Wednesday, June 6, 2018

Mothering Nature In the Age of Trump: Dr. Riane Eisler

Deep bow of gratitude to Riane Eisler and her amazing work, which has changed my life and the lives of countless others worldwide. Such an extraordinary woman, author, activist, visionary, truth-teller, and wisdom-keeper! This interview with Riane Eisler from last year is powerful, illuminating, and deeply relevant to today. May her courage, caring, and wisdom inform and inspire us all! ― Molly
End domination and authoritarianism with 
collaborative care, across the board.

In honor of International Women’s Day, Mothering Nature is very pleased to welcome the great Dr. Riane Eisler(las the first guest in our new series: Mothering Nature in the Age of Trump. Dr. Eisler’s work for women and children around the world has changed countless lives and the fabric of international culture.
Born in Austria and galvanized by a horrific personal loss of family to authoritarian dictatorship during the Holocaust, she’s dedicated her life to a global cultural shift away from domination-based economies, towards a sustainable culture of collaboration, partnership and caring. 
Her instrumental book The Chalice and The Blade, according to the LA Times, “may be the most significant work published in all our lifetimes …It may make the future possible.” Since then, she’s continued to publish groundbreaking works including The Power of PartnershipThe Real Wealth of Nations and Sacred Pleasure.
She is the founder and president of The Center for Partnership Studies(link is external), and the editor-in-chief of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies. Dr. Eisler has received numerous honors and awards, including honorary PhDs and peace and human rights awards. She lectures worldwide, including at the United Nations General Assembly, the U.S. Department of State, Congressional briefings, universities, corporations, conference keynotes, and events hosted by heads of State.
Dr. Eisler warmly welcomes readers to join her for The Center for Partnership Leadership and Learning Programs(link is external) that “bring together women and men from around the world to learn how to become leaders of the partnership and caring economy movements.” 
*****
Dr. Eisler…Thank you so much for talking with us at this remarkable juncture in history. Given your vital work on collaborative and partnership societies, your perspective is increasingly significant to the world today as authoritarian power seems to be rising in the world. Your work is also pertinent to the idea of “Mothering Nature”—humans working in harmony with the natural world. Welcome!
Many people are now realizing that the connection between human harmony and the environment has been severely eroded in recent history, and that this is coming to a crisis point. Do you believe such a breakdown (e.g. climate change, species extinction, human oppression or hatred etc.) is inevitable for humans as a species? Or just a toxic cultural “mistake” that can be solved?
How can shifting our human culture to partnership and collaboration help?
RE: In our age of nuclear and biological weapons and the ever more efficient exploitation of nature, the mix of high technology and an ethos of domination could take us to an evolutionary dead end.
This is not inevitable. But averting it requires more than tinkering at the edges of failing political and economic institutions. It requires a cultural transformation.
The good news is that there is strong movement in this direction of shifting from domination systems to partnership systems. Over the past several hundred years, one progressive movement after another has challenged traditions of domination – from the 18th century “rights of man” movement challenging the “divinely ordained right” of kings to rule their “subjects” to today’s environmental movement challenging the once hallowed “conquest of nature.”
The bad news is that the movement toward the partnership side of the social scale (and it is always a matter of degree, as no society is a pure partnership or domination system) has been fiercely resisted and countered by periodic regressions. So domination systems have rebuilt themselves in different forms – be they secular or religious, eastern or western, leftist or rightist.
As I said when I spoke to the United Nations Assembly, we can’t just tack on environmental balance to a fundamentally imbalanced system. That session was organized by Bolivia. It pointed out their indigenous traditions of worshipping the Pachamama, or Great Mother, which imbued the culture with respect for nature.
We have to recognize that the rape of nature and the rape of women is of the same dominator cloth: part of an authoritarian and exploitive system of top down-rankings we have been trying to leave behind: man over man, man over woman, race over race, religion over religion, and man over nature. Preventing regressions to domination – and the destructive policies they bring – requires whole systems change that addresses connection we are not used to recognizing.  
How has the recent US election and inauguration impacted your work and/or thinking? Are you taking different steps in response? If so, can you tell us about that?
RE: What happened in the US is a regression to the domination side of the social scale. Trump claimed that he, as a “strongman,” would solve all our problems, and was elected by fanning fear, hate, scapegoating, the debasement of women.  
While there were many factors in the 2016 election, from false news to voter suppression and Russian hacking, the question is why so many people responded to this demagoguery. To answer this question we have to go deeper; to ask what conditions people to vote for authoritarian leaders who advocate punitive policies against weak or vulnerable “out-groups.”
Very briefly, studies show that people from authoritarian, male-dominated, punitive families tend to vote for “strongman” leaders and for “hard” punitive policies (prisons, wars) rather than “soft” caring policies (healthcare, childcare). Not everyone from this background does. But many people do. And this conditioning can be exploited, as Trump’s campaign did, especially in times like ours of economic, social, and technological upheaval.
But the ground for this election was paved for a long time. If we look at the last decades, we see that the US rightist-fundamentalist alliance demonized partnership-oriented families and painted women’s rights as a threat to “tradition” – which of course it is to traditions of domination. These people had an integrated political agenda that recognizes that a “traditional” authoritarian, male dominated, punitive family is foundational to an authoritarian, male dominated, punitive politics. We can see this connection in sharp relief in brutal top-down regimes, be they secular like Nazi Germany or religious like ISIS in the Middle East.
By contrast, for most progressives, what happens in families is a matter of “just” women’s issues and children’s issues. So progressive movements have focused primarily on dismantling the top of the dominator pyramid (politics and economics) and left its foundations (domination in family, gender, and other intimate relations) in place.
And it is on these foundations that domination systems have kept rebuilding themselves, be they eastern or western, rightist or leftist, religious or secular. We urgently need an integrated progressive political agenda, along the lines I propose in my book The Power of Partnership if we are to have foundations for a more equitable, sustainable, caring world.

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