Incest 0000i-xiv FM 1 - William L. White

Professional Closure 71
the emotional and financial bosom of the organization. Branding the
renegade member as heretic, traitor, and pariah is not nearly as important
as the recommitment of the member whose loyalty was wavering.
The most extreme example of loyalty tests in a closed system in
my lifetime occurred in Jonestown, Guyana. In a ritual called “White
Night,” all of the members of the religious community led by Jim Jones
participated in the enactment of a ritual mass suicide. In all but the
final enactment, the liquid they drank contained only Kool-Aid. The
White Night loyalty test was performed more than forty times before
the final mass suicide at Jonestown. Less horrific versions of such loyalty
tests occur every day in business: Is a worker willing to assume a
new role, accept a transfer, accept overtime assignments, accept a cut in
pay or benefits for the good of the company? Some loyalty tests in the
business world involve pressure to take sides in a struggle for power or
requests to move into gray areas of ethical conduct. Sometimes there are
requests to involve oneself in illegal conduct, but the line separating
legal from illegal conduct is usually approached one inch at a time. The
last inch is hardly noticed, and then one’s complicity ties one to the
system. When the majority of employees have been so compromised, silence
reigns because no one feels he or she can speak with any moral
authority.
Purges are part of the cycles of contraction of closed systems: periods
of minimal turnover followed by bursts of members fleeing or being
extruded.
5.22 “The Infinite Dance of Shifting Coalitions”
The conspiracies and open conflicts create a tremendously high level of
anxiety at a time when the staff has few supports to handle such tension.
There may be constant pressure to choose sides as issues get polarized.
There may be ruptures in long-standing personal and professional
relationships. The staff may be confused by powerful feelings of ambivalence
toward the high priest/priestess and other organizational family
members.
As feelings of fear and personal vulnerability increase in this situation,
the staff’s self-protective defenses go up. One of the most common
defensive patterns at this stage is the constant shifting of supportive
dyads and triads in the organization, a pattern Gregory Bateson has
described in nuclear families under conflict as “the infinite dance of
shifting coalitions.” This phrase graphically describes the constantly