The Leader of the Pack
It’s July 4th, Independence Day, and I am thinking about packs of people and how they interact with one another. I wrote yesterday about my transition from working guy to retired guy and I know that these are not unusual thoughts for a man of my age, but that does not prevent me from thinking that I can somehow express them in new, interesting or possibly even unique ways. I believe I only took one course in college that would qualify as Sociology. In actuality it was a course in Economic Anthropology, but I figure that Anthropology and Sociology are really the same topic only one deals with the way humanity operated in the past (and a little bit in the present), and the other looks at how society social behavior operate in the here and now. Please don’t call me on any small inaccuracies of definition because this is not an academic paper, but just my random thoughts for, as I like to say, lightly wounded Baby Boomers. There is more to man than work, no matter how much it occupies of his existence. If one characterizes everything in man’s life other than work, it seems to boil down to sociology or anthropology. At the top of the food chain of society is the family, which by definition is the nuclear pack in which we run. Strangely enough, it is on days like Independence Day that we tend to gather as a nuclear pack and act in anything but an independent manner.
Man is a gregarious beast that chooses by nature to flock together and no flock is closer than family. I don’t think I need to prove that premise because it is so well documented over the years in every form of expression from writing to song and to dramatics. My personal flock (as differentiated from either Kim’s flock or our collective flock) consists of my three children and their significant others and their offspring. I have mentioned my bracelet with the silver bands with seven names on it. Those names are Kim, Betty, my three kids and my two granddaughters. Everything beyond that is “extended family” by definition and there are plenty of those separate extensions. They would include my siblings and their families, my children’s’ in-laws, my cousins and aunts/uncles, and then move on to Kim’s siblings and their significant others and offspring. In another concentric outward circle or flock there are in-laws of siblings and perhaps children of nieces and nephews and so on and so on. While I am sure to offend many who don’t like being considered “extended” anything, it is simply the way of the world that we build our flocks in concentric circles of trust, as Robert DeNiro said to Ben Stiller in Meet The Parents. I also acknowledge that Kim’s circles vary slightly from my circles. That too is natural even though there should be significant overlap in our circles.
And the thing we all understand about packs, whether its a pack of wolves, dolphins, moose or people, its that there needs to be a leader of the pack. In concept, packs can try to be leaderless or have multiple leaders, but I think we can agree that those approaches rarely work or work well. Most packs try to employ some sort of term limit so that the leader of the pack is the person or animal most capable to effectively and fairly lead rather than the person who wields the most power by virtue of the position they hold. I read an interesting piece recently about wolf packs and how they so thoroughly exhibit the social mores of their species by keeping the oldest members at the lead of the pack. The theory is that this limits the speed of the pack to keep the oldest members in tow, less out of kindness and more because the older members have important knowledge and memories that are useful to the pack. So leadership in wolf packs is a multi-layered thing and there are leaders and there are leaders.
In my nuclear pack, I am the leader of the pack. I have made most of the economic and lifestyle decisions that have set the tone for how the pack operates. This is somewhat because I have been the breadwinner of the pack, but also because those of us inclined towards the alpha orientation tend to make decisions that others follow and often want to follow. Some people want others to make decisions for them. Who among us has not said to their significant other, “I don’t want to make another decision today, so you decide what we should have for dinner.” While those may be small one-offs for some, there are many relationships where that approach is used for larger and larger lifestyle and pack decisions until there is a de facto leadership model put into place. We kid one another in our misogynistic tradition by suggesting who in a relationship “wears the pants.”
As we move more and more into this Century and as women become both a bigger part of the educated work force (they already dominate the professional ranks like veterinary, medical and legal arenas in the student bodies and therefore will dominate those professions overall in years to come). It is noteworthy that business schools still only have 39% women in their student bodies unlike the majority occupied in the other arenas, so maybe raw business areas will still take longer. We will increasingly see women taking on more pack leadership roles and that personally gives me great hope since Women seem to be less simple-minded and narcissistic in their leadership styles and more egalitarian and greater-good-focused. That may be a culturally biased assessment, but I honestly believe it to be true and since I believe those are valuable qualities of leadership, I look forward to that day.
But back to my pack. I think of my favorite movie, Moonstruck, the name I chose to call my home on the hilltop, Casa Moonstruck, and I think of Vincent Gardenia, Cosmo Castorini, who is the leader of the Castorini Pack, which includes his wife, his daughter, his wife’s brother Raymond Cappomaggio and his wife Rita. There is also an old man, who is Cosmo’s father who lives in their home and keeps a pack of dogs for companionship. His whole role in the movie is to be a comic relief who sees what is going on but is “confused” and who says that “I am an old man and the old are not wanted, but I have one thing to say.” I’m sure there was a time when he was the leader of the Castorini pack, but now he exists on the periphery as the old, loved, perhaps respected, but largely irrelevant aging man of the house. Somewhere, somehow, the mantle of leadership passed from him to Cosmo. I find myself wondering when that mantle will pass from me to someone else in my pack.
I see my friend Frank, who is now 83 and that makes him sixteen years my senior and he is still the leader of his pack and probably will be until he dies. I can imagine that this may be due to the strength he maintains as an alpha male, even into his eighties, or perhaps it is because the rest of the pack does not include anyone who logically wishes or is able to step up into those shoes. What will become of my pack as I get older? Will I become Cosmo’s father or will I be Frank, who stays in control until his ship goes to the ocean floor. And then, will my pack even continue to exist or will it atomize in to different packs that logically form and obviate the need for a continuation of Marin Madness, as we call our pack. Time will tell.