The Chalice or the Blade - Choices for Our Future - Domination or Partnership ? by Riane Eisler

[W]hile the earliest cradles of civilization — going back many thousands of years before Sumer– were not utopian societies in the sense of perfect societies, they were societies organized along very different lines from what came later . . . . the cultural evolution of societies that worshipped the life-generating and nurturing powers of the universe - in our time still symbolized by the ancient “feminine” chalice or grail-was interrupted . . . . [by] people [of cultures] who literally worshipped “the lethal power of the blade” — the power to take rather than give life that is the ultimate power to establish and enforce rankings of domination.

When the first evidence of prehistoric societies where men did not dominate women began to be unearthed in the 19th century, the scholars of that day concluded that since they were not patriarchies they must have been matriarchies. But matriarchy is not the opposite of patriarchy: it is the other side of the coin of a dominator model of society. The real alternative to a patriarchal or male-dominant society is a very different way of organizing social relations. This is the partnership model, where, beginning with the most fundamental difference in our species between male and female, diversity is not equated with inferiority or superiority, dominating or being dominated . . . . a resurging thrust towards a social system that is not geared towards man’s conquest of women, other men, or nature.

[G]ender relations and parent-child relations are the critical, formative relations. This is where we first learn what’s normal and moral, where we learn values and behaviors . . . . My research shows a definite link between intimate violence and international violence. People in dominator societies learn to accept control from the top, gross inequities in living standards, a high degree of violence and fear in day-to-day life. The basic model for domination is the punitive parent, specifically the punitive male head of household . . . . Evolutionary science shows we carry genes for both violence and caring. The decisive issue is our experiences, and particularly the influences of childhood. These experiences actually affect brain chemistry and synaptic development, and with that the propensity toward violence or caring. We’ll never eliminate violence completely, but we can eliminate structural violence, violence built into the system.

One of the most ignored issues in foreign policy is that you cannot solve the global problem of poverty without giving much more support to the work of caring and care giving. It’s the result of an economic system that came out of a dominator paradigm, where the most fundamental human work of caring for ourselves and others, even for our Mother Earth, has no visibility in the economic indicators.

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[The] questioning of “givens” — particularly the stereotypical roles and relations of women and men–is not accidental. It is symptomatic of what systems theorists call a period of social disequilibrium a time when fundamental or transformational systems change can occur. But transformation from what to what? What kind of a social system are we moving toward? What kind of system are we struggling to leave behind? And how does today’s struggle over gender roles and relations relate to all this?

Indeed, history as conventionally written has been literally the story of men, with only an occasional mention of “their” women. But if we re-examine our past taking into account the whole of our history, including prehistory, drawing from a database that includes the whole of humanity–both its female and male halves-a very different picture emerges.

A good entry point into this new, and more hopeful, picture of our cultural evolution is through a fresh look at some familiar legends about an earlier, more harmonious and peaceful age. The Judaeo-Christian Bible tells of a garden where woman and man lived in harmony with each other and nature - a time before a male god decreed that woman henceforth be subservient to man. The Chinese Tao Te Ching describes a time when the yin or feminine principle was not yet ruled by the male principle or yang, a more peaceful and just time when the wisdom of the mother was still honored.

For many people these stories are merely religious or poetic allegories. But they contain important clues to a fundamental cultural shift during our prehistory. Indeed, new archaeological discoveries (coupled with reinterpretations of older excavations) show that while the earliest cradles of civilization — going back many thousands of years before Sumer– were not utopian societies in the sense of perfect societies, they were societies organized along very different lines from what came later. As the British archaeologist James Mellaart reports from his excavations of Catal Huyuk (the largest early agrarian or Neolithic site ever found), their characteristic social structure appears to have been generally egalitarian. He writes how the comparative size of houses, the nature of their contents, and the “funerary gifts” found in graves show that there were no extreme differences in status and wealth.

Data from Catal Huyuk and other Neolithic sites also indicate that in these societies, where women were priestesses and craftspeople, the female was not subordinate to the male. Although the sacred union of female and male was an important religious mystery, the powers that create and govern the universe were generally depicted as a goddess rather than a god.

But the archaeological record also shows that, following a period of chaos and almost total cultural disruption, the cultural evolution of societies that worshipped the life-generating and nurturing powers of the universe - in our time still symbolized by the ancient “feminine” chalice or grail-was interrupted. There now appeared on the prehistoric horizon invaders from the peripheral areas of our globe (from the arid steppes of the north and barren deserts of the south) who ushered in a very different form of social organization. As the University of California archaeologist Marija Gimbutas wrote, these were people who literally worshipped “the lethal power of the blade” — the power to take rather than give life that is the ultimate power to establish and enforce rankings of domination.

