Monday, July 09, 2012  How is Dominance Resisted?  Athol Kay
writes:  Most interpersonal conflict arises from attempts to
maintain threatened dominance and/or evade being in a submissive
position. When I started “breaking free” at work, I got into
“trouble” several times with my superiors. Once it became
apparent I wasn’t going to be contained, and in fact was
becoming someone that could bump back on them rather firmly,
they backed off and were much nicer.  I was thinking about that
while watching this scene from Margin Call, a movie with a fair
number of high-dominance males.  For those of you who haven’t
seen it (and it’s a great movie, btw), it concerns the 2008
decision by “the firm” (i.e., Goldman Sachs) to dump it’s
worthless MBS portfolio on unsuspecting investors.  The head of
trading Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey) has objected to this, and
Sam’s boss Jared Cohen (Simon Baker) is shown here telling Sam’s
subordinate Will Emerson (Paul Bettany) that he may have to take
over if Sam doesn’t “step up”.  Watch