Christina Paskow
Brook S. Edwards
Writing II
10 November 2014

Leadership in Society

Steven Johnson’s “The Myth of the Ant Queen” is broken down into 3 categories: the city of Manchester, emergence of the complexity theory, and as the title states, the myth of the ant queen. It opens with Deborah Gordon showing the author, Steven Johnson, the ant colonies and how they develop. Gordon’s work, “Focuses on the connections between the micro behavior of individual ants and the overall behavior of the colonies themselves, and part of that research involves tracking the life cycles of the individual colonies, following them year after year as they scour the desert floor for food, competing with other colonies for territory, and once a year they mate with them” (Johnson 193). She is a student, in other words of a particular kind of emergent, self-organizing system The queen of the ants is not as the name suggests, the queen of an ant colony has no political or authoritative significance in the colony. The queen of the ant colony lays eggs and is cared for by other ants, not the dictator of what the other ants do. What Gordon’s work suggests and then supports is that ants do not have a set authoritative figure, they are a self-organizing society. The ants have three main parts to their way of living: the midden which is the town dump, the cemetery, and the main colony. “Look at what actually happened here: they’ve built the cemetery at exactly the point that’s furthest away from the colony. And the midden is even more interesting: they’ve put it at precisely the point that maximizes its distance from both the colony and the cemetery,” says Gordon (Johnson 195). This triangle of society that the ants created without a leader, just out of organization goes to show a leader to dictate who does what is not always needed or needed at all. Self-organization in this case seems to produce optimum results, suggesting that if humans focus and understand self-organization rather than leadership, basic rules, and laws we would have a better functioning society as the ants do. Individuals doing their part and being a functioning part of society can make a whole society functioning, ants showed that they work better as a group rather than individuals. Perhaps there are more similarities between the ant society and us humans than we thought. Johnson says, “The tubing and cramped conditions and surging crowds bring one thought immediately to mind: the New York subway system, rush hour. In the early years of Manchester it was the center of a commercial and technological revolution. The industrial takeoff happened between 1700 and 1850, the population in 1773 was 24,000, in 1801 it was 70,000, and by the mid-century there were more than 250,000 people living in Manchester. Manchester at the time was considered a manor which meant, “In the eyes of the law, it was run like a feudal estate, with no local government to speak of-no city planners, police, or public health authorities” (Johnson 196). The British government did not even recognize Manchester as a city until 1853. Despite the fact that there was no authority in Manchester it was still the center of a revolution and was very successful. The city of Manchester resembled the society of ants that Gordon had been studying. The question posed is does society need a leader to function or does society form its own social structures out of habit?
In Susan Faludi’s “The Naked Citadel” an inside look of a society of all men is given. The Citadel is a public military college on Charleston’s Ashley River, which no women are allowed to attend. It is what seems to be a strict school preparing men for a life in the military with rules like staying off the grass and the freshman, also referred to as “knobs,” are required to cut their hair to a certain length. Although The Citadel has a firm belief in not letting women into their facility, they have female teachers, record keepers, and an all-black as well as female food staff making the population of women 15%. 77% percent of the students enrolled in summer and night class are women and are allowed to attend. Seems like a contradiction, right? Major Rick Mill, The Citadel’s public relations director says, “Those who attend summer and night school aren't wearing their uniforms” (Fauldi 74) therefore it cannot be counted. Perhaps The Citadels biggest problem was when Shannon Faulkner, a woman, was accidentally admitted to The Citadel. She completed the requirements given of forty five push-ups fifty five sit-ups in two minute sets, and running two miles under sixteen minutes just like a man would have and she had a 3.48 grade point average, which means she did not lack anything that would have prohibited her from being accepted. Shannon decided to not release her gender when enrolling and this is how she got accepted into The Citadel, but as soon as The Citadel learned of her sex they immediately revoked her acceptance. This created a public uproar. The men of The Citadel listed many reasons on why women should not be admitted to The Citadel such as: it would cost eight to nine thousand dollars to pay for all the blinds they would have to put up in the bathrooms, they would have to build bathrooms for women or create new ones for them, and they would not be able to learn or focus with women around and that was why they could not be admitted. They harassed Shannon at her home by driving through her yard, driving through her flower bed, writing profanity on the side of her house, driving over her mailbox, opening the emergency gas valve, prying open her gas tank, and leaving threatening messages on her phone. The list of harassment seems to be never ending. Perhaps the biggest reason for the men at The Citadel not wanting women there was their stall-less toilets and showers in which was their pride and joy. The men saw this as a bonding experience and said it was where they all suffered, but they suffered together. The