Which one is more fundamental to flourishing?

Readership: All
Theme: Culture
Author’s Note: This post explores comments from RPA and LastHoldOut, and adds some insights taken from an email exchange between Jack, Oscar, and Red Pill Apostle on 2023/7/27.
Length: 1,600 words
Reading Time: 9 minutes

Introduction

A previous post, Overcompensation of Roles in Relationships without Roles (2024/2/12), examined the correlations between Egalitarianism, Individualism, and Masculinity.  The conclusions posited the following questions:

  1. Is a low Power Distance a necessary condition for Individualism?  Or, is Individualism fundamentally opposed to Hierarchy?
  2. Could Biblical Headship fit this description?

This post will offer three case studies for our discussion that are intended to help readers reach a conclusion.

Case Study 1 — Faith Comes by Hearing

When my daughters were younger, they were prone to insecurity and quarreling.  Whenever they were fighting over the availability of household items, conflicting personal schedules, and such, I’d start talking about the situation, lay out a few options, and push them to compromise, make a decision, and cooperate, such that they could both get what they wanted.  This always got them thinking like a family or a team.  I noticed that sometimes they didn’t even understand what I was talking about, but the sound of my voice rambling on about concepts that were esoteric (to them) was enough to humble them, calm them down, give them a sense of security, and cause them to introspect and reassess their state.

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Observing this response from my daughters made me more aware of how I am like this with God, and it helped me recognize His voice more easily.  It also improved my teaching skills.  I learned that whenever I lose my notes or my train of thought during a lecture if I just roll with it and keep talking about something, anything really, then students remain attentive, engaged, and thoughtful.

Case Study 2 — Jack and Jill

My wife is high in trait anxiety, and she’s also the type of personality who likes to have things planned and scheduled in advance (ESTJ).  So at those times when schedules are hectic, important matters are unsettled, and/or urgent unforeseen events occur, she gets bossy, contentious, demanding, and gritchy.  However, if I lay out a plan of action, give her some directions, speak in an affirmative commanding voice, and stay busy working on something relevant to the situation, she’ll calm down and become less of a termagant.  I’ve learned that I have to be careful not to respond when she is demanding a response because this comes across as me answering to her as a superior and thus tends to invert the structure of authority.  I’ve also developed a habit of not responding to her when she yells about something from another room or speaks disrespectfully to me.  Instead, I’ll only respond to her when she comes to me to ask, and she does so in a polite manner.  If she continues to insist on being a brat, then I’ll confront her and talk about something important to her (e.g. goals, plans, schedules), and point out how her attitudes and behaviors are unconstructive and are slowing us down.  At those moments, she’ll usually try to avoid a direct engagement with me, but nevertheless, my words and attitude still affect her.  It doesn’t usually have an immediate effect on her behavior, but she will correct her attitude by the next day.

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Case Study 3 — Wifely Submission is Liberating to both Husband and Wife

A long-time married female reader wrote me an email in response to LastHoldOut’s observation.  She says,

“I have observed this in my own marriage.  My husband tends to have a soft no and a hard no.  Soft no — Translation: “I do not care for it but I do not mind it either.”  Hard no — Translation: “It is a firm NO.  If you ask me again I will NOT be pleased.”  With a hard no, I do not even bother.  With a soft no, if I try to be angry, demanding, or use the silent treatment, then a soft no DEFINITELY becomes a hard no.  But, if I am very sweet, put on “puppy dog” eyes and say “pretty please” very nicely, then there’s a very good chance for his soft no to become a yes.”

“I think this is because “pretty please” still recognizes my husband as my “authority”.  Even if he changes his mind he is still the one in charge.  So he is more likely to be “indulgent”.  But contentiousness seeks to usurp that authority which is why that route brings out the “nasty” because he sees that as a direct challenge to his authority and so he feels like he has to “double down” to show he is the one in charge which he innately knows is the natural order of things.  He is trying to restore the “authority” back to where it should be — with him.”

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RPA pointed out that her description reveals the dynamics that bring out the differences between the sexes, saying…

  1. We didn’t need another case study illustrating how women manipulate, but we got one.  The explanation of how her marriage operates is one more example of how women’s power exists in femininity, softness, and meekness.
  2. Her idea that her husband has to show his authority or restore his authority is telling of how women see men.  Maybe she does not see the difference between control and authority.  The reality is that the husband’s authority exists outside of a wife’s attempts to usurp it.  God gave it to husbands which means the interactions are more of an exercise of authority than a defense of it.
  3. The doubling down, for me at least, is not a “restoration of authority”, as she put it, but just an expression of the annoyance of dealing with a wife who is not voluntarily following God’s order once again and the headache that creates. There is little “showing” who’s in charge or “restoring” authority, only more work for the husband and less peace in the household because she did not readily and voluntarily go along with his decision.

Comparison to Headship

Going back to the question that was raised in the previous post, of why sex differences are more pronounced in low Power Distance / Egalitarian societies, if we contrast this against how men act in a Headship model, the reason the data is what it is becomes more apparent.

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In his post, When Two Worlds Collide (2023/7/17), Jack outlined four possible responses that a man can take in response to a woman who holds herself as an equal to him.

  1. He can treat her like a Friend.
  2. He can treat her like a Competitor.
  3. He can treat her as an Enemy.

In Biblical headship, husbands / fathers are responsible for their wives / children and are urged to be patient and cherish them.  When a woman recognizes a man as an authority over her, a man’s nature as a protector and a provider shines through thereby granting the woman the dignity, grace, and honor she desires.

Within the Headship paradigm, a respectful wife may be more bold in her interactions with her husband because she won’t come across as a competitor, or a challenge to be opposed and defeated.  The wife’s submission to him removes the competition inherent in egalitarianism by making what she wants a request rather than a demand and by adjusting / affirming his view of her as someone under his care rather than an opponent to be defeated.  And if she is a biblically submissive wife, his directions to her will generally be followed which arrests the husband’s instinct to compete.  There is nothing to defeat if she’s waiving the feminine flag of wifely compliance.

LastHoldOut made this dynamic clearer in writing,

“The inverse correlation between headship / submission and a man’s “competitive” tendencies toward his wife is hard-wired.  The church!ans interpret his competitiveness as the man being self-centered and heavy-handed and it never dawns on them that the woman is not holding her biblical role.  The competitive element is not there in the case of a marriage where the woman wholeheartedly submits.  There is peace and love.”

Moreover, Headship gives a married couple the authority structure within which they can relax and have a little more give and take.  Biblical Headship permits men to be masculine and women to be feminine.

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Conclusions

To answer the questions raised in the introduction, the tentative* conclusions are as follows.

  1. Individualism is NOT fundamentally opposed to hierarchy as long as the hierarchy is dutifully observed.
  2. Biblical Headship permits more Individualism in the form of personal expression and liberty.  In fact, this may be the reason why Christian cultures are more Individualistic.

As time goes on, Western societies have slowly moved away from the recognition of male authority, and there has been more intersexual competition, contention, and strife as a result.  Apparently, it is the structure of male authority (exhibited in Headship) that has contributed to the flourishing success of Christian societies in the past, rather than Egalitarianism or Individualism (as opposed to Collectivism), as Maxwell presumed.

* I say ‘tentative’ because I am not yet fully convinced.  Opposing viewpoints are contained in the writings linked below.  Readers are invited to discuss the differences in perspective. One point of interest concerns whether or not, and how well the case studies offered above can represent a larger community or culture.

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