“You’re getting a detention for that,” were the scariest words we could hear between fifth grade and eighth grade. To avoid hearing that from a teacher, the principle, or any of the other authority figures who stalked the halls of my school, I walked straight lines, stood as straight as I could, and I didn’t respond to neighbors who whispered something funny that required a rejoinder. We were not only scared, we were terrified to the point of anxiety attacks when the teacher would give us the pre-detention eyeball. 

A detention required us to spend one half-hour after school. Thirty minutes. You might think that serving a mere thirty minutes after school would lead an overwhelming majority of us to think, “Hey, that wasn’t so bad after all.” No, it was so terrifying that some of us had nightmares about being caught in the act, the teacher writing out the detention, and the din of silence that followed with everyone staring, looking away, and staring again. Thinking back, it’s almost funny to think how powerful the culture of fear was, but we all knew it, and we all participated in it in our own individual ways. 

The tradition of forcing a student to stay after school, as a punishment for bad behavior was not new, or unique, to us. This punishment has probably been handed out for hundreds of years, the world over. It was also not unusual for us to fear getting in trouble in grade school, nor was it unprecedented that the kids in my grade school were absolutely terrified. This article isn’t about the silly effort of trying to suggest that our experience in grade school was worse than yours, better, or any different. We’re far more interested in the culture of fear that some institutions, such as my grade school, instituted to modify behavior.    

As scary as our principal was, and Mary Jane Meyer (aka Mrs. Meyer) was as scary, and as angry, as any individual I’ve met in all the decades sense. You might suggest that she thought she had to be to keep the hundreds of grade-school-aged kids in line.

“And if you just happened to catch her tending to her garden on some sunny day, she was probably a sweet, elderly woman.”

I just can’t picture it. I can’t picture her being gracious, warm, or even smiling. I’m sure she was quite pleasant to certain people, but I can’t picture it, and I don’t think any of my fellow students who attended this grade school during her reign of terror could either.  

Mrs. Meyer provided us a more tangible fear of God, and she was the wizard behind the curtain who orchestrated the culture of fear we knew. If we messed around in class, our teacher might scold us. If that wasn’t enough, she could threaten and/or give us a detention. That was enough for an overwhelming majority of us, but there were a few, and aren’t there always a few, for whom that wasn’t enough. For them, there was the ever-present threat of being sent to Mrs. Meyer’s office. That was enough for just about everyone else.

As scary as she was, however, Mrs. Meyer couldn’t have created the level of fear we knew on her own. She delegated much of the responsibility to her teachers, but they couldn’t have terrified us to the degree that some of us had anxiety issues, and others had such horrible nightmares they couldn’t sleep at night. For that level of fear, the institution needed compliance, our compliance. It needed our participation, and our promulgation of the culture that suggested that getting a detention was the most awful thing that could ever happened to a human being. No matter what they did to establish this climate, it wouldn’t have been half as effective as it was if we didn’t participate and fortify it. We did that to ourselves.   

“Did you hear that Gretchen and Marla got detentions?” someone would say in conspiratorial whisper.

“No way! For what?” No matter what the conspiratorial whisperer said there, the gossip mill spun the threads out to ultimately characterize the alleged perpetrator as the most horrible person of the day, and they often had a difficult time recovering their reputation in the aftermath.

When we approached one of the pariahs to get their perspective on what happened, they usually broke down like a politician in the midst of a career-ending scandal. Some tried to maintain a strong façade, but most couldn’t. Their defense usually devolved to those scared, uncontrollable tears. We empathized, because we knew firsthand the idea that nothing this bad had ever happened to them before.

It was our fault that she felt that way, because when she’d walk down the aisle to receive her detention, she felt our eyes on her, and she heard our whispers. The minute she turned around, we’d turn away and go silent. When it came to defending herself against the mob, she’s lie, obfuscate, try to shift the blame, and try anything and everything she could to salvage her reputation. We empathized here too, because what else are you going to do? 

We did more damage to her than the teacher, the principal, or any of our other authority figures could to demonize her, the detention of the day. We did it to ourselves. We policed our own and promulgated the culture of fear that surrounded the detention.

The idea that we cultivated their culture of fear wasn’t apparent to me in the moment, of course, because I was too young to grasp such complicated concepts, but it was crystallized in the form of a transfer student named Billy Kifferly. I knew Billy Kifferly before he transferred to our school, he was a friend of a friend, so when he got a detention I was the emissary sent to find out what happened, and how he entered into our dominion of the damned.

I asked him about it in the most empathetic manner a ten-year-old could. “… And it’s fine if you don’t want to tell me …” I added. I was fully prepared for his tears and/or the anguish that followed, and I had my shoulder all ready for him to cry on.

Not only did Billy not cry, or show any signs of fear of remorse, he told me all of the damning details of his detention, as if … as if they didn’t really matter. He didn’t try to wriggle out of it, or spread the blame. He said, “I did it. It was all my fault and all that, but it’s a half hour, so, big deal, right? I could do that standing on my head.”

That put me back a step. I couldn’t understand how he could be so blasé about it. As his only friend and confidant, I wanted to say, ‘Billy, you don’t understand,’ but Billy’s reaction to it informed me that there was something larger going on here that I didn’t understand. I didn’t get the fact that he was more accustomed to getting in trouble, or failing to meet the standards. He just got expelled from his prior school, so on that scale, a detention, or a half-hour after school, was nothing to him. I also didn’t understand that I was not only a part of the institutional culture of fear, but a promulgator of it

“It’s just a half-hour,” he said, and he was right, but ‘It’s so much more than that’ I wanted to say. I couldn’t back that up though, because I was too young to understand the nature of authority, rebellion, and Billy’s far too mature definition of the system-is-a-farce reaction. I knew Billy was the rebel, on some complicated level, I knew I’d become the standard bearer for the status quo if I said anything further.  

