This phrase, common in magical philosophy and Pagan religion, can be traced back to a ninth-century Hermetic text called the Emerald Tablet. Attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, the text originally appeared in Arabic and was eventually translated into Latin in the Middle Ages.
Here’s the longer sentence the paraphrase is pulled from, courtesy of Wikipedia:
Quod est superius est sicut quod inferius, et quod inferius est sicut quod est superius. That which is above is like to that which is below, and that which is below is like to that which is above.
Rather than a mirror, the idea reminds me of a hologram, in which every part contains the entire image. Perhaps it’s part of my mystical bent, but I tend to see the multiverse in holographic terms: smaller systems reflect larger systems and vice versa.
A fair number of the long-form blog entries I have made in recent years come from the attempt to divine the nature of our society’s soul-sickness and what sparked that sickness. And yes, since I focused on ecofeminism in my doctoral dissertation, I run the risk of seeing hammers and nails – in this case, domination versus partnership structures – every place I look. So, please grab the salt-shaker whenever you feel the need.
Dominator societies – which are hierarchical, authoritarian and view violence as sacred – aren’t necessarily imposed on us from on-high, courtesy of a beribboned dictator or a church or a corporation. Just like a hologram, you can see the principles of domination in even the smallest social units – such as the family.
That’s right: authoritarianism begins in the home, with how we are raised, the cultural messages we receive as children, the systems we are socialized to consider as normal when they’re anything but.
A good practical explainer of how this works comes by way of Lindsay Gibson, the author of an unfortunately named but spectacular book called The Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. I’m not sure how I chanced upon it – I probably read an article by her somewhere and was intrigued by the concepts therein – but I am glad I did.
Yes, the book centers upon family dysfunction because Gibson is a clinical psychologist who specializes in dysfunctional families. But you don’t need a dysfunctional family to read this book or find value in it. Even if your family is absolutely perfect (and it probably isn’t, since every family has its “characters”), you will pause every few pages and say, “Hot damn, I know someone exactly like this.”
It may be a boss or coworker, a neighbor or long-time friend, or someone in your spiritual community. It may be the candidate for a major political party that took a drastic turn toward authoritarianism. Fact is: You know someone, probably a few someones – even more if you have a lax hand at setting personal boundaries.
If I were to rename Gibson’s book, it would be: Why People Act Like Assholes and How You Can Deal with That Without Driving Yourself Batshit.
The book pairs well with Gabor Maté’s The Myth of Normal, Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough and even Danya Ruttenberg’s On Repentence and Repair. After all, these assholes are the people who refuse to repent or repair, and expect others to just deal with it. You know: “I’m sorry that you feel that way” and “witch-hunt!”
Is assholishness a permanent condition? Nah, but it’s chronic
There’s a tendency these days to classify people’s maladaptive behavior as evidence of personality disorder, whether reactive hyper-emotionality (AKA “borderline”) or startling selfishness (“narcissism”). The problem? We tend to view personalities as immutable, which means the borderline or the narcissist or the co-dependent or whatever cannot and will not change.
But is that really true? Is personality cast in steel by our genetics or early childhood, and completely unalterable unless we’re physically tossed into a volcano? Is it, “Once an asshole, always an asshole”?
Assholish behaviors, whether selfish or chaotic, are typically forged from pain and a lack of appropriate behavior modeling earlier in life. But to view such behaviors as immutable personality traits means that people who have bad shit happen to them deserve to be exiled from the human race because there is no path back.
Sometimes, there isn’t: There may be a neurological basis behind some forms of psychopathy, which makes empathy cognitively impossible and thus erases the sufferer’s social mammaltude. Insults such as fetal alcohol syndrome can also predispose people to antisocial behavior. But the nature/nurture relationship behind even psychopathy isn’t so clear-cut when you consider the family systems, neighborhoods and overall societies that forge individuals.
In most cases, though, assholishness is a coping strategy – and a super-successful one. People on the business end of an asshole often find themselves walking on eggshells, which means they are carefully managing the other person’s emotions for them. Dysfunctional systems – families, workplaces, even entire societies – revolve around a monarch who must be placated at all costs and protected from the consequences of their own actions. We’ll call that person the rex, as a nod to my previous post about loyalty, because the rex insists on loyalty – even though they don’t offer any themselves.
Assholishness and/or narcissism is a dominance strategy. In other words, it’s a deliberate choice people are making to achieve personal goals. There’s an Internet author, counselor and former pastor named Sven Erlandson who reclassifies narcissists as “extreme takers,” which I think gets at the core of this behavior. Rather than the give-and-take of partnership, some people opt for one side of the equation and find a “giver” to meet all of their needs. (More on that in a minute.)