When the first evidence of prehistoric societies where men did not dominate women began to be unearthed in the 19th century, the scholars of that day concluded that since they were not patriarchies they must have been matriarchies. But matriarchy is not the opposite of patriarchy: it is the other side of the coin of a dominator model of society. The real alternative to a patriarchal or male-dominant society is a very different way of organizing social relations. This is the partnership model, where, beginning with the most fundamental difference in our species between male and female, diversity is not equated with inferiority or superiority, dominating or being dominated.

The larger picture that emerges from this gender-holistic perspective also indicates that, contrary to popular misconceptions, male dominance and male violence are not innate. Clearly throughout history not all men have been violent. And today many men are consciously rejecting their stereotypical “masculine” roles — for example, the men who are today redefining fathering in the more caring and nurturing way once stereotypically associated only with mothering.

In short, the problem in dominator societies is not men. It is rather the way male identity must be defined in male-dominant societies where, by definition, “masculinity” is equated with domination and conquest– be it of women, other men, or nature.

A clear understanding of these systems dynamics is today urgently needed. Ours is an age when “man’s conquest of nature” is rapidly taking us to an evolutionary dead-end. It is an age when the lethal power of the blade, amplified a million-fold by megatons of nuclear warheads, threatens to put an end to all human civilization.

It is therefore not coincidental that our time, when the mix of high technology and a dominator system of social organization poses a danger to all life on this earth, should also be a time when women and men all over the world are increasingly questioning the stereotypical gender roles and relations appropriate for a dominator society. Nor is it coincidental that on the grassroots level groups working for equality, development, and peace are proliferating–even against strong dominator resistance and intermittent regressions.

[S]uch seemingly diverse progressive movements as the “rights of man,” utopian and scientific socialist, abolitionist, and feminist movements of the 18th and 19th centuries and the anti-colonial, peace, ecology, civil rights and women’s movements of the 20th century are part of a resurging thrust towards a social system that is not geared towards man’s conquest of women, other men, or nature.

Most critically, rather than being a peripheral, or what is in male-dominant systems the same, a “women’s issue,” the social construction of gender roles and relations is central to the kind of future we will have. The domination of the female half of humanity by the male half is a basic template for all forms of domination, conditioning children early on to consider such relations normal. A related dynamic is that values such as nonviolence, caring, and compassion can only attain social governance when those stereotypically associated with such “feminine” values are no longer subservient.

It is therefore essential that those working for a more equitable and peaceful world also become conscious of these dynamics. Indeed, the struggle for our future is not between capitalism and communism or between religion and secularism. It is a struggle about what kinds of relations we have, be it in our intimate or our intemational relations.

If those who still believe that domination, exploitation, and violence are “just the way things are” prevail, we face a very grim future, and ultimately no future at all. But if we recognize that a future orienting to partnership rather than domination is a viable alternative, and become conscious of the centrality of partnership gender roles and relations to the construction of such a future, there is realistic hope.

Full article at Renaissance Universal

“Eisler proposes that we need new social categories that go beyond conventional ones such as religious vs. secular, right vs. left, capitalist vs. communist, Eastern vs. Western, and industrial vs. pre or post industrial, which she notes do not describe the whole of a society’s beliefs and institutions. She coined the term domination culture to describe a system of top-down rankings ultimately backed up by fear or force.”

~From Riane Eisler at Wikipedia

Family? Discussions of the Middle East don’t usually start there.

But it’s where I start, because gender relations and parent-child relations are the critical, formative relations. This is where we first learn what’s normal and moral, where we learn values and behaviors.

We were talking about the feudal family and terrorism.

Yes. Because in rigid dominator families, whether in the Muslim world or elsewhere, you learn from childhood that it’s okay to impose your will by force on those weaker than you ?\ women and children ?\ that it’s your God-given right to do so. And you learn never to express your anger or resentment against those who cause you pain, for fear of more pain. So you have a lot of stored rage that can be redirected toward “out-groups,” in pogroms and lynchings and “holy wars.”

My research shows a definite link between intimate violence and international violence. People in dominator societies learn to accept control from the top, gross inequities in living standards, a high degree of violence and fear in day-to-day life. The basic model for domination is the punitive parent, specifically the punitive male head of household.

You know people argue that humans are naturally violent.

