Women Get It: Testosterone Will Kill Us All. Open Letter to Candace Rondeaux

Dear Professor Rondeaux,

Last week, a favourite podcast, Ukraine: The Latest, featured you in conversation with the two marvellous hosts, Dom Nicholls and Francis Dearnley. As warm as I feel toward these two knowledgeable chaps, and however much I appreciate the satisfying structure of the pod, conceived of and started by the late David Knowles, I confess my bias: I must admit the women Nicholls and Dearnley interview are oftentimes simply stellar, incredible, and courageous. I would place you at the top of the list.

Male voices dominate philosophy and politics. For example: The Guardian just posted a well-meaning but breathtaking article of narrow perspective. Jonathan R. Goodman is the author. Mr. Goodman's Guardian piece is enticingly entitled Are we hardwired to fall for autocrats? It’s human nature to trust strongmen, but we’ve also evolved the tools to resist them. Believing this assertion to be qualitatively true, I was eager to read the answer. Oh dear. Like a too-easily-startled racehorse, Mr. Goodman is wearing heavy blinkers. He sees the track all right, but with a male-only perspective. Of course, you say. No fault there. He's a male. But I'm telling you: it's not enough. Should Mr. Goodman attend to the female perspective on the issue of "strongmen" (and strongwomen), he would significantly broaden his POV—and believe me, it needs broadening, no pun intended (hm, well, maybe). If and when women speak up and if and when we dare to listen, many of us feel something missing has just been plugged in. That is to say, no female thinker implies a panoply of males—from Schopenhauer to Popper to Wittgenstein to Nietzsche to Sartre to Harari to Goodman—are socio-philosophically incorrect, but just . . . huh, rather like old math—not good enough. Insufficient. Incomplete.

Mercifully, Hannah Arendt spoke up and joined the twentieth century's conversations to offer brilliant insights into World War II and what she called the banality of evil; Arendt saw things men don't tend to see. One cannot think of a better description than Arendt’s to capture the indifference of many apathetic citizens in contemporary liberal democracies as their governance teeters on the edge of tyranny.

The natural tension between the herd and the individual marks us, and dealing with that inevitable stress calls upon our agility with manners. Yet, sometimes, as Arendt notes, individuals feeling safe within the herd are too tired, too scared, too comfortable, or too optimistic to call out the behaviour of the herd as it acts as a single unit, often fighting for its own survival––or propaganizing (maybe true, maybe not true) that IT really IS fighting for its own survival. MAGA behaviour, for example, gaslights followers into believing whiteness is under attack. Followers coalesce with the common purpose of shutting out Blackness. If European and American students received a fundamental education in evolutionary science, they would realize whiteness is not a race. Nor Blackness. Nor Brownness. There is only one race: the human race. Homo Sapiens.

Yet while biology unites us, culture sure divides us—and that division, expressed through common purpose, ideology and power structures, is what actually shapes our conflicts. Which brings us to face head-on the power of a non-banal and demonstrably evil culture club, and the need to understand Evgeny Prigozhin's Wagner Group to better understand ourselves, and how and why such violent a culture club forms. Who can help the curious? Professor Rondeaux.

Hannah Arendt

You, Professor Rondeaux, outlined the various disparate threads, which coalesced to form the Wagner Group (eventually creating the Wagner brand), and I for one understood your message. What had previously been, to me, a can of worms, instantly became clear. You also mentioned the contemporary and conducive environment of 2014, which underpinned the group’s formation. In my work, I call it the “conducive environment” ––that which paves the way for an individual or group’s behavior––the affordance. While you spoke, I felt a kind of joy. In a clear and persuasive way, you told us about the rise and fall of Yevgeny Prigozhin and you cautiously predicted the possible legacy of Wagner, especially in Africa. I hope you’ll see this letter as a compliment: you clarified the Wagner situation in a way that complements my own theory about power structures. I felt the matrix social game ringing throughout your every word.

My name is Susan Minsos, and I’m reaching out to you — and to the Jonantha Goodmans of the world — to express my admiration for your voice and wisdom. And yes, in doing so, I’m giving myself a bit of a pat on the back. Your philosophy and approach to humanity resonate deeply with my own. While I share the same foundational outlook, I also recognize that I haven’t had — and likely never will have — the benefit of your extraordinary firsthand knowledge and extensive field experience. Still, I hope you might take an interest in my book, which I see as a kind of universal prequel to your Russian-Ukrainian experience.

To be frank, most men don’t like what I have to say about the enduring structure of power — and especially about the crucial role women and children, along with affordances and manners, play in keeping Homo sapiens extant. As the old adage says, the hand that rocks the cradle...

When a culture club’s manners are dismissed, and law-breaking within the herd goes unpunished, dominators feel emboldened to create a new culture club. (Simple but true: there is no leader without followers). A liberal society, for instance, feels the warmth of authoritarianism; the proverbial frog in the pot simmers in the cultural waters. That's just humanity at work. Our agility at making manners to harmonize the conduct of the members of a team to deal with real or perceived dangers is incredible. So, take Macbeth: Lady Macbeth realizes the chilling effect of a lack of cultural consequences when she says to her husband, the infamous disruptor, “What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?”(Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1). Propped up by a manipulating woman and under the spell of a hefty dose of crap mysticism (gaslighting), Macbeth comes to believe he’s a man who can rival the gods. He will make a new culture club, with new strict manners, to rival the power of Good King Duncan, he, with his old generous manners. Women have long demonstrated a keen awareness of political structures and power dynamics — so let’s lay to rest any illusion that we are philosophical outsiders. Are you a playgoer? If Macbeth doesn’t give us pause when considering the state of today’s North American and European culture wars, then nothing will. When people fail to rise in fury against those who flout the rules and take reckless risks, dominators and followers know the throne is waiting. In any case, let us disabuse ourselves of the myth that women don’t understand culture clubs. Lady Macbeth certainly did in 1603. Shakespeare lived through Elizabeth I’s reign — and he knew whereof he wrote.

