A Scalar View of Dominance

Article - A Scalar View of Dominance

The purpose of this article is to offer an over simplified concept of dominance which is necessary in our thoughts in order to approach this lifestyle.

Why bother reading? That depends on what you want out of Gor. Over the decades I have been involved in the Gorean communities one of the most prolific questions is how someone can transition this lifestyle to their offline life. I believe this concept is the crux of that answer. With a conceptual idea of dominance which is not polarized (On/Off) it is very difficult to find your way through situations which occur commonly in life and relationships. Whether you are looking to eventually transition some of the Gorean Philosophy into your offline relationships, bring an online relationship offline, or keep everything in an online atmosphere there are benefits to these ideas which I will try to put together at the end.

As I stated this is a simplified version. Take what is here and see how it can help solidify or help re-evaluate your perspective. Reading through with the perspective of how it can not help, will only force you to miss the entire point of reading.

Let us begin ...

The most important concept is that in order to live our lives we simplify many things in a polarized fashion so that our brain works as a high functioning system. We think of them as part of or not part of a selection. This is a fruit or it is not. That person is potentially dangerous or they are not. This is my item, or it belongs to someone else. It is night, or it is day ... ad infinitum.

For the moment I am going to discuss a very passionate part of the Gorean Philosophy as if there is no night and day, but only dusk. Your part is the patience to get through the whole article before passing judgment (valuable / not valuable).

We are going to remove "submissive" as a character trait (yes, I know ... but have a little faith). Instead, for the moment replace that on/off view of dominant/submissive and replace it with a view of varying dominance. If we think of dominance on a scale from one to ten many people can immediately adapt to targeting themselves somewhere around a 2, or 5, or 9. However imagine instead a range of dominance as shown below for two people labeled A and B.

One we begin to see dominance in a range we can start to perceive this range as overlapping other ranges. These ranges are what I think of as a genetic predisposition for dominance. They are hard coded ranges that person A and B are not able to escape, save some physically traumatic injury/illness to the brain.

Throughout our lives, and situationally we will move along this range. We may spend the vast majority at one end, or we may fluctuate through our range easily. The ability to fluctuate is a product of our experiences in life. This means that if we have one set of experiences we may be able to flow through our genetic capability at will. That we are flexible enough to adapt in a dominance trait very easily across our scale. If our experiences have caused us negative feedback by being too flexible we may have developed coping mechanisms which prohibit moving along this range easily.

As example suppose when we did move along this scale easily we became unpredictable with people who were close to us. If our dead center of our range was where someone else lived all their life. So if I had a range from 1-10 and could move about it at will but Bob the Farmer had a range from 4.9 - 5.1, Bob would perceive me as half the time less dominant and half the time more dominant. My interactions with him would look anywhere from being indecisive to being a control freak (and no, I don't believe dominance is equated to being a control freak). So that may be problematic for Bob, and if many of my personal and professional relationships were like Bob and they were not able to cope with my ranges, there may be a lot of negative reprocussions which could alter my ability to fluctuate so easily so that I could unconsciously adapt to something more predictable.

We can represent this idea with something like the image below. Where the straight line in A, would have no experience barriers to moving across our scale, and B would find moving along the scale to be more cumbersome and take more effort.

As you can see from the image above if we had to walk along either the path in A or in B it would take significantly longer over the path in B to move from say five to ten.

One last part of this is that situational importance will potentially offer a dramatic influence on the ease of movement. We may be able to say, shift from our lowest expressions of dominance to our highest if our child is in danger. The situational circumstance will include the audience around us, subject our attention is on (person or object), and sense of urgency we feel.

Putting it all together ...

It becomes rather combersome to try and map anything past the point of use. However, this should be enough to draw some conclusions and offer insight on why this is important.

Firstly, to take the idea that someone is either a dominant or submissive type personality is to ignore that they have a range. This means that you are not going to be prepared for their natural inclination for differing tendencies. If we do not see people in this light we are apt to see people as liars, deceitful, and unpassionate about their station simply because of a temporary shift in their expressions.

One task an owner has is to understand the obstacles to someone's self expression they own for where they react in a way outwardly in their range of dominance which does not match how they truly wish to be. Removing those obstacles which errantly became part of them, allows your owned to be who they are. This is why you selected them, because you see them for who they truly are.

If we can not identify, we can not find root cause. If we can not find root cause, then we are destined to simply accept people for who they are. That would be analogus to always purchasing an adult dog, one that you have no plans to teach a thing to.

What we think of as submissives are those who have a range where they are mostly on the lower end of the scale of dominance and concede decision making more often. It is done as an unconscious analysis of their audience. When they are surrounded by those of lesser dominance (or drastic difference in ability) then they may step up and take the lead depending on the circumstance.

This has nothing to do with trying to make a case for frequent switching in the Gorean relationship - however I will gladly have those conversations online any time.

As always, feel free to ask questions on any of this, anytime in the Gorean Tavern!

I love you all,

~Thalin