By not fearing the institutional hierarchy, and the elements that propped it up, Billy essentially informed me that the whole system was a farce. “Why should I fear spending a half-hour after school so much?” was essentially what he said. I thought of instructing him in our ways, but I was too young to understand the nature of our ways, and I was also far too immature to understand that we weren’t just ceding to authority, we were contributing to it.  

***

We can now all laugh at this kid, I call me, now. We’re sophisticated adults now with a more sophisticated understanding of authority, rebellion, and the balance of the two that forms a foundation that helps maintain a system, but when we look back at our naïve, immature understandings of an authoritarian world, we laugh. While we’re laughing, we should also take a look at how we sophisticated adults not only cede authority to authority figures in our lives now, we contribute to the underpinnings of their authority?

We call certain individuals in our culture authoritative experts, and we allow them to dictate their facts and opinions in a manner that changes the direction of our lives. “Why?” we ask rhetorically, “because they are more informed.” Are they? “Sure, they use the scientific method to arrive at dispassionate theories based on empirical data.” We learn from their research that there is “there is no conclusive evidence” for what we see and hear. How can that be? “After exhaustive research, the team at (fill in the blank) has determined that there is no conclusive evidence to suggest that’s true.” We learn to accept what they say, until we develop a level of faith in their point of view, their expertise, and their authority on the issue. We learn to accept their values through their lens. Are they right? “They’re experts, what are you asking here?”

Analysts call the dynamic of subjects contributing to expert analysis and authoritative dictates the leadership mystique. We now have unspoken requirements of our leaders to which they must adhere. We require them to exhibit, display, and provide some semblance of leadership qualities to fortify the facade. What are these requirements? They vary, but anyone who knows anything about icebergs knows that 90% of an iceberg is underwater. It could be argued that we create 90% of the foundation of leadership mystique for us, and we contribute to it in our interactions with other, fellow subjects.

We see this at play in the workplace when someone everyone considered an oaf yesterday, receives a prominent promotion today, and we agree to their leadership qualities tomorrow, characteristics that we never saw previously. Our authority figures obviously saw something special in them, and that’s enough for us, for some of us, and the onus is on us to help others see, accept, and promulgate their authority tomorrow.

Coupled with our concessions and contributions to authority figures and their rules and punishments, is the inherent recognition that even if we disagree with all of the above, we can’t choose our leaders. We are subjects who are subjected to those who make the rules, and we don’t even know who to blame when those rules prove silly. We blame our supervisor for imposing a rule passed down by a manager; we blame the policeman for carrying out a silly law passed down by a state legislator or federal official. We blame the person who is in our face, enforcing the rules, because most of us don’t dig through the layers to find the person who is to blame for drawing up the rules/laws, and those who pass them. 

The United States citizen lives in a Representative Republic that permits us to choose those we deem our authority figures. Yet, how many of us choose a representative of what we want to be as opposed to who we are. An overwhelming majority of us live within our means, and we’re quiet, unassuming types. We’re more like the character actor who quietly assumes the characteristics necessary for a role, but we prefer to vote charismatic game show hosts types into office. That guy looks like someone who would be fun to hang around. If that’s our choice for a leader in a Representative Republic, who are we? Who do we deify and assign leadership qualities to satisfy our role in the leadership mystique? How many of us assign such qualities to the manager of our local Wendy’s? We don’t, we hold them accountable for producing an inferior product.

Most of us don’t condemn representatives we charge with voting the way we would or the manner in which they spend our money. We direct our ire at those who don’t pay enough in taxes instead. We police our own. The governments can levy fines, put liens on our property, and take away our freedom if they determine that we didn’t pay enough taxes, but they cannot convince us to condemn our neighbor as a pariah for not paying what we deem enough. That’s our job, and we relish it.    

This article is not about the rebels or the figures of authority in our lives, though those would be interesting pieces. It’s about us, and our amenable and compliant ways of helping authority figures establish and maintain a level of authority in our lives. It’s about ceding elements of our lives to authoritative experts who sit behind a type writer telling us how to live our lives, raise our children, and go silent when they need us to just be quiet. 

In grade school, we were little kids who were easy to manipulate and cajole into carrying out institutional planks, but how many adults aid in the culture of fear of government edicts on paying “enough” taxes? We’re not half as concerned when our government officials spend our money in foolish ways, as we are the CEO of a company not paying what we deem enough in taxes. We not only cede authority to government officials. We contribute to it by condemning our neighbor for not paying enough.

As someone who has been on both sides of the paradigm, on a very, very minor scale, one thing I recognized when given an relatively insignificant level of authority was that my level of authority was not recognized or appreciated by my fellow authoritative figures. As a huge Letterman fan in the 80s, I’ve always found some inspiration in his idea that he was a bit of a joke. You can be king of the world, and he was in his own little way, but you’re still that goofy kid from the Midwest who had some really stupid notions about the world. His influence led me to consider myself a bit of a joke, and I saw the joke in everyone around me too, especially those in leadership positions. Everyone enjoys hearing that what they’re doing is important and substantial, and they don’t mind laughing at themselves, but they do no enjoy hearing that they’re kind of a joke too. When I learned to control my comedic impulses, and I ceded to their authority, they began to appreciate and contribute to my comparatively meager mystique. 

“It’s called reciprocity,” a friend of mine said, “I scratch your back, you feed my need!”