Why? With this strategy, some people have the “divine right of kings” to act however they will, while other people take on the consequences. That’s a sweet deal, isn’t it? It’s great to be king.
When I say that authoritarianism begins in the home, this is what I am pointing to: the mundane little dictatorships we encounter every day. Because we accept that these little dictatorships are “normal” and “just how the world works,” we find ourselves helpless when the big-D dictatorship comes along.
Every king needs a servant, or else he isn’t a king.
I detest the word “codependent” because I think it misses the mark. Instead, I think of it this way: If assholes are Erlandson’s “extreme takers,” then codependents are “extreme givers.” And just like personal pain, upbringing and societal values can turn a certain subset of people into extreme takers, the same constellation turns another cohort into extreme givers.
The rex needs the lex, in other words; you can’t have a king without a servant. Because they are socialized to view dominance/submission as normal in human relationships, the rex and the lex also tend to attract each other like magnets.
People who engage in dominant behavior, sadly, seem to live longer than the people who silently endure for reasons I gleaned from Gabor Maté’s book. Constant submission is incredibly stressful, and the body breaks down from the chemical soup of repressed emotion. If they’re not killed in battle or have alchemists whip up toxic concoctions in pursuit of eternal life, kings live better and longer than servants.
Which seems patently unfair, doesn’t it? But it makes a certain amount of sense.
In a society built on hierarchy and dominance, we are socialized early and often that some people (“the losers”) submit to others (“the killers,” to borrow terms from the Mary Trump book). Undoing this socialization takes a lot of work – and is arguably harder for the rex than the lex. After all, being a servant has a severe impact on the bodymind, potentially degrading health or even driving a person to suicide … whereas the kings enjoy their status as “winners,” if they’re able to find the lex to support them.
Don’t whisper to the assholes: They can’t hear you.
Can assholes change? Absolutely – but you’re not the one who will change them. I don’t care how compassionate or loving or understanding you are, dear lex: You are not the asshole whisperer.
When you stop being the asshole-whisperer, you may stand accused of being the asshole, but that’s part of the strategy. It’s frightening for a king to be deposed, so they’ll try to forestall that in any way they can. Don’t be phased.
It doesn’t matter how expertly you walk on eggshells or fulfill the monarch’s desires before they voice them. It doesn’t matter how much love or friendship or loyalty or gratitude you show, how tough and uncomplaining you prove yourself to be, how many hits you take for the team.
Because it ain’t about you.
You can argue that assholes are doing their best, given the weight of their suffering. You can argue that they’re evil. The truth is somewhere in between: They rely on tried-and-true strategies of dominance because those strategies have worked and continue to work. Once those strategies stop working, however, that introduces the possibility of change. Not change itself, mind you: just the possibility.
An asshole may need to lose their marriage, business or relationship with their kids, their friendships and community. They may need to end up alone or even in jail. If this sounds like being “canceled,” that’s because cancellation is a new term for an ancient correction.
Nothing changes until those engaged in harm begin to feel the weight of consequence – what addicts call “hitting bottom.” It’s terrible to witness, but you must step back and witness it because if you fix it, they learn nothing. That’s what enabling is.
Here’s the thing: A lot of assholes – once time-out is over – go right back to acting the way they are accustomed to acting because being king carries substantial benefits. Consequences that don’t stick are just meaningless specks on that shiny regal surface; they don’t lead the recalcitrant to metanoia.
That isn’t to say that you can’t have a relationship with a repentant ex-asshole – but they need to genuinely repent, and you need to keep an eye out for backsliding. And if they backslide, you’re gone in a poof of glitter and bats – for good. They may abandon dominator strategies someday, but it won’t be for you because the temptation to fall back into the master/servant dyad is just too great.
So, you find a new job or gym or spiritual community, a new political party. You exercise choice over who gets to share your life, with an emphasis on reciprocity. You push back and speak your mind, no matter how many tears or tantrums are involved – not for them, mind you, but for yourself because your perspectives and experiences matter. You ignore kingly demands for the floor.
You don’t give in to dominance strategies and – just as importantly – don’t adopt them yourself … because the cure for assholishness isn’t to become an asshole.
The cure is to grow up, to become emotionally and spiritually mature. Look, when you drill down to the bedrock, dominance strategies are also toddler strategies. We should have compassion for toddlers, but we don’t give in because toddler ideas generally aren’t good ideas; after all, they haven’t yet learned a better way.
It’s on us to teach that – not through enabling, but through the compassionate use of consequences, even when the toddler insists that being denied another juice box is tantamount to abuse. Especially then.
And if I haven’t said this lately … please, for the love of all things holy, keep toddlers out of elected office.
White Cat Grove 
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