We are at risk of suffering from plans that others make without our knowing. Our future is our past and we begin at the beginning of the patriarchal system.
Anthropologists point to the rise of male dominance with large and populous agricultural states organized in terms of classes.
Survival depended on ownership and position. Maintaining good relationships with others, relying on cooperation might have been important for those on the bottom rung of the social ladder, but the higher your position and the more wealth you had separated you from the need to be considerate, to care about others beneath your position.
Marriage was not about eros, it was about joining two wealthy families together for status. Daughters were a bargaining chip in the wedding of two families. Children were chattels. Wives were forced to keep themselves, their children, their husbands, away from anything that might threaten their reputation, even though they couldn’t control the mouths of gossips.
Daughters could not marry into "good" families if their reputation was stained in any way regardless of whether it was their fault. Proving the truth would be difficult against the words of those who had influence. Intellectual exploration was harnessed, imprisoned. Answering the call of love with your body led to social isolation. Every thought act and utterance becomes a political outcome while the feelings that guide and give us joy become a potential threat.
Just how much control do we have over fate, desire and happiness, in a society obsessed with appearances, where gossips are brutal in the city of class and fashion.
War, structural violence, wealth, money and education are all weapons in the struggle for supremacy. The president of the most powerful country on the planet can behave like an idiot because those who challenge his position will be punished by all who aspire to climb the ladder. There is no shortage of those willing to torture the challenger of group think.
Eventually we all learn how to grovel at the feet of a despicable system. The winners become more shallow, more heinous, more ridiculous, because the system cannot see how it protects itself, the system casts out the original thinkers and the people who look and sound different.
Although we think we live in a democracy and feel responsible to vote for a healthy planet, there are other influences that keep us tucked inside self interest.
The professional classes may not vote for equality and fairness because their interests are linked to their own group.
Then there is the group given privilege but who have been forgotten, dismissed, marginalized. They are angry, bitter and potentially violent as their rage bubbles out. These are young men who have learned how society expects to be "a man".
Patriarchy is not about men, says an article in Psychology Today. It is about the ownership and domestication of women and their sexuality. To keep women out of the public domain they must deny and ridicule everything they like, they say, they believe and achieve. Communities which women mostly build through volunteering and their work must be ignored. Real politics must be lampooned and any "progress" in human society must be destroyed, including compassion and love.
The threat to our healthcare system, our education, our justice and search for peace, acknowledgement of LGBTQ rights, may look like separate issues but they are all connected.
As social organization becomes more aware and effective it becomes a threat to the hierarchy. Wars are organized to crush the exuberance of young men and women who are re-thinking a new kind of society. White Supremacy movement is set up to make young men feel oppressed by the changing narrative of inclusion and to cut the interrogation of capitalist exploitation of masculinity - which does oppress men and women. Right wing parties seek to undo the emancipation of men and women to keep them working for the factory that crushes the human spirit. Women who have achieved status by their writing and work are met with death threats.
Environmentalism takes authority away from the market and into the conscience of the people. The human conscience that cares for all sentient life on this planet is the only thing that can save us.
