Today’s topic is testosterone and its discontents. The notion of "discontents" is taken from Freud. It means weaknesses that are a constituent part of strengths, an Achilles heel that doesn't go away. The strengths of maleness-summarized as testosterone, the magic elixir behind it all-are pretty clear.  We men are taught to be scrappers. We take on all comers, establish dominance, keep the dominance for as long as we can, rising to ever higher heights-and then what? That's where the discontents kick in. They make the old guys calling the shots defensive, prone to see enemies in anybody who crosses them, ruthless in dealing with the next generation that doesn't see things their way, and convinced that only massive immediate force can deal with any challenge. I'd say that the fact of waning testosterone just when men reach the pinnacle of their power is the source of many of the world's problems in politics, business, and perhaps most especially, the military, the organization that prizes force and testosterone even more than the others.

In the animal kingdom, we see the same state of affairs, only more clearly. In Jack London's immortal male fable, The Call of the Wild, the lead wolf will of necessity one day be picked off by one of the younger male wolves, and he knows it. The repelling of challenges is a question of literal survival: you fend off younger males in order to live. Might doesn't make right, it just makes life. In our kinder, gentler human world, things aren't so aboveboard. Part of the way we repel challenges is by putting on a show of moral force: the people in power (that's us) are there because we deserve to be in power. Those who challenge the status quo are committing a moral outrage. It's a democratic form of the divine right of kings, asserted most strongly in periods of crisis. How dare they?

I saw this strange moral outrage in the screams of fury that arose from some senior Navy retirees at my  recent questioning of the Naval Academy's devotion to fielding nationally competitive sports teams and asserting that they are in fact what the Academy is all about. Huh? If I questioned the price we pay, or the rationale of the policy, I had to be anti-military, anti-Academy, anti-Navy, probably anti-American. The way we do things is the only way, because it's the way we do things. One letter, which I scanned shaking my head before tossing, went on for four pages.

I got the same reaction two years ago when I wrote a piece questioning the particular, and peculiar, politics, that leads us to letting in about half our class by the back door, what I called "set-asides," to achieve current little-known political goals. I was accused (stand by for the shock) of not being "a team player." No justification for doing things the way we do was offered. Clearly the rationale was: yell loud enough and he'll back down.

We humans are constantly paying the price for the fact that leaders are subject to a biological form of the Peter principle, which states that in a hierarchy, people rise to their level of incompetence. They did well at lower-level jobs, so they keep getting promoted until they hit a level where they're in over their head. And there they stay. Biologically, this means that men continue to rise so long as they have these leadership qualities of toughness we associate with testosterone in full flower.

But here's the thing: when they're at their most powerful, the testosterone is ebbing, and the world is suddenly populated with younger, more virile guys. It's not a fun place any more: it's a scary place. Those who don't agree are lily-livered "girlie-men" (to quote the Governator in his bellicose phase). The result is leaders-in politics, business, and also the military-who re-cast every objection as a threat to their waning forces. Opposition makes them apoplectic, they see every other-thinker as a threat that has to be annihilated. And that's among their own people. On the outside, everybody who looks different or acts differently is The Enemy. Everybody is out to get you, the enemy lurks very close, all different viewpoints are a threat, and challenges must be repelled immediately and irrevocably.

This kind of wide-swinging itchy-trigger-finger politics is what's characterized the clueless current Bush Administration, whose invasion of Iraq as a response to terrorism has been compared to an invasion, as a response, of Argentina (i.e. makes as much sense). It has characterized the ugly bluster emanating from the Vice President, and by extension the President, that for many years tarred everybody who questioned anything as a traitor or a coward, including decorated combat veterans like Rep. Murtha, or for that matter Senator Kerry. The best defense is apparently still a good offense.

But no organization uses this pre-emptive strike against outsider criticism more consistently than the military. The predictable response by the old guys in power to outside criticism is to circle the wagons. Every time things get bad you start by denying, and only grudgingly admit as little as you can get away with. (Remember the Army's cover-up of Pat Tillman's "friendly fire" death?) A form of this also enforces discipline within the ranks. Everybody in uniform has stories about upper-level officers squashing dissent just because they could, hushing up things that would make them look bad, and apparently getting a thrill out of dominating younger men. It's not across the board, of course: I have nothing but respect for the stellar senior officers I've brushed shoulders with. Yet it is the weakness of a gerontocracy such as the military is: the older you are, the higher you go. When you're highest up, you're at your most insecure. So you get defensive.

Of course insecurity can come from other sources than consciousness of waning testosterone. We're all familiar with what's called the Napoleon complex, where a bantam cock of a young man comes on way too strong to compensate for not being a towering giant. Conversely, age doesn't have to have this effect on a man. It can make him wise and tolerant of the world's folly, and bring a big smile to his face when he sees younger males making the mistakes through sheer abundance of youth that he himself remembers making (that's the guy I want to be).

What's the alternative? More women in positions of power, perhaps-though the female form of these discontents may be a tendency to produce shrill battle-axes, estrogen no longer kicking in. Younger people of both sexes in leadership positions, perhaps? For mature men, the alternative to this sorry state of affairs is to hold power because you actually deserve to have it. If you deserve to have it, you can explain yourself. You understand that not everyone will agree. You can actually win hearts and minds, not just force people to do things because otherwise it's going to hurt. That kind of tolerance of otherness isn't a sign of weakness, but in fact of strength. Too bad it's in such short supply.