Your points are valid. Your anger, however, is not.
Let's talk about gender roles in society, quoting from Ken Wilbur's A Brief History of Everything.
Q: Now you said that our society has been male-oriented for some time, and that a certain balancing of the books seems to be in order.
KW: This is what is generally meant by the “patriarchy,” a word which is always pronounced with scorn. The obvious and perhaps naïve solution is to simply say that men imposed the patriarchy on women-a nasty and brutal state of affairs that easily could have been different-and therefore all that is required now is for men to simply say, “Oops, excuse me, didn’t mean to crush and oppress you for five thousand years. What was I thinking? Can we just start over?”
But, alas, it is not that simple, I don’t believe. It appears there were certain inescapable circumstances that made the “patriarchy” an unavoidable arrangement for an important part of human development, and we are just now reaching the point where that arrangement is no longer necessary, so that we can begin, in certain fundamental ways, to “deconstruct” the patriarchy, or more charitably balance the books between the male and female value spheres. But this is not the undoing of a brutal state of affairs that could easily have been otherwise; it is rather the outgrowing of a state of affairs that is no longer necessary.
Q: Which is a very different way of looking at it.
KW: Well, if we take the standard response-that the patriarchy was imposed on women by a bunch of sadistic and power-hungry men-then we are locked into two inescapable definitions of men and women. Namely, men re pigs and women are sheep. That men would intentionally want to oppress half of the human race paints a dismal picture of men altogether. Testosterone or not, men are simply not that malicious in the totality of their being.
But actually, what’s so altogether unbelievable about this explanation of the patriarchy is that it paints an incredibly flattering picture of men. It says that men managed to collectively get together and agree to oppress half of the human race, and more amazingly, they succeeded totally in every known culture. Mind you, men have never been able to create a domineering government that lasted more than a few hundred years; but according to feminists, men managed to implement this other and massive domination for five thousand-some say one hundred thousand-years. Those wacky guys, gotta love ‘em.
But the real problem with the “imposition theory”-men oppressed women from day one-is that it paints a horrifyingly dismal picture of women. You simply cannot be as strong and as intelligent and oppressed. This picture necessarily paints women basically as sheep, as weaker and/or stupider than men. Instead of seeing that, at every stage of human evolution, men and women co-created the social forms of their interaction, this picture defines women primarily as molded by an Other. These feminists, in other words, are assuming and enforcing precisely the picture of women that they say they want to erase. But men are simply not that piggy, and women not that sheepy.
So one of the things I have tried to do, based on more recent feminist scholarship, is to trace out the hidden power that women have had and that influenced, co-created, the various cultural structures throughout our history, including the so-called patriarchy. Among other things, this releases men from being defined as schmucks, and releases women from being defined as duped, brainwashed, and herded.
He goes on to point out in early tribal society, women would be at an evolutionary disadvantage if they participated in the activities of men, as if they hunted and gathered all day, they suffered a much increased risk of miscarriage.
Anyway, I can remember a time when you would say things religious that were equally horrifying to me then as reading this is to you now.
It’s easy to judge people for having the faults you used to. The fact is our hard-wiring, our instincts are old, something like 40,000 years old. They are out of date, no question, but that doesn’t change that we’re all still imbued, born with them. The only way to overcome our base instincts is through conscious effort. One must strip oneself down and see him/herself as he/she is. From there, only constant and consistent observation of your own faults will show you how to solve them, and it won’t be a magic pill. The underlying energy of evolution is to transcend and include. Crystals transcend and include atoms, molecules transcend and include crystals and atoms, cells transcend and include molecules, etc. The thinking mind transcends and includes the emotional mind which transcends and includes the instinctive mind, and so on down. There is a pattern to life, to development, that is common to all of us, and yes, some will be more behind and some will be more ahead. This is a given.
So congratulations, you stand on a pedestal of understanding that the unwashed hordes below you fail to comprehend. What do you now do with it, I ask? Do you stand above everyone and point and yell about how wrong they are, further alienating yourself from them, only making them scorn the ideas you preach, or do take the moment to reflect on yourself, and how you used to be that way, and what it took for you to grow?
Do you realize that you wrote that whole incredibly long quote and then said, "The fact is our hard-wiring, our instincts are old, something like 40,000 years old. They are out of date, no question, but that doesn’t change that we’re all still imbued, born with them," which is exactly the opposite of everything he was saying? His whole point was that it wasn't a genetic thing or something that had gone on forever, but a temporary and (wo)man-made societal neccessity that we're currently in the process of out-growing.
