This is our future

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.

What is Power?

Years ago we visited a cottage resort, same time and same cottage each summer, reuniting with the same families in other cottages.

As was my habit I brought note books and papers to write and read. One day I asked each of the adults "what is power?".  Their  answers were varied:

• power is energy
• E=mc2 
• power is what turns men into monsters
• love is power

So I pondered these answers, as throughout the years, the subject fascinated and troubled me.

My answer to the question would be - power is the ability to create, to influence the outcome of events. Humans certainly have wielded power throughout our time on this planet.  We have created culture - opera is one example of cultural power. Language, story and education is another. People working together to create something memorable and inspiring. Cell phone technology is another magical example of technological power. Raising our children responsibly so they are able to find their way through the unknown future. Think of all the years of study and discipline that goes into building a beautiful temple. Think of the labour, the energy, the beauty of the design. Think of all the writers who have written books that sit in the library of most towns in North America and Europe.  All the cars that jam our roadways, the drivers who learned how to drive, the planners who put up traffic light and signs to guide them. The sum of our power is so great that we have created terrible problems for the environment, and yet it has become too common for us to notice.

Dismissing the power we have has bred a different kind of power. The circus, clowns exploiting vulnerable people and animals.  It clamours for attention in a way that makes humanity seem like a bunch of suckers.  Consumer commercials, magical thinking, snake oil salesmen, political bloviators, astronomical greed, Punch and Judy shows, and celebrity gossip.

I call this fake power.

The only thing this power creates is alienation from society - it doesn't even try to represent anything of worth. It arises out of our failure to appreciate the life bestowed on this planet. It's a cynical  race to see how quickly we can destroy decency, civility replaced with thuggery. Corporate media obsessed with evil,  as though we are powerless to save it.

This culture is saying to young impressionable minds you are powerless to change anything. We laugh at the naiveté of the desire to care. By example we are offering them victims to bully with the glorification of brute force. Gang rape, racist slurs, intolerance to diversity, contempt for the fragile.

Bad enough that the young might display this behaviour, but even worse are the men who hold positions that would normally demand intelligence and leadership but who brag about making it a game, as though our universe is merely a casino and man's task is simply to take home the most chips.

This is not power.  This is just capitalism. Turning the diversity of  the web of life into a lottery where there is only one winner and billions of losers.

What dominates this culture is not power at all but a soul destroying pretence of power based on the universal contempt for all life as we know it.

If we want to have a future we need to build it on the real power we have to sustain the healthy community. Peace and a reverence for life is the ultimate profit from our efforts. 

Three Dimensional World

One way to understand the system is to see how it got here. When did it begin? Division of labour? Industrial revolution? Class systems? Who created it? Was it us - masses? The landowners? The aristocracy? Wealthy merchants? Religion?

At what point did the system become the thing we must serve or die? Must we serve it?

With each century our system becomes more complex with layers and cracks from various interests and now we call it capitalism, democracy, the machine, fascism, globalization, the economy.

Are our minds and hearts becoming more marginalized by the algorithms of finance? We fear we are disposable.

This is not an easy idea to digest.  A gut reaction is to seek revolution, war, hatred, punishment. But not against the most powerful. Against those with the least political power.

But life becomes brutal when we convince ourselves that we can build a just system on hate. We lose touch with our problem solving abilities. However the answer to this problem is the mind and heart that brings the system back into its imagination.

We need to affirm that social systems were created to save life not exploit it. Once we cross that bridge we begin to see that there is a lot of work to be done. Clearly we can't fix it in one lifetime but we can begin to see the future as a co-creation rather than a prison.