It was close to 30 years ago that I first read The Chalice and the Blade, which has changed my life, as it has countless others around the world. (Please go here for information on the international impact of this book: http://rianeeisler.com/the-chalice-the-blade-highlights-of-international-impact/.) I've also read other books by Riane Eisler, including The Real Wealth of Nations, and I'm currently reading The Power of Partnership, published in 2002. All of her work is relevant to our times and, I believe, deeply needed. Riane Eisler's contrast of Dominator and Partnership relationships, cultures, values, and belief systems across time is illuminating in how it offers us language and a depth of understanding of why and what we are faced with at this time in our human history and how we can change. Her own work initially arose out of the extreme trauma of barely escaping the Nazis as a 7 year old. For decades she was left with haunting questions that she became compelled to explore: "Is all the cruelty, violence, and suffering in the world inevitable? Is there an alternative? What is it? And what can we do to get there?" These are vital questions for us all to be asking ourselves. It is my experience and belief that the work of Riane Eilser offers deep support in the continuous ongoing process of lifting the veils of our ignorance, indoctrination, and illusions. The opportunity here is for each of us to see ourselves and our world through a lens which offers greater truth and wisdom, possibilities and potentials, and compassion and love. Riane Eisler is an extraordinary and courageous visionary, wisdom-keeper, and national and global treasure. May she inform and inspire us all. — Molly
...Today we all stand at a turning point when changes in how we view our world and how we live in it are more important than they have been ever before...
As the new reality of our lives demonstrates, the self can't be helped in isolation. All of us are always in relationship — and not just with the people in our immediate circle, in our families and at work. We are affected by a much wider web of relationships swirling around us and impacting every aspect of our lives...
The Power of Partnership offers a new approach to transformative change. It deals with personal change and the larger changes needed if we and our children are to have the good life we all want. It shows the connections between our personal problems and the global problems piling up around us, and how a happier self and a better world are interconnected....
The Power of Partnership deals with the seven key relationships that make up our lives. First, our relationship with ourselves. Second, our intimate relationships. Third, our workplace and community relations. Fourth, our relationship with our national community. Fifty, international and multicultural relationships. Sixth, our relationship with nature and the living environment. And seventh, our spiritual relations.
There are two fundamentally different models for all these relationships: the partnership model and the domination model. You will see how these two underlying models mold all our relationships — from relationships between parents and children and between women and men to the relations between governments and citizens and between us and nature.
While the terms domination model and partnership model may not be familiar to you, you've probably noticed the difference between these two ways of relating — but lacked names for your insight. When we lack language for an insight, it's hard to hold on to it, much less use it. Before Newton identified gravity, apples fell off trees all the time but people had no name or explanation for what was happening. The partnership and domination models not only give us names for different ways of relating but also an explanation for what lies behind these differences.
In the domination model, somebody has to be on top and somebody has to be on the bottom. Those on top control those below them. People learn, starting in early childhood, to obey orders without question. They learn to carry a harsh voice in their heads telling them they're no good, they don't deserve love, they need to be punished. Families and societies are based on control that is explicitly or implicitly backed up by guilt, fear, and force. The world is divided into in-groups and out-groups, with those who are different seen as enemies to be conquered or destroyed.
In contrast, the partnership model supports mutually respectful and caring relations. Because there is no need to maintain rigid rankings of control, there is also no built-in need for abuse or violence. Partnership relations free our innate capacity to feel joy, to play. They enable us to grow mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. This is true for individuals, families, and whole societies. Conflict is an opportunity to learn and to be creative, and power is exercised in ways that empower rather than disempower others...
If your spouse abuses you emotionally or physically, you're in a dominator marriage. If you're in a relationship that gives you and your partner the freedom to be fully authentic and at the same time mutually supportive, you're experiencing partnership in the home.
If you look at the difference between people's lives in Norway and Saudi Arabia, you see how the partnership and domination models play out on the national stage...
You can dramatically see how these two models play out on the international level when you compare Gandhi's successful nonviolent tactics in dealing with the British in India with the terrorist tactics of Muslim fundamentalists against the United States...
If we look at this history, we see that many of our habits — whether we're in intimate or international relations — come from earlier times when everybody had to learn to obey their "superiors" unquestioningly...
Once we become aware of what we carry unconsciously, we can change. Change involves two things: awareness and action. As we become more aware of what is really behind our problems, we can begin changing what we do and how we do it... Awareness and action are always in a dance together that takes us farther and farther from where we started...
So new awareness and changed habits go together. As our personal relationships move toward partnership, the beliefs that guide our behaviors change. As our beliefs start to support partnership rather than dominator relations, we begin to change the rules for relationships. This in turn helps us build more partnership-oriented families, workplaces, and communities. We then begin to change the rules for the wider web of relationships, including economic and political relations as well as our relationship with our Mother Earth. These rules, in their turn, support partnership relations all across the board, so that the upward spiral is given yet another boost.
One of the striking things about history is how many great visionaries, thinkers, and writers have pointed to exactly what we're looking at here. From Jesus to Buddha to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Martin Luther King, Jr., they all recognized that just working on ourselves is not enough. They point to the road from the self to society and back again — that we also have to change the cultural beliefs and social structures that imprison us in a life we don't want. In essence, they point us to a partnership spiritual path...
Wherever we are and whenever we can, every one of us can do something to move us from domination to partnership.
I know from the joy, imagination, and creativity that are my grandchildren's natural gifts — as, given half a chance, they are every child's — that the human spirit can soar into as yet unimagined realms of possibility. We have been endowed by nature with an amazing brain, an enormous capacity for love, a remarkable creativity, and a unique ability to learn, change, grow, and plan ahead. We were not born with the unhealthy habits we carry. We had to learn them. So we can unlearn them, and help others to do the same.
We can all learn partnership ways of living. I invite you to join me in the adventure of creating a way of life where the wonder and beauty latent in every child can be realized, where the human spirit is liberated, where love can freely do its magic.
— Riane Eisler
Excerpts from the Introduction of The Power of Partnership:
Seven Relationships That Will Change Your Life
Seven Relationships That Will Change Your Life
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