Malignant Chef and Greedy Diner

The Scottish play: A Great Dollop of Gaslighting to Make You Look the Other Way

To the point, Ms Rondeaux: I believe our ideas complement each other, and I would be honored to have you consider my theory as a helpful component of your political analysis. For a brief overview, here is a précis of Culture Clubs: The Real Fate of Societies (2022).

Culture Clubs: The Real Fate of Societies asserts all human organizations, whether small local groups like PTAs or hockey teams, or large national-international structures like Russia, the Catholic church, Microsoft, the USA, or Canada, share the same cone-shaped, power structure; all power architectures are pyramidal, larger at the base, smaller at the top.

The universal pyrimidal power structure in the circle of life

What differentiates culture clubs, one from the other, is not the architecture of power, but the "manners" of each culture club. A set of "manners" in the context of my tit-for-tat game (an unusual trichotomy game I’ve dubbed Weird Tit-for-Tat) includes a hierarchy of social and cultural conducts and norms. What I call “manners” range from civilities (folkways and etiquette), to cultural policies, to precedents and heritage, to bylaws, to statutory laws and, occasionally and finally, to written constitutions.

For instance, I argue the distinction between a liberal democracy and an authoritarian democracy (Russians have voted for president since 1991) does not lie in their power structures but in their different purposes and sets of manners.

A Brilliant political Canadian Novel of Manners

• Analysis: How Putin’s Sledgehammer Picks Up the Tenets of Culture Clubs: The Real Fate of Societies

  1. Core Thesis of Culture Clubs: The Real Fate of Societies

  The book argues that all human organizations—from small clubs to large nations—share the same fundamental pyramidal power structure: broad at the base (many ordinary members) and narrow at the top (few leaders).

  2. Key Differentiator

  What distinguishes one group (or "culture club") from another is not the structure itself, which is universal, but the set of “manners”—the specific behaviors, norms, rules, laws, and cultural practices that, within current affordances, govern group interactions to ensure survival. Because Homo sapiens can rapidly adapt manners, culture clubs are fluid: they form, dissolve, collide, and reconstitute.

  3. Game Theory Influence

  Minsos introduces an original twist on tit-for-tat game theory, called Weird Tit-for-Tat, to explain how dominant and compliant behaviors evolve in groups. Dominators, with the compliance of followers (compliors), establish a hierarchy of manners for all members. Adherence to these manners creates internal harmony and group cohesion.

  4. Universality of Human Behaviour

  Humans are both loners and herders—we desire individuality yet need social belonging. This duality in our natures incites various levels of tension, which can shake up the harmony inside every culture club. We must never forget: Our enemies define us.

  5. Neutrality of Selection

  The matrix game underlying our herd-making is neutral. The game doesn't favor liberalism or authoritarianism; it simply reflects the strategies groups adopt to survive. Hence, it’s worth restating: The game of life is neutral. The matrix game plays on, for good or ill, leaving clever journalists like you to determine answers to the hard questions:

  • Whether a culture club has survived long enough to develop a brand, and

  • Whether, affordances allowing, the brand will survive long enough to leave a legacy—however terrifying.

  • Whether, because of contemporary affordances (climate change, increased immigration, famine, and poverty), the entire geopolitical landscape is on the verge of turning protectionist and authoritarian.

  6. Cultural and Political Change

  When enough members reject a culture club’s prevailing manners, the group’s rule-of-law may shift—oscillating between liberalism and authoritarianism, depending on what survival requires. As with individuals, the collective seeks self-preservation.

  For whatever reason—and whatever the enabling affordance—as soon as individuals in a culture club feel free to no longer accept and are willing to actually defy a culture’s conventional and statutory manners, the club’s old rule-of-law flies out the window (e.g., liberal manners), to be replaced by a new rule-of-law (e.g., mafia manners).

  The reverse is also true. For instance, as soon as enough elite Russian mothers grow tired of seeing the nation’s sons and daughters return home in body bags, they may join with their poor rural sisters to gain enough critical mass to inspire an uprising, one which is finally ready and willing to defy the authoritarian manners of Putin’s regime.Critical mass creates tipping points, which change dominators, which change manners.

  7. Implications for Putin’s Sledgehammer

  The mercenary chaos in the culture club to which you refer will no doubt bring about atrocious manners (horrible for individual members who step out of line)—but the point is this: even violent mercenary chaos will nonetheless formulate a set of manners to "harmonize" club membership. Greedy diners like Putin and Trump are dangerous to everyone’s safety and every nation’s prosperity. But—as Lady Macbeth opines, she who would have peeked while pinning the tail on the donkey,—if no one says no, why not?

  8. Philosophical Disclaimer

  In Canada, I am a flexible centrist. I am not, personally, politically neutral. Yet, any philosopher worth her salt understands: Description should not lean into prescription. Personal bias and neutral theories should be siloed. When one can't help oneself from prescribing future behaviours, one should say so. (Economists! Are you listening?)

  
  

  Thank you for the tremendous contribution your work has made to the field of political analysis. I look forward to reading and have pre-ordered Putin's Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia’s Collapse into Mercenary Chaos.