telling anyone where she’s gone. And then later, only once the battle is over and the danger past, she pops out again, returns to London, declares that she alone is the cause of the victory, and orders a grand celebration in her name at St Paul’s Cathedral. But the sailors who fought the actual battle, who saved her life and her realm, does she share the victory with them, accord them the honours too? Of course not! - instead she ordered the ships to be left tied up in the middle of the Thames, without any supplies or other support, and where their entire crews quietly starved to death.
People like Elizabeth I are trapped in that insanely self-centred state for their entire lives. Even with all their stolen glitz and stolen glamour, they can never be truly happy, they will never feel safe, they will never have enough. They feel driven, always, always, to demand more, and more, and more: they have no choice in that. They have no capacity for compassion, nor pity - both of these are literally beyond their comprehension, because they never reached that stage of human development that would otherwise be normal for everyone else.
True, we can do something that they cannot, for we can, and probably should, have compassion for their cruel fate. Yet we also need to be cautious around them, at every moment, and actively guard against any risk and rise of paediarchy, rule by, for or on behalf of these childish-ones - for there is huge, huge danger here.
The diagnostic indicators for this state are well-known, well-documented, well-understood - yet so also is the inevitable prognosis that follows on from that. Never underestimate how dangerous these people really are; never let them weasel their way into any position of control over others, at even the lowest possible level. They may at first seem cute, convincing, charismatic: yet once they achieve any kind of command over others' lives, they literally cannot stop wanting more, and more, and more.
Do not doubt this: whether metaphorically or literally, these covert-crybabies will kill (or, more usually, get their cult to do it for them…). And if they’re embedded deeply enough in a paediarchy that panders to their will and leaves their behaviour unchecked, they’re all too likely to do just that. Right now there’s one who’s so far gone in this that he is literally threatening to kill everyone in the entire world if he doesn’t get his way. We need to put an end to to this literally childish madness, and also put an end to paediarchies that protect and promote it, in every possible way, as quickly and permanently as we possibly can. Well, assuming, that is, that we still have some thin chance to survive this current crybaby’s mindless mess…
Great note Tom, and I have people I can add to the list too :) from your low footprint managers to the ones that screw the lives of many millions. Thank you :)