We’re collectively staring into our latest human horror, the numbers of people involved in the depravity of whatever Jeffrey Epstein was up to. Adding to this shocking unearthing is the case of Gisèle Pelicot and her husband Dominique, who spent 10 years drugging her while he brought dozens and dozens of men into their home to rape her unconscious body.
We’re at a moment—again–where we are facing into the reality of men abusing their power to assault and exploit women. These moments arise regularly: Another Catholic archdiocese to pay out millions to sexual abuse survivors; more religious figures who turn out to be perpetrators; the #METOO movement surfacing how many women (and men) have the experience of being sexually assaulted in common. Over and over and over. With no end in sight.
Let’s face into these basic questions:
Why do apparently civilized men choose to rape girls, boys, women, even or an unconscious woman?
Why do the rest of us somehow allow this?
And—
What do we do??!
We know it’s immoral. We know it’s absolutely wrong, damaging at a soul level to the victims as well as the perpetrators. We try to eradicate these unspeakable behaviors by preaching, punishing, shaming and blaming. We do our best to ferret out the wrong-doers, firing them, canceling them (for a time), perhaps finally imprisoning them, with a fantasy that they’ll “get theirs.” We might feel some relief when we see them dethroned, hoping they’ll be shunned into oblivion, where they would ostensibly atone for their sins, or maybe get caught on the karmic wheel and suffer some terrible consequence.
It turns out this isn’t enough to curtail these behaviors. The amorality continues. We hardly have a moment to integrate what we last discovered before the next bunch is revealed. Oh, no, now it’s even non-denominational spiritual leaders??
We have to do something, right? So we turn back to analyzing, searching for new explanations, talking it over, doing what we can to identify the source so we can eradicate it. We devise new treatments for the evildoers, hoping that they’ll avail themselves of it. That, of course, depends on those we’ve labeled as bad (or the current trend, “Toxic Narcissists”) actually deciding there’s a problem, which by virtue of their diagnosis, is highly unlikely.
We try to stay ahead of it all, like watching a mud spill find its way towards our front door and doing what we can to push it back. We resort to what we know: try to identify the good, ethical people from the perpetrators. But—how could there be so many perpetrators??
Writer after writer has analyzed what is behind this rampant abuse. Celeste Davis dug through the explanations and justifications to get to the root cause of men’s willingness to be part of rape culture. (Please read this article: Davis goes deep and cites many other excellent articles by current thought leaders.) She sorted through the research and came to this conclusion:
So entitlement, gender inequality and masculine discrepancy stress have all been correlated with rape.If only we had a name for this…And what is this system called that perpetuates gender inequality, and dominance and entitlement among men?
Patriarchy.
Well then. We know what the problem is.
What do we do?
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When I was a kid, fighting with my brother, I remember this exchange.
“STOP IT!”
“No, YOU stop it!!”
We’d go on for a while, until one of us (likely me, the little sister) would whine “MOM!! DAVID WON’T STOP IT!” Calling in the big guns seemed like the only option.
I observe this same behavior in our culture. At our escalated moments, feminists demand that men get over their male entitlement. (STOP IT!) The “bros” want women to quit being bitches, shrews and feminazis. (STOP IT!) The deadlock continues, and so do the results: alienation, people behaving in damaging ways, a new dedication to sort out the bad people from the good.
My life’s work has been to wake up from believing the thrall of blame. I know it is instinctive, our way to locate the external threat and move to eradicate it, but I watch the consequences: the rampant, frustrating powerlessness of power struggle.
What’s the antidote to this blaming reflex?
Do the tough work to ask: what does this issue have to do with my own design as a human being?
If I can’t just “other” rapists and those aiding them through their complicity, what is it about being human that we all share–even me, and yes, you–and could actually shift and evolve?
I’ve studied relationship dynamics for decades. I’ve spent thousands of hours refereeing power struggles, as couples and groups and organizations escalated and wound themselves into their worst moments with themselves and each other. I’ve witnessed so much pain, stuckness, frustration and despair that I started referring to it as the “hell realm,” where the desperation of our deepest longings for human connection struck like flint into the rock of the other pole, the expression of self. The result? The ignition of the human proclivity for terrible behavior.
