Some time ago I wrote a commentary at the end of which I proposed that women should or could save the world, save us from ourselves, as the world is currently still mostly run by men and consequently out of balance, and as men appear to be obsessed with power and control to such a destructive extent that our species very survival is at stake.
Such a statement can be confusing as women have already been in positions of power as heads of states, they have already run institutions such as the EPA and corporations without making much difference.
People such as Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher and the various queens of the past did not stir the state away from dominant power, war, exploitation or injustice but instead demonstrated how well they could compete with men in matters of aggression and ruthlessness, thereby praised as being strong women worthy of holding power positions.
The worldwide patriarchal power structures created by men long ago indeed demand that whoever leads conforms to, serves and sustains the patriarchy, whose focuses are on authority, power, control, coercion and the subjugation and exploitation of the less aggressive and dominant, or “weak.”
It is not and has never been an intelligent system, but it is a structure set in place possibly tens of thousands of years ago, most likely when males first discovered or invented weapons that could smash the heads of their competitors or poke holes in their bodies, and expended a natural competitive drive to a state of war, of constant aggression and conquest.
Might made right and at the end of the day still does in our contemporary world in spite of weak and vastly contested moral stances, even though the means of might are no longer exclusively a matter of weaponry.
Because the structure is as a pyramid, with the top dominating the bottom, it is hierarchical and remains so to this day, no matter how many freedoms or rights the subjugated populace is allowed to claim within so-called free societies.
Power today is no longer exclusively exercised by means of brutal force and coercion as it was in the past but through wealth, through the political reality that whoever possesses the most wealth has the greatest influence by means of what appears to be the legal corruption of democratic principles.
There is, however, no corruption of political and social hierarchies, because the system itself is fundamentally corrupt.
Power does not corrupt, power is corruption, because imbalanced, because exclusively patriarchal by definition and consequently sustaining means and pursuing goals that cause imbalance in the natural and human worlds, goals of aggression, conquest, dominance, control and exploitation, even in the supposedly neutral fields of science and technology.
All patriarchal thoughts lead to war, to unrestrained competition and what could be referred to as urinating contests and territory marking, which is why business is thought to be war and its goal the elimination of all competition, and why the stated goal of science and technology is a utopia of mastery achieved through the conquest of nature in all its dimensions, from the microcosm to the macrocosm, from DNA to outer space.
This mentality of aggression, of dominance permeates, in a very pathological and toxic manner, all that patriarchal cultures and societies do or attempt, yet it has become such an intrinsic part of the current worldview that very few individuals, whether male or female, not only question it but see it.
Humanity, conditioned by thousands of years of patriarchal rule, has come to imagine that without dominant power, without conquest, subjugation and control, there would be no order, nature would take over both within (the human psyche) and without (the environment), and the end result would be anarchy, wildness.
Amazingly, contemporary humanity, while now baffled, overwhelmed and somewhat vexed by the chaos it created by tempering with nature, is still very reluctant to connect the dots, to acknowledge responsibility, and is still unable or unwilling to understand the basic fact that nature is fundamentally mostly orderly, harmonious and balanced, and that all that opposes natures, such as patriarchal thoughts and a patriarchal civilization, causes short and long term imbalance and destruction.
What could then be the contribution of women in a global attempt to save humanity from self-destruction?
As long as women abide and conform to pyramidal, hierarchical, patriarchal power structures such as the world know, their gender is irrelevant, as all remain actively involved in the destruction process to varying degrees, and women are capable of making as good warriors as do men on the societal battlefields of competition, conquest and exploitation.
The ancient power women could reclaim would be a matriarchal power that is circular rather than pyramidal, meaning one that is founded on cooperation rather than competition, on conflict resolution through dialogue, not force, on respect, equality and justice, not ruthlessness, dominance and the exploitation of the weak or unfortunate, and on empathy, compassion and life nurturing, rather than aggression, indifference and cruelty.
The idea here is, however, not for the matriarchy to dominate the world, which is a contradiction in terms anyway, but on returning to balance between male and female drives, so that neither rules exclusively but each complements the other.
At this point in time it is rather obvious that there is no balance, which causes, by the way, women to still be victimized, worldwide, by men and their oppressive and abhorrent political, social and religious structures.
Women could not change the world without changing these structures from the ground up, without causing humanity to understand that these pyramids of power are destructive, obsolete, and are becoming extremely dangerous and a threat to all life, including human life.
Such would not be a revolutionary but an evolutionary process, not brought about by force but through an expansion of human consciousness, through real education rather than what currently passes for it, and an actual understanding of the kinship and interdependence of all life, of the complementary nature of all polarities, of all opposites, of the unity and oneness of the cosmos.
However, it is my belief that such actual enlightenment will not happen until humanity has caused itself to fall on its knees and beg for mercy, until it has created and experienced a catastrophic event of such global and overwhelming magnitude that it will be forced to surrender to reality and finally acknowledge its undeniable connection to and total dependence upon nature, upon the so-called environment, and the interconnection and interdependence of all life, of all ecological systems, as well as of the manmade world.
Women could stir this literally speaking manmade world in the direction of cooperation, of sustainability, of balance.
However the resistance to such massive shift is and will most certainly remain too intense and widespread on the part of all who are loyal to the patriarchy, which are mostly conservative factions, to allow significant change.
Intelligence is almost always sabotaged by ignorance and shortsightedness, as a more expended consciousness is always antagonized by the ego, by limited and fearful perceptions, as love always encounters fear and hatred, and as humanity has too long come to identify with illusions of separation and conflict.
This conceptual nightmare of separation causes humanity to experience itself as being alienated from all life, spiritual and natural, and to struggle against all life, both conditions which lead to fear, which itself fuels obsessive pursuits of command and control, of patriarchal, dominant power, which oppose love as fear is the actual and only enemy of love, of unity, of peace.
From the book Ring of Power, the Abandoned Child, the Authoritarian Father and the Disempowered Feminine, A Jungian Understanding of Wagner’s Ring Cycle by Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD: “The life story of anyone for whom power counts more than love takes place in a family, organization, or nation, that is within the patriarchy, the culture that emphasizes dominance of individuals or classes or nations over other individuals, classes, or nations, of ideological supremacy decided by might, and religions that support the divine right of some men to subjugate others and of mankind to subdue nature. Power is the ruling principle in patriarchy, and where power rather than love rules, freedom and justice also suffer. It is a struggle to stay with love as a principle in a patriarchal culture, yet succumbing to power is destructive to the very relationships we came into the world needing. Each individual must struggle to determine whether love or power will be the ruling principle in the psyche.”
Raphael Montoliu lives in Lakeport, Calif.
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