men had an odd way of showing affection towards one another but claimed they had amazing relationships. In 1991 Michael Lake, a freshman, decided to leave after being beaten, hit with the butt of a gun, and knocked down, a member of the cycling team was forced to hang by his fingers over a sword two inches from his testacles, a football player was forced to swallow his tobacco so many times he was not able to speak right, a kicker was dunked under water twenty times to the point of unconsciousness, there were many racial related incidents, a raccoon was captured then repeatedly stabbed until death, and in 1993 two upperclassmen kneed freshman in the genitals, pulled their chest hair, and beat them. Those are just a few of the incidents that occurred at The Citadel between men that were found out by the public. It was not just men that were being mistreated it was women as well, according to The Citadel creed of the cadet, “women are just objects, they’re things that you can do with whatever you want to” (Faludi 85). December Green, a teacher there was constantly harassed to the point where she had to quit and the administration did not try to stop her. She could not contain the cadet’s fury. The cadets left obscene phone calls, left notes on her door saying things such as “pussy,” groups of men would stare at her, and some men even sent death threats. The male administration was no help to her and had no sympathy, one professor even said to her, “you get what you provoke” (Faludi 86). The most appalling incident was when December turned all of the evidence in to the Dean who did nothing for months then finally when she went to check on the progress of her case he had told her that he had happened to misplace all the evidence. Not only is it teachers they harass, but women peers they find as well. Men recall stories of hamsters being locked in with women, cats being smashed against windows they were by, they trapped them in latrines, and threw up on them. The cadets had no respect for women. The oddest thing about the cadet’s hatred for women was the fact that many of them had relations with drag queens but did not consider themselves homosexual. The men of The Citadel had a hatred for women but had sexual relations with female look-a-likes, this was not considered homosexual which is very confusing to someone outside The Citadel who is trying to understand the situation. The oddest thing is the fact that all this hazing was occurring with supervision and a strict military background, one would think that the military background would mean that these men are very respectable people but the story does not support this in fact it provides the opposite. “They must defend their inner humanity with outer brutality may say as much about the world outside The Citadel walls as about the world within them. The cadets feel called to defend those walls. Never mind that their true ideal may not be vaunted one of material masculinity, just as their true enemy is not Shannon Faulkner. The cadets at The Citadel feel that something about their life and routine is worthy on its merits and is endangered from without. And in that they may be right,” says Faludi (Faludi 103).
“Selections from Losing Matt Shepard” by Beth Loffreda tells the story of Matt Shepard who was killed in a brutal anti-gay murder. In the beautifully described town of Laramie, Wyoming in October of 1998 news began to spread of the murder. Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney had met up with Matt at the Fireside Bar. The two men left the bar with Shepard, drove him in the pick-up truck to the edge of town, beat him with a gun as well as with their bodies, and took some of his possessions including his wallet and shoes with intent to rob his apartment as well, but then got in a fight with two other men and went to jail.. Matt’s body was found tied to the fence after the night and almost an entire day had passed. From then on the city of Laramie was heavily criticized for “not having a head trauma unit, not having a gay bar, and not pushing back homecoming” and things such as, “Well, this kind of thing probably happens a lot up there. You have that cowboy mentality in Wyoming so this was bound to happen” and “Hate: it’s a common word in Wyoming” (Loffreda 242). Things like this broke the people of not only the town but the states heart, they became infamous for the murder of one man. The police tried the best they could to bring justice to the situation and peace back to the town after this horrific tragedy had happened to their town.
These three articles all show the role of leadership in society, “The Myth of the Ant Queen” provides us with a basic understanding questioning the role of leaders in society and posing the question if leaders are actually needed for a society to function, “The Naked Citadel” shows even with leadership there may be no structure, and in “Selections from Losing Matt Shepard” we see that through leaders peace and social justice can be brought back. A question is asked by one story while the two others serve as one good and one bad example of leadership in society; one failing and one succeeding. These three stories go to show that there is no need for leadership, but in some instances leadership isn’t successful yet in some situations it can be. Our society seems to naturally always have a leader, but they are not always needed.

Works Cited
Faludi, Susan. “The Naked Citadel.” The New Humanities Reader. Ed. Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer. Stamford, CT: CENGAGE Learning, 2015.72-103. Print.
Johnson, Steven. “The Myth of the Ant Queen.” The New Humanities Reader. Ed. Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer. Stamford, CT: CENGAGE Learning, 2015.193-207. Print.
Loffreda, Beth. “Selections from Losing Matt Shepard.” The New Humanities Reader. Ed. Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer. Stamford, CT: CENGAGE Learning, 2015. 236-255. Print.