Your points are valid. Your anger, however, is not.
Let's talk about gender roles in society, quoting from Ken Wilbur's A Brief History of Everything.
Q: Now you said that our society has been male-oriented for some time, and that a certain balancing of the books seems to be in order.
KW: This is what is generally meant by the “patriarchy,” a word which is always pronounced with scorn. The obvious and perhaps naïve solution is to simply say that men imposed the patriarchy on women-a nasty and brutal state of affairs that easily could have been different-and therefore all that is required now is for men to simply say, “Oops, excuse me, didn’t mean to crush and oppress you for five thousand years. What was I thinking? Can we just start over?”
But, alas, it is not that simple, I don’t believe. It appears there were certain inescapable circumstances that made the “patriarchy” an unavoidable arrangement for an important part of human development, and we are just now reaching the point where that arrangement is no longer necessary, so that we can begin, in certain fundamental ways, to “deconstruct” the patriarchy, or more charitably balance the books between the male and female value spheres. But this is not the undoing of a brutal state of affairs that could easily have been otherwise; it is rather the outgrowing of a state of affairs that is no longer necessary.
Q: Which is a very different way of looking at it.
KW: Well, if we take the standard response-that the patriarchy was imposed on women by a bunch of sadistic and power-hungry men-then we are locked into two inescapable definitions of men and women. Namely, men re pigs and women are sheep. That men would intentionally want to oppress half of the human race paints a dismal picture of men altogether. Testosterone or not, men are simply not that malicious in the totality of their being.
But actually, what’s so altogether unbelievable about this explanation of the patriarchy is that it paints an incredibly flattering picture of men. It says that men managed to collectively get together and agree to oppress half of the human race, and more amazingly, they succeeded totally in every known culture. Mind you, men have never been able to create a domineering government that lasted more than a few hundred years; but according to feminists, men managed to implement this other and massive domination for five thousand-some say one hundred thousand-years. Those wacky guys, gotta love ‘em.
But the real problem with the “imposition theory”-men oppressed women from day one-is that it paints a horrifyingly dismal picture of women. You simply cannot be as strong and as intelligent and oppressed. This picture necessarily paints women basically as sheep, as weaker and/or stupider than men. Instead of seeing that, at every stage of human evolution, men and women co-created the social forms of their interaction, this picture defines women primarily as molded by an Other. These feminists, in other words, are assuming and enforcing precisely the picture of women that they say they want to erase. But men are simply not that piggy, and women not that sheepy.
So one of the things I have tried to do, based on more recent feminist scholarship, is to trace out the hidden power that women have had and that influenced, co-created, the various cultural structures throughout our history, including the so-called patriarchy. Among other things, this releases men from being defined as schmucks, and releases women from being defined as duped, brainwashed, and herded.
He goes on to point out in early tribal society, women would be at an evolutionary disadvantage if they participated in the activities of men, as if they hunted and gathered all day, they suffered a much increased risk of miscarriage.
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Anyway, I can remember a time when you would say things religious that were equally horrifying to me then as reading this is to you now.
It’s easy to judge people for having the faults you used to. The fact is our hard-wiring, our instincts are old, something like 40,000 years old. They are out of date, no question, but that doesn’t change that we’re all still imbued, born with them. The only way to overcome our base instincts is through conscious effort. One must strip oneself down and see him/herself as he/she is. From there, only constant and consistent observation of your own faults will show you how to solve them, and it won’t be a magic pill. The underlying energy of evolution is to transcend and include. Crystals transcend and include atoms, molecules transcend and include crystals and atoms, cells transcend and include molecules, etc. The thinking mind transcends and includes the emotional mind which transcends and includes the instinctive mind, and so on down. There is a pattern to life, to development, that is common to all of us, and yes, some will be more behind and some will be more ahead. This is a given.
So congratulations, you stand on a pedestal of understanding that the unwashed hordes below you fail to comprehend. What do you now do with it, I ask? Do you stand above everyone and point and yell about how wrong they are, further alienating yourself from them, only making them scorn the ideas you preach, or do take the moment to reflect on yourself, and how you used to be that way, and what it took for you to grow?
Patience, dear, patience.
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When our instincts were new, male dominated heirarchies made more sense than they do now.
Our instincts are no longer new. We've awakened to deeper consciousness and this is forcing us to re-evaluate and change our societal structures.
I do not see how I contradicted myself.
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