So, I was giving myself a psychological exam, in my head (translating thoughts into questions posed by an analyst), and I realized that, I differ from most people in yet another key manner: I don’t think of any source of authority with regard to myself. I feel no subordination to anyone or anything.
For a while, when I had a job, I thought of having a duty, but I never felt subordination to my boss. My religion involves a horizontal, rather than a vertical, sense of hierarchy. I don’t feel subordinate to the clergy. I certainly don’t think of myself as politically subordinate to anyone. The idea of having a “leader”, to me, is nuts. And of course I’m not a neo-fascist spouting off about a “commander in chief” – as though civilians had commanders, or as though military titles carried weight among civilians. In point of fact, the military is subordinate to the civilian powers, not vice versa.
I remember the fundamentalists always talking of “authority”. Always the lingo of fascism – always referring to “the leadership” or “headship” or being “under authority”. Who wants any of those things? Fearful little Mussolini’s perhaps, but not I. Nope – if a tendency to situate oneself as part of a vertical hierarchy of authority were a gene, I was born without it. No wonder I used to get so much flack as a young man over it. It’s one thing for a mature gentleman to feel no subjugation to anything – we can excuse that as eccentricity. But for a young man to demonstrate a complete lack of subordination, we think it abominable.
Yet another Asher characteristic. No sense of submission to anything at all. Nice to know.
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