Did You Kill Anyone? by Scott Beauchamp;

Author:Scott Beauchamp;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Hunt (NBN)
Published: 2019-11-13T16:00:00+00:00

It would be disingenuous of me to say that there weren’t any of Mishima’s chiefs in the Army. There were. There were all kinds of distortions of what true leadership should be. There were, in fact, archetypes of bad leaders. Low rent versions of Captain Ahab, men twisted by strange personal rancor from their pasts who carried their bitterness to the job and then elevated it to an almost metaphysical grandeur. There were Judge Holdens, inscrutable in their vacuous cruelty. But there were leaders who failed in the opposite direction, as it were. Timid and pliant, unable to take a stand for the men serving under them. People defined by their insecurity, who cared more about feeling like friends with their subordinates than in fealty to their responsibilities as leaders. In many cases, the ones who wanted to be your friend were even more dangerous than the hardened sadistic ones, because that friendship really only moved in one direction, only benefited them. It was a kind of moral laziness. They felt uncomfortable making demands of you, and then would throw you under the bus the instant that their own superior came down on them. It wasn’t kindness. It was their path of least resistance.

My grandmother is a Tarot card reader. And, having been close to her from birth, I learned to read Tarot cards before I learned to read English. So when I think associatively about authority, my mind moves to the visual dichotomy between The Hierophant card and The Devil card. In the Rider-Waite deck the images of the two figures echo each other. They appear as two forces moving in opposite directions while remaining joined at a common fixed point of origin. Both are seated on thrones positioned above acolytes. Each has their right hand raised and forming a symbolic gesture. In their left hands they each hold some sort of staff. In the case of the hierophant it’s an elegant gold crosier. The Devil holds a flaming torch. They look similar, even sharing a placid expression of someone absolutely comfortable being in a hierarchical position.

But if the similarities are striking, the differences are even more so. The hierophant’s crosier is made of gold, the most mystical mineral, and points up, as do his (or her? The figure is androgynous) middle and index fingers, which are held in the sign of benediction. The hierophant’s followers are depicted only by the back of their heads, hair shaved into a Roman tonsure. Their authority and guidance comes from the hierophant, whose own authority and guidance comes from “above.” What we see when we look at the card is something like an electrical circuit moving through each of the figures, and ourselves, channeling the energy of a higher authority.

The Devil meanwhile points down with his torch. His hand is held aloft with each finger extended and palm flattened. His acolytes are prisoners, not students, each chained to the column throne that he’s perched upon. All three figures stare out at us almost antagonistically.

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