All of this gave me a bird’s eye view of how humans and their relationships go off the rails, and how to get them back on track. I now understand the larger context of how hierarchy can easily atrophy into the dysfunction of power struggle, and what to do about that. I see this context behind every interaction we have, with those around us, within ourselves, and in the larger social context. I’ve put language around something that has been pernicious in its effects, but nearly invisible in its existence.
As I’ve applied the “Inner Map,”* developed over the past 20 years, what used to be concealed is now unavoidably obvious: Our threat response throws us automatically and directly into power struggle. But we are generally completely unaware of how we’ve become captives to our biology.
You see, reaction to perceived threat is automatic, instinctive, and immediate. We instantly get mobilized or immobilized. It’s all involuntary, unconscious, before thought. Out of our control. We suddenly are taken over by mammalian instincts that have been part of life for 250,000 years. Stress hormones have taken away our agency, and all beyond our awareness.
Suddenly we’re hurtling through a chute that lands us into what has been called “Power Over,”—domination–or “Power Under,” submission. Each response is inextricably linked to survival. Power Over is a set of aggressive and controlling behaviors designed to elicit immediate compliance. Power Under triggers our bodies into immobilization, reducing the chances that we’ll be aggressed upon.
As is true with every state on the Inner Map, any human is capable of either Power Over or Power Under. As much as we might want to sort out the mean bitches and assholes from the meek doormats, it turns out our bodies are designed to respond differently in different situations. We can all be all of it, from the most collapsed, to the most aggressive.
Look back at the Inner Map. I’ve only been focusing “Below the Line,” that is, on Reactive Brain. But look, there it is, Above the Line. Creative Brain. These states reflect who humans naturally are–when we’re not in a threat response. We’re loving and appreciative and joyful;. we’re collaborative, connected, relaxed and peaceful. Our best selves.
No wonder it’s so hard to separate out the “good” people from the bad ones. Any of us can be acting from any place on that Inner Map. But we generally have no idea how much our physiology is impacting us–or anyone else.
We’ve done preliminary research to understand more about Power Over, Power Under, and Evolutionary Power, that is, Power With. Before I go over our findings, however, I ask you to look at this checklist and see what you discover about what might previously have been invisible to you. (It should take about 5-10 minutes.)
Having given a version of this checklist to hundreds of people, I’ve discovered some fascinating results that have opened my eyes to what is behind so many seemingly intractable issues. Here is some of what I see:
- Power Over and Under are a matched set, interactional and playing off of each other. The activation of Power Over leads to the deactivation of Power Under, and vice versa.
- This unconscious interplay of activation/immobilization is the step into hierarchy. The process: Our Reactive Brains detect threat. Our impulse might be to mobilize, that is, to fight or try to get away. If the other person also mobilizes, things escalate, sometimes leading to verbal abuse or even physical violence. But we can deescalate by immobilizing ourselves. The collapse into submission is adaptive.
This domination/submission combination is fast and efficient, perfect for emergencies. However, the unconsciousness behind it creates a strong possibility that what was to be an emergency response becomes status quo, indeed, how we view ourselves. We’re tough, we’re badasses, we’re macho and to be feared. Alternatively, we don’t know what happened that we collapsed—what’s wrong with us that we go so weak?
- Power Over is highly alluring. People love the feeling of energy and aliveness of these states (Pride, Anger), and will trade their very souls for it, giving up intimacy, morality, connection to themselves and those around them for it.
It took us some time to understand that the exhilaration of feeling confident is actually a symptom of being Power Over. How did we come to that unexpected conclusion? By observing the impact of one person’s Power Over on the people they were intimate with. Over and over we watched the Power Under person turn frozen, unable to access their basic competence, to the point they had trouble speaking or knowing what they wanted.