This argument comes straight out of the dominator view of human nature. Evolutionary science shows we carry genes for both violence and caring. The decisive issue is our experiences, and particularly the influences of childhood. These experiences actually affect brain chemistry and synaptic development, and with that the propensity toward violence or caring. We’ll never eliminate violence completely, but we can eliminate structural violence, violence built into the system.

~From “The School for Violence — A conversation with Riane Eisler“By Helen Knode, LA Weekly, September 28, 2001

To look at history and contemporary culture through a partnership lens is to walk through a different reality tunnel, to get a glimpse beyond the matrix . . . . The story she tells us is that we continue to carry partnership deep within us, drawn from our collective history, and that we can push for a partnership resurgence to shift us away from the violent, controlling dominator paradigm.

Our conventional language only allows us matriarchy as an alternative to patriarchy, when in fact matriarchy, which is rule by mothers rather than rule by fathers, is the other side of the dominator coin, where one half of humanity is subordinate to the other half.

Gender relations, parent-child relations are simply not considered “important” by most “serious” studies of politics, economics, which is really crazy because where do people first learn what is considered normal or moral? They learn it in their early intimate relations, either experiencing or observing.

One of the distinguishing things about my work, my methodology, is what I call the study of relational dynamics. First of all it looks at what kind of relations does a particular cultural configuration support or inhibit, and secondly it looks at systems self-organization, how elements of a system mutually reinforce one another. And third, most important, how can we really achieve transformational change? We have to look at the whole system and really pay attention to the primary human relations.

The problem is it’s quite often so literally beat out of people, violence against children very early on. We need parental education more respectful of children, more what we’d call authoritative than authoritarian, non-violent, and much more caring. Canada has a much more caring family policy, and universal health care. We’re told there’s always money for control, for prisons, for weapons, for wars, and then we’re told there isn’t enough money for the stereotypical women’s work of caring and care giving, like health care, child care, paid parental leave, these are the connections we really need to understand if we want worldwide to have more equitable economic systems.

~From An Interview with Dr. Riane Eisler by Jody Franklin

Well, I coined another word. Gylany. (guy-lan-ee) “Gy” for female, “any” for male, and “l” linking them, which also in the Greek stands for liberation. A lot of people have used that word, and I’m happy to say, I think my work is the first contemporary work that has brought women’s rights out of the feminist corner that it’s always shoved into.

It really means that, in contrast to matriarchy and patriarchy, we have a gender-specific term. If you look at partnership societies, like the Minangkabau of Sumatra, they call themselves a matriarchy, but if you really look at it, they’re not. Men play much of the leading role in the intellectual and public sphere, I’m sorry to say, but women play a huge role in the ritual life and in the community life. Now that’s just one way of balancing. Violence against children is not used, they’re much more concerned about caring and caregiving, the whole configuration. They’re not really matrifocal or gynocratic, they’re partnership societies where equal value is given to the two halves of humanity. And nurturing is part of the male role, they don’t say that’s just what women do. So I wanted something to shift the emphasis from women. But partnership is more the popular term, because when people hear the word partnership, they get it.

It’s not that they’re evil creatures, some of the nicest people in the world are men. So please, when you print what I say, always qualify it, because I always worry about that, that it will come out that men are the enemy. Because they’re not. Men have a miserable deal in the dominator model, because the one privilege they get is to lord it over those under them, but they sure are at the mercy of those above them, aren’t they? I mean it’s the men who through history are asked to give their bodies in battle for these guys who wanted more real estate.

Well, my work helps the men. It offers them a model in which they have a place and in which they as individuals are not the villains. It offers them a model in which they can see it’s in their self-interest to change traditions of domination including those traditions that give them a little bit more privilege, and many men are becoming very open to this. I get a lot of mail from them, telling me how transformative my work has been to them. So I’m really hoping that men will take a leading role in the politics of partnership, not only women. I mean women still have to take the initiative here, because we have the organizations, but we need to now take our efforts out of this women’s ghetto of activity and move it into the mainstream of politics and economics and spirituality. We have to have the spiritual courage to expose what is immoral, what is a dominator religious teaching for what it is. That’s the only way we can get the moral high ground.

~From “Securing the moral high ground - An interview with Riane Eisler” by Stephanie Hiller

The book : “The Chalice or the Blade: Our History, Our Future” at Amazon.com

Keywords : gender, feminism, partnership, domination, ecosocial crisis, co-intelligence, democracy, cooperation, history, egalitarian, love
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