MY BEST POEM  delivered by hand, into their pockets & with love to Pat and Josh summer of '22

                                                            Congressman Pat Ryan, that is now, perhaps Josh Riley next time                      

                                                                       NO BLAME!

but understanding

and to realise

Patriarchy

is what we’re all in

it’s what conditions and programs us

and no less

to the place you are going!

to Washington

and Wall St and Tech..80% men

so just to remember

that while we women were bleeding

and conceiving and birthing and breastfeeding

that of course you men were

historically, in charge

male mammals

bigger and stronger

so it was for men to protect and provide

though not so much any more

thus the furious identity crisis

of White men today

losing their power

as they must

they’re so scared

that they’ll kill democracy

to defend from the Feminizing and Browning

and thus now the necessary humanizing

of this country so what counts most

for humanity

but way back when men made the rules

 men made language and laws

and religions

and priorities

and policies

and politics

and Constitutions

and more linear thinking

and reductionism

and now the disconnecting of AI

men decreed borders and boundaries

and military and muscle

mens brains more defensively

 mechanistic

more driven by metrics

more liable to hostility

less empathic

by nature

than we women’s are

so think of

how different 

the world would be

had we women had voices

all these centuries

so yours for the courage to make change!

 STILL FORSAKING MOTHER EARTH ? . . .

Today, Washington, Wall Street, Corporate and Big Tech is 80+% men. Currently — July 2021, the US Senate so threatened by the feminizing and browning of this country they’re holding Democracy and these dis-uniting states to ransom. And no, this is not an attack on all men. Far from it! But it is tagging the entrenched capitalistic privileged white patriarchy and the self-serving power and status-seeking of the men-on-top who are so effectively ignoring ‘we the people’. In the process perpetuating environmental injustice, diminishing equality and fueling existential climate-change so much of which is based on the exploitation inherent in systemic racism, to say nothing of from the natural resources and elements of our forsaken Mother Earth. Yes Black do indeed lives matter as do the Indigenous peoples from whom we Europeans shamefully stole this continent and whose matrilineal values understand humanity in the context of the embodied opposites of our existence....spirit and matter.

If we accept that (historically at least) men are biologically built to lead, to dominate, to be strong, to inseminate, to ensure our species’ survival...hmm...then today they’re not doing so well! Perhaps, as a Men’s Movement leader, way back when in the 8o’s Dr. Sam Keen was wont to put it “when we men unzip our flies, our brains fall out” calls for a review to update and modify that programing of expected roles as “protectors and providers”. In these days of gender flexibility, many women are that too though our biology still means most of us still more bodily vulnerable —still built to bleed, to attract, to conceive, to give birth, breast-feed, care take and nurture.

That said, homo-sapiens stellar progress today is based on eons of daring and discovery and men’s bold and brilliant exploration, calculation, construction, invention, innovation which has given us language, banking, the law, engineering, electricity, radar, rockets, cars, trains, boats and planes along with AI’s dehumanizing data-driven future. With it —for better and worse— our accelerating flexibility, mobility, comfort, complicity, complacency and the ease, speed, and luxury and consumption of today’s fossil-fueled “Petroculture”.

The ongoing primal and predominantly masculine drive for power and control has materialized by fighting for, or defending turf, thus to kill or be killed. Not to forget during this time of peace (?) we take so easily for granted it’s a result of centuries of conflict and war when (rightly or wrongly) millions of (mostly) men have, and still do, sacrifice life and limb. As that basic tribal impulse to attack and divide necessitates the denial of our mutual humanity, civility and commonality — how else could the patriarchal impulse have been motivated to undertake historically punishing and lethal tasks had we women not been kept silent with no choice but to buy into our subservient role.

No surprise then, in innate response to fear, testosterone-fueled competitiveness, violence and risk-taking is found more in the brains and hormones of men than women and pro-social, oxytocin-enhanced feelings of empathy and relatedness — and with it more ethics* —- more predominant in women than men. (*see Dr. Paul Zak). These basic physiological facts actually offer us reasons to forgive ourselves and each other. A better understanding of the origins of our culturally conditioned patterns of power-dynamics within the script we’ve unconsciously introjected & which neuroscience reflects explains much about the reasons why, and....that with this knowing that we can change!

Acknowledging the roots of our limited individual and collective consciousness which has enabled our outdated polarizing political systems to remain so unquestioned is pivotal to integrating this new understanding and encourage frank and open conversations between women and men, and the young and old. As women’s progress increasingly threatens the status-quo’s self styled supremacy, it is ours to recognize why patterns of dominance are still rooted in primitive imprints of mammalian history and anatomy. It is for us all to accept and appreciate all our similarities and — thankfully — our differences too, and move on together harmoniously from here.