- Power Under feels awful. While there can be a temporary relief of being taken care of, over time this constellation of states (Frozen Fear, Sadness, Despair, Guilt, Shame) leads to very common mental health issues: depression, low self-esteem, and an overall sense of helplessness.
- Once this unconscious, instinctive dynamic has taken over, it leads to predictable outcomes:
- People disconnect from their inner experience. A threat has been detected; it appears to be coming from the outside, so reactivity is all about handling that threat. Insights that would help end the power struggle are inaccessible
- Blame is rife, the logical answer to “where is the threat coming from?!”
- Because Power Over feels so good and Power Under so bad, the apparent solution is to try to flip the power, like two wrestlers trying to ultimately be the one on top. Status (and its symbols—private jets, fancy parties, yachts, etc), money, acclaim, adoration, fantasies of sexual prowess all support that sense of Power Over.
- Evolutionary Power (Power With) is a whole different territory. Let’s go there. When you went through the checklist earlier, what was it like to get to the third set of questions? I notice just looking at the first two sets (the Power Over and Under questions) I feel tense and sick to my stomach. I get to the third set and relax, start breathing deeply again. Here’s what I believe about Evolutionary Power:
- It’s our natural state. We’re Above the Line, in Creative Brain.
- We immediately come back into connection with our own bodies, the truth that our bodies are trying so hard to communicate to us through our sensations and emotions.
- Since we’re now connected to ourselves, we naturally can connect with those around us. We realize they’re also humans. We get to be intimate. We’re known and seen.
- Creative solutions are suddenly available. Our minds are freed from the constraints and narrowed perspective applied by our Reactive Brains.
Reporter Anand Giridharadas, a guest on the Ezra Klein show on 2/8/26, described some of the men caught in the Epstein web in these terms:
“The money people may not need money, although they always want more of it. They often want to seem and feel smart. If you have met people in those kinds of worlds—finance people—even if you make a lot of money in it, they’re often very boring people. I don’t say that as slander. They know if. I’ve had so many conversations with people in this world where there’s an insecurity about how boring they are. So they want something else.” He later quotes from Virginia Giuffre’s book, Nobody’s Girl: “My impression of many of these men is that they didn’t know how to pursue women. Awkward and socially immature, it was as if their big brains were missing the ability to interact with other people.”
Awkwardness, social immaturity—classic Power Under symptoms that few of us can tolerate over time, that lead to a desperation to find one’s sense of value and competence, such a strong pull to flip back to Power Over.
What does it take to overthrow the other, if one is stuck in hierarchy? Status. Wealth. And such a strong disconnection from one’s own self and others that we don’t notice how easy it is to devalue the Power Unders with contempt, dehumanization, aggression, degradation.
I am glad to not have to try to plumb the depths of human depravity, try to explain the staggering level of hatred of women the Epstein files expose. I do, however, suspect that much of it originates from the same source: the interplay of Power Over and Power Under, how humans are drawn to do whatever it takes to feel the exhilaration of being on top of the world. Domination in the face of others’ submission is a heady drug. Apparently even having proximity to all of that glory enchants us away from our best values, opening the portal to behaving badly, sometimes monstrously.
The good news? Shaking off the trance of our own reactivity by reconnecting with our bodies and their reliable communications is the path away from our basest instincts of dominate or submit. We can find who we naturally are: open-hearted beings who love, who care for, who were born into the world to express our best gifts. We don’t have to be controlled in order to behave morally; our relaxed bodies tune us into a world where cocreativity is what is under, around and within every relationship.
It’s so easy to lapse into a sense of helplessness when we are faced with horror, to feel angry or terrified or overwhelmed, wonder, once again, but what do I do?? When there is no apparent answer, it is inevitable to shrug and turn away.
But there is a “do.”
Right now, and from moment to moment from now on, I can notice my body, check where I am on the Inner Map and discern whether I’m in Creative Brain or whether my threat response took me into Power Over or Power Under. I can shake off the thrall of blame and power struggle. I can shift my physiology, as many times as it takes, so that I can rejoin my species in our collective pursuit of being our best, most divine selves.