(A) Partnership vs. Domination
1. Two models of cultural organization: Power as domination (ranking) versus actualization (linking) (28) The opposite of patriarchy is not matriarchy, but rather partnership (gylany)
[ Note: All page numbers refer to Riane Eisler’s The Chalice and the Blade (New York: Harper Collins, 1995).]
2. Eisler’s new terms to describe fundamental modes of cultural transformation:
Androcracy - a social system ruled through force or the threat of force by men.
Gylany- a social system organized through the linking together of male and female through equal partnership.
3. Two kinds of hierarchy: dominator hierarchy - system of human ranking based on force and actualization hierarchy - systems based on ability to actualize. (105)
4. Evolution as having (a) descriptive and (b) normative meaning: cultural changes are neither inevitable nor fundamentally desirable.
(B) Discovery of Old Europe’s Neolithic Civilization: the Goddess
5. Remained invisible to mainstream patriarchal scholarship with its assumptions about male dominance (12) Confusion about how to interpret the neolithic Goddess iconography, as a ‘fertility cult.’ (23)
6. Archeological data supporting a different model of society: partnership - equal size graves, no evidence of war, idealizing of female power to give birth. Females in charge of religious rituals, agriculture, social maintenance. (14)
Matrilineal order (24)
7. Civilization as beginning before Sumer - women as the original agriculturists, domesticators of plants and animals. (68)
8. Crete: an example of a long standing partnership civilization with a non-violent state, (equalitarian, sexual equality, peaceful, abundant, focussed on spiritual, artistic and technological development) in contrast to standard view of western civilization as starting in Sumer c. 5000 BCE in Mesopotamia characterized by social stratification, constant war and women as non-citizens. Crete gone by 1100 BCE. (53)
(C) Four Arrow’s analysis of Anti-Indianism in recent American Scholarship
9. Calvin & Drury assert that the Lakota are not only patriarchal, but that “the “Sioux” men badly treated their woman who, according to the authors, were “closer to slaves than second-class citizens by modern standards of thinking” (p.65). But “Women controlled most of the tribe’s resources. When men married, they lived with the wife’s relatives. Women elders were highly respected and adult women had equal power in decision-making. The children belong to the mother’s clan. Today, in spite of the loss of language and culture and in spite of hundreds of years of anti-matrilineal propaganda, the Lakota women are still the backbone of the Lakota nation.” (7)
10. “Women are missing-in-action in nearly all studies of Native America, whether historical, social or anthropological. I believe this is because westerners are still reacting to the panic that European patriarchs felt upon discovering Turtle Island chock-full of self-directed, articulate, and confident Native women, all demanding to be dealt with as equals. The initial Euro-male horror was frank and obvious in first-contact records and the recoil remains, skewing discussion.” (8)
11. Birth of the women’s rights movement in the territory of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Peoples in 1848 by Elizabeth Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Lucretia Mott.
[ Sally Wagner, Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee Influence on Early American Feminists (Native Voices, 2001), 28.]
12. Out-of-context emphasis on warfare: supports the idea that war is natural part of humanity: “by applauding the Indian’s warrior traits while also picturing them as dirty, blood-thirsty, women-dominating savages, they show that this part of human nature, i.e. being war-oriented, proves that it is a good thing modern civilization took over.” (9)
§12. Peace as the default condition of traditional societies: “Peaceable preindustrial (preliterate, primitive, etc.) societies constitute a nuisance to most theories of warfare and they are, with few exceptions, either denied or “explained away.”
(C) End of Neolithic Partnership
1. The Kurgan Invasions starting c. 5000 BCE. (44) by the “Indo-Europeans,” Aryans (not actually from Europe - nomadic dominator tribes including the Achaeans and the Hebrews. First Evidence of Kurganization: large opulent graves for dominator-chiefs. (50)
2. Decline in cultural sophistication. Idealizing of brutality as a new norm. (51) Hesiod’s recounting of the Golden Age before the Kurgan invasion: “All good things were theirs. The fruitful earth poured forth her fruits unbidden in boundless plenty. In peaceful ease they kept their lands with good abundance, rich in flocks and dear to the immortals.” But then enter the Bronze Age Achaeans: “The all-lamented sinful works of Ares were their chief care. They ate no grain, but hearts of flint were theirs, unyielding and unconquered.” (62)
(D) Mythology as record of cultural transformation and a technology for reprogramming society
1. The story of Cain and Abel as retelling of destruction of Neolithic agrarian society by dominator pastorals (64).
2. The Bible as de-sacralizing woman, expunging the spirituality of females: vilification of the serpent (80); Jehovah as an angry war god - teaching violence, male-dominance and authoritarianism. (94)
4. Women becoming property; virgins as commodities (97) Book of Judges - giving daughters to gangs (99); Lot spared in the destruction of his city for giving his daughters away (100) Childbirth as now ‘unclean’ (102)
(E) The Pendulum Swings: Historical appearances of Gylanic ideals
1. Jesus and Socrates as gylanists
Gnostic gospels as gylanic - equalitarian, promoting spiritual equality of all humans.
Central importance of Mary - leader of the post-Jesus Christian movement.
Partnership philosophy of Jesus ended by Paul c. 200 CE. (125)
2. Enlightenment values of progress, equality and freedom as proto-gylanic
Capitalism as a positive step but still androcratic
3. Right wing (fascism/neoliberalism) and Left Wing (Stalinism, Maoism) totalitarianism, Christian and Muslim fundamentalism as androcratic-dominator ideologies. (183)
(F) Need for a New Social Guidance System: Towards a Gylanic Pragmatopia
1. Overcoming dominator sexual stereotypes (relationship affiliations as an impediment to manhood - women as socialized to sacrifice to others) (189). A higher synthesis: “For everyone - men as well as women - individual development proceeds only by means of affiliation.” (190)
From things to emotionally-satisfying relationships;
Ecologically-regenerative systems which partner with nature,
Reintegrating ‘caring labor’ into the economic mainstream. (196)
Creating heterarchic/partnership institutions (e.g. decentralized worker cooperatives)
End of War and the Unproductive War Economy - massive development in technology.
The lowering of interpersonal tensions (hence reduction in rates of mental illness, suicide, abuse and terrorism.
Celebrating Life and Creativity versus Power and Control.
Questions
Is war rooted in human nature or the result of social programming?
Does civilization inevitably bring with it social inequality, violence and domination?
Have men always dominated western culture? If not, what evidence suggests the contrary?
Are Neolithic figurines some kind of fertility cult or do they have a deeper meaning
for how we understand the possibilities for human culture?
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