Feeling Degraded

Feeling Degraded?

Written in Montenegro, in 2009

Yesterday I wandered into a store to have a look around. I saw two employees standing near the door. I asked if they spoke English. The younger one smiled and said enthusiastically, "Yes, I do!" The age difference between the two was approximately that of mother and daughter. This is common here in Montenegro. The younger generation often does speak English, and often very well, (but it usually depends on their desire to learn it, since not everyone who goes to the same classes speaks it equally well.)

I looked at a few of the things, and chatted with the younger person. I will call her the "subordinate", which basically means she takes orders from the older one. I think I learned this word, or at least first saw it being used in practice, when I worked in a factory in Ohio and they talked about "insubordination", in other words, not doing what you were told to do by your boss. The punishment for this was immediate suspension, without pay. (This was even agreed to by the labor union who negotiated the contracts between the workers and the management.)

As a little more background for the rest of this story, when I started to speak to the "subordinate" in the shop, I asked her if the other woman was her boss. She said "no," and that her boss wasn't there. I have learned that many employees or subordinates are afraid to spend much time talking to me if their boss is around, so I often check before asking a lot of questions, since I don't want to get them in trouble. Here in Montenegro I find some of the employees doing very low paying work can speak English surprisingly well and are very happy, even excited, to have a chance to practice it with an American. If I see that they can speak it well, I often ask them if they like English and they almost always answer with a smile that they do. (I then will often ask them a question about their language, so I can learn a little day by day.)

Since I have been looking for a corkscrew (because some hostel guests and some friends have brought wine here, just in case you might be thinking I have turned into a wine-drinking alcoholic as a result of trying to do the impossible alone for all these years...) I asked her if they had one. She looked around a bit and then asked the older woman. Next we walked to the back of the store to search some more. I followed her and she found one, but it was very expensive, something like 20 or 30 euros. It came from Germany and I made a comment like, "That figures, the Germans have enough money to waste on something so needlessly expensive." She seemed to agree. Then I asked her about something else I needed for the hostel -- a pillow case. I had to explain to her what a pillow case was and then I tried to pronounce the word in Serbian (or Montenegrin, whichever you want to call what they speak here).

About that time, the older woman came to find us and said something to the subordinate. The subordinate quickly left me and went up to the front of the store. I wondered if the older woman really needed her, but tried to give her the benefit of the doubt and assumed she probably had to take care of another customer or something. I expected her to come back to help me some more when she was finished but after what seemed to be a long time, I decided she wasn't coming back. At that point I felt even more suspicious that the older woman had disapproved of her speaking to me... in English, which the older one didn't understand... and spending what was to the older one an unacceptable amount of time with me, and even worse, perhaps, doing all this out of her sight.

My suspicions were confirmed when I walked to the front of the store to see the subordinate mopping the floor, a floor which didn't look at all dirty! The older one was standing there watching over her in a way that reminded me of the prison guards watching over Nelson Mandela in South Africa as he broke rocks in the hot sun. And it reminds me also of a story I heard, I think from someone in Denmark, who had to serve time in the army there. He said they would make the young people, who were legally forced to spend something like one year in the army, dig holes, only to fill them up with dirt again. If they disobeyed, they would be punished. But when it was almost the end of the required time doing this kind of degrading, dehumanizing "work", he finally told his "boss" to dig it himself! Then he put the shovel down and walked away. By this point the "boss" knew there wasn't much point in punishing him anymore so he let him go.

I wonder now whether the subordinate, who is a law student, and who is interested in human rights, felt similarly degraded. I also wonder how the "boss" or at least authority figure in this situation, felt as she watched the student and I talk, and then as she stood over her, watching her mop the floor.

I remembered what I had read the other day from a website about Abraham Maslow. It said something like "well adjusted slaves make good employees. They are obedient and fearful." I will get the exact quote when I go online. Now I am writing this offline in notepad and I will transfer it later. It is now four thirty in the morning, just for the record. This is one of the many things which was on my mind when I woke up about an hour ago.

EQI.org Home Page

Other EQI.org Topics:

Search EQI.org | Support EQI.org

Online Consulting, Counseling Coaching from EQI.org

I found this article when I did this search

well adjusted slaves fearful obedient

http://www.anxietyculture.com/sadism.htm

In the article there is this which fits Montenegro perfectly:

The post-Freudian psychologist Wilhelm Reich claimed that sexual repression and the “authoritarian family” style of child-rearing are responsible for the perpetuation of what he called “patriarchal society.” Reich traced sexually-repressive child-rearing back to the beginning of hierarchical ruler-and-slave society. For example, it was not in the interests of the ruling families – the chiefs, royals, lords, barons etc – to have their children “promiscuously” reproducing with persons of lower social status. Tight control of child/adolescent sexuality was in the economic and power interests of the rulers (eg via fixed marriages and dowries). And, as usual, the priests served their masters – the church instituted various strict morals and taboos, putting a “divine” slant on all this control and repression of sex.

Reich’s psychological theory is fairly complex, but in a nutshell it claims that the strict authoritarian repression of natural childhood desires leads to an inhibited character structure which is obedient, docile and fearful of authority. To quote Reich:

“[this] has a crippling effect on man’s rebellious forces because every vital life-impulse is now burdened with severe fear... in short, morality’s aim is to produce acquiescent subjects who, despite distress and humiliation, are adjusted to the authoritarian order. Thus, the family is the authoritarian state in miniature.”

More about Reich

http://www.orgonelab.org/wrhistory.htm

http://www.sonoma.edu/users/d/daniels/syllabus201A_F08.html