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
Partnership, The 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.
Please continue this
interview here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mothering-nature/201703/mothering-nature-in-the-age-trump-dr-riane-eisler
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