Reflections on the Glass Ceiling

It's been some time since I posted here.  Much has happened worthy of comment, but I've felt no real desire to do so.  Call it a kind of disgust at worst, resignation at best.  Despite the fact that the presidential contest has become more interesting, I remain baffled by the fact that the Republican candidate remains popular with many of the voters here in God's Favorite Country.  It's a testament to the fact that a liar--not just any liar but a kind of titan or demi-god of lying, though the argument can be made that he's simply vastly deluded--can capture the hearts and minds of people who are citizens of our Great Republic. It doesn't speak well for us.

But I feel inclined to comment on the metaphor of the "Glass Ceiling" normally used to refer to a sort of invisible barrier which, wrongly, prevents certain people from achieving a higher place in the hierarchy in question.  More specifically, it refers to that barrier which will, presumably, be demolished if a woman is elected president of our Glorious Union.

The fabled Glass Ceiling figured in an earlier presidential election, as we all recall.  If I remember correctly a representation of it was on display, ready to be broken, at the campaign headquarters of Hilary Clinton on election night in 2016.  But while it seems her victory was anticipated, it remained unbroken.  Too much was taken for granted.

We males have historically been confused in our understanding of women generally, but especially in particular where politics and positions or events of importance are concerned.  It's interesting to consider whether our conception of them is most unrealistic and inaccurate when we become consumed by the belief that they are either inferior or superior to men; either better or worse than men.

If a Glass Ceiling exists preventing them from obtaining positions of power or importance, one would think it does because they're considered inferior in certain respects; or at least lacking in certain respects or by nature unable to be adequately concerned with certain matters.  But a Glass Ceiling also may be a barrier even when they're considered superior to men.

They have been considered superior to or better than men throughout our history in specific ways.  Most obviously they've been so thought of with respect to raising children and minding a home.  For a very long time that was considered to be their place in life, an obvious inference some thought from the fact that women, not men, bear children.  That view in itself would be sufficient to create a Glass Ceiling.

They've also been considered superior throughout our history, again in other specific ways.

Sometimes, this conception of superiority is expressed by implication, sometimes expressly.  Boethius, for example, portrayed Philosophy (capital "p") as a woman, come to chide him for his weakness when a captive of Theodoric the Great.  She recalled him to Philosophy, and the knowledge that success, fame, fortune, persecution and death were trivial things, like life on Earth in general.  She was the incarnation of Philosophy, the best of us, in his Consolation of Philosophy which he wrote while imprisoned.  It's to be hoped she provided him some consolation while he was bludgeoned to death by his captors.

Dante in his Divine Comedy was guided by the pagan Virgil through Hell and Purgatory, but of course a pagan could not enter the kingdom of heaven and so the woman, or spirit of a woman, named Beatrice was his guide in Paradise.  Beatrice may or may not have been based on the woman, also named Beatrice, Dante loved in a courtly fashion--which is to say not physically.  In any event she served to represent religious faith, grace, enlightenment and love as portrayed in this work, a higher being than Dante himself, and men in general.

Then there is Goethe, who ended his Faust with an idealized woman redeeming the protagonist, and the words "Eternal Woman (or the Eternal Feminine) draws us upward." (Das Ewig-Weibliche ziet uns hinan).  Woman is in a sense nobler, more attuned to God, wiser, more spiritual than man; a kind of goddess.  This is Goethe's Faust; Christopher Marlow in his Doctor Faustus ended his play by having him dragged down to Hell where he damn well belonged.

But this perception of women as better...sometimes much better...then men also serves to bar her from earthly affairs such as politics and business and the professions because she's JUST TOO GOOD.  A woman cannot bear with or make decisions regarding the matters and people which and who must be dealt with, let alone serve as a commander in war.  Hence women are precious, to be protected, put on the proverbial pedestal.

So the Glass Ceiling where women are concerned is the result of conceiving of them as both superior and inferior to men.  Kipling of course took a different approach.  He famously wrote that the female of the species is more deadly than the male.  This interesting view seems to be based on a portrayal of women as reckless and even fanatic in some respects and in some manner, related primarily to the protection of the family.  But again, this would disqualify women from reasonably making decisions that must be made in the world of affairs.

Perhaps we're just too enamored with categorizing in our thinking.  Perhaps this tendency is a kind of bequest to posterity by Aristotle, that Relentless Categorizer.  That hinders us in our acceptance of possibilities.  The Glass Ceiling may be broken if we can recognize each other as humans, far more alike than different.

The Other Man of Steel

"Stalin" was a name chosen in the days before the so-called October Revolution; so-called as it actually took place in November according to the modern calendar subsequently adopted.  It means "steel", as all or most now know.  I suppose that makes him the first Man of Steel.  The other one, a/k/a "Superman", was created in 1933 according to the invaluable Wikipedia--by high school students in Cleveland.

Stalin was, once, something like a high school student himself.  He was once other things as well, before he became Stalin.   He wrote romantic poetry in his native Georgian about his native Georgia, which it seems was considered rather good (the poetry, I mean).  A romantic boy he may have been. He was not a romantic man, however.  He was once a Georgian patriot, and came to be against Georgian nationalism, indeed nationalism of all kinds which endangered the unity of the Soviet Union. In fact, he came to extol Russians over the members of other nationalities subsumed by the Soviet Union.  He was a seminarian who came to believe in God, if he did believe in God, as something no seminarian would recognize as God.

Whatever he was, he came to be a monster, though not a mere monster as sometimes maintained.  He was often underestimated by Lenin, by Trotsky and others in the party and out of it, it seems to their regret.  He survived them all.  Sometimes he survived them by being responsible for their deaths, sometimes their imprisonment in the Gulag, sometimes he simply rendered them harmless or made them puppets of his will.  He never forgot a sleight and rejoiced in destroying those who thought him a lesser man or lesser intellect. 

Lenin was a special case.  Stalin wouldn't hesitate to disagree with him even while he was alive.  Lenin even criticized Stalin and warned that he was inclined to accumulate power, but he criticized Stalin's great rival and enemy, Trotsky as well.  It seems Stalin admired and respected Lenin in some ways, but in any case knew that he had become a totem of Marxism, the Revolution and  Bolshevism and in that respect could not be challenged.  Lenin also conveniently died in the 1920s, while Stalin was on the rise but not yet claiming the summit of power.

All  evidence indicates that Stalin was a highly intelligent man, and I think we underestimate him still by thinking him to be "only" evil.  We tend to attribute evil to the Devil, or upbringing and environment, or psychological deficiencies.  But people do evil things not just because they're bad, or immoral, due to some inherent defect or by being influenced by a malevolent supernatural power. 

Stalin was even cultured, in his own peculiar way and patronized certain writers, again in his own peculiar way, rebuking them when he thought appropriate.  He was not known as a great political thinker, but he read extensively.  He worked very hard.  He was a very able negotiator, as became known to the Western powers during and after the Second World War.

It's an amusing exercise to compare great tyrants and despots.  Napoleon had his own romantic youth, and was an ardent Corsican patriot, but turned away from such childish things.  Corsica became as unimportant to him as Georgia became to Stalin.  Napoleon had no artistic pretensions, so far as I know, though like Stalin he had his favorite artists.  He was an enormously hard worker and read constantly.  He had a vast memory and formidable intellect.  Goethe famously said Napoleon was as intelligent as a man could be without wisdom, and as great as a man can be without virtue. 

Hitler was a failed artist, but it seems he differed from Stalin and Napoleon in various respects.  He wasn't a hard worker, and may be called lazy in comparison.  His intellect doesn't seem to have been impressive.  And yet he's credited by such as B.H. Liddell-Hart with insight into military tactics and as being behind the Blitzkrieg and an astute proponent of the "indirect approach" to strategy, for a time, at least.  Before his descent into madness or drug-induced irrationality and mania.

All three men were alike in their ruthlessness, though, in pursuit of their goals.  That much seems clear.  The ruthlessness of Stalin and Hitler is particularly striking and horrifying because in pursuing their goals they sanctioned the deliberate and coldly planned death of millions.  Napoleon's wars caused a great deal of death and suffering as well, but Stalin and Hitler inflicted death not merely in war, but even more in the pursuit of ideological ends.

There is a difference, I think, between war and the planned annihilation of millions apart from war to achieve ideological or other ends.  Stalin was responsible for the deaths of millions through starvation and by other means in the effort to modernize industry and collectivize agricultural production in the Soviet Union.  He was responsible for the deaths, incarceration, persecution of peasants, kulaks, Cossacks, professionals and intelligentsia, all of which he deemed necessary under Marxist-Leninist theory.  It seems evident that he sincerely believed what he did was required in order to make the Soviet Union a great power and in the pursuit of the goals of the October Revolution.  While he was a vengeful man, it's not the case that he killed only because of personal hate or animosity or to achieve absolute power.

The fanatical pursuit of ideological goals regardless of consequences to others is far more destructive than hate or ambition, particularly where fanaticism is combined with ability.  Stalin was a fanatic and a talented one.  There's no doubt that he hated many within the party and wanted absolute power over it and the Soviet Union itself but he is truly monstrous because he was a true believer, and as such he thought that those who didn't believe as he did should be destroyed.