Has this protracted covid pandemic reignited Trump’s psychopathic extremes thus sabotaging the necessary regenerative transition of Biden? It is harrowing what January 6th indicates about the ongoing predation and arrogance of toxic masculinity that many good men— and women and children — continue to suffer from may not be over. Increasingly, young people today are crucial catalysts for vital systemic change an they deserve our total support. Here’s to their rebelling against our extinction and putting an end to the tiny minority of male oligarchs who monopolize the world. And time is now for more women and whatever gender any of us are to speak up and out forcefully. Enough of we women buying into the game and objectifying of ourselves with 8” heels, skin-tight clothes and cleavage, and instead use our persuasion to collaborate and cooperate and keep the faith in the best of the relatedness inherent in the Feminine principles of interdependence within all of us and in the natural bonds within human nature.

Yes, a call to all of us — to good men and women alike — to heed the signals and respect and give voice to the unquantifiable human qualities of love and interconnectedness and caring common to us all. To do it for ourselves, for each other, for our children — and for Mother Earth — before we have no choice but to escape this little Blue Planet and head for Mars or the Moon again — c/o Bransom, Bezos and Musk’s “Big Fuckin’ Rockets” !

 

INTERDEPENDENCE?

and how so many men-- as well as women -- have been used abused by patriarchal masculinity 

Why, even though we know better do we keep repeating outdated patterns in spite of today's record fires and floods? This Independence Day was a prod for me, a boomer Brit, to look more deeply at my privilege in the context of what's behind today's status-quo. Unequivocally, as one who benefits from white skin, our continuing shamefully racist short-sightedness inevitably harks back to 1776 and before, and to our Founding Fathers. Those men, 56 in all, for all their courage and laborious considerations who decreed “all men are created equal”…..which then, as now --- excluded very, very many men — to say nothing of all women, and children.

 

Their priorities ostensibly remain in Washington today where White Supremacy still dominates. And, where the pivotal quotient is today's 80% men-in-charge who are increasingly threatened here by the prospect of losing their power and control to the ever-growing feminizing and browning of this country.  That ongoing need of the still dominant men-on-top to is as unyielding as ever in today's Senate -- even in the face of their being willing to destroy American democracy.

Then, as now, that grip is upon this Western World where what's measurable is all that counts. The inherently less quantifiable, but universally human, more innately feminine feeling-functions of relatedness and interdependence — that exist strongly within all of us -- have no place in our profit-driven calculus. One which calculates our impacts upon the elements -- earth, air, fire and water —  as peripheral ‘externalities’. Computations that seem to forget those irreplaceable life-giving elements are not only around us, but, oh... yes...vitally, internally, within us too! 

Considered in this context, some of the most linear and left-hemisphere driven extremes of authoritarian masculinity are what refuels so much of the unethical lobbying and the many now outdated laws which govern the US. Laws that are increasingly inappropriate to the regenerative, eco-logical and existential needs of today and for the future. 

With we women’s role no longer just about childbearing and the men in power who are currently failing “to provide and protect" us from the existential threat of climate change......now what? What about us all caring enough to actually evolve and actually survive here on this Mothership?! To say nothing of for the rest of life of this planet -- are we really willing to leave this for our grandchildren to inherit? Certainly I'm one of those loathe to let go of all our comforts and ease but, like it or not, it is for we privileged ones, more than any other, to reduce our demand upon the Earth's resources. Even more humbling -- and the real roots of this story here in the Hudson Valley right under my feet are the Lenape homelands where our European ancestors brutally commandeered so much from native New Yorkers? (see Evan Pritchard's book of the same name).

Surely it is ours to move beyond the systematizing, reductionistic prioritizing of the more rigidly ‘rational mind’. Isn't it tiime for our more personal -- thus collective -- relational qualities, which are so utterly interdependent upon each other, to be seriously taken into account? Time for those qualities of empathy and love and caring — or more relevant, our lack of them — to be acknowledged in the ways they can so easily multiply for the better, as they must. 

All you men, as well we woman and children have been short-changed by our externalized reliance on what computes at the cost of our inner connections with ourselves and each other and the natural world. There is so much good in humanity if only our human-nature would be humbled enough to learn and no longer keep forsaking the source of our individual and collective existence. For sure here on Earth we are indebted to those diverse masculine and feminine energies within and around us which together create life....and to our old Mother Nature who should be forsaken no more.

 

Forsaking Mother Nature..?

....Could this COVID be a metaphor for humanity’s rapacious assault upon Mother Nature?  What is it about us, the US in particular, that'sso knowingly assaulting the source of our existence?  We Boomers have had the best of it in so many ways.  Why are we not computing the reasons why we do what we do and in the process seek to evolve and change today’s power dynamic for the sake of all life on our forsaken Earth?  Applying bio-logical hard-data neuroscience is one way —were we to heed it —which can actually help us adapt and maybe survive!

Today,  Washington, Wall Street, Corporate and Big Tech is 80+% men.  And no, this is NOT an attack on all men. Far from it.  But it is tagging the entrenched capitalistic privileged white patriarchy and the self-serving power and status-seeking of the men on top who so effectively and increasingly are ignoring ‘we the people’. In the process perpetuating environmental injustice, diminishing democracy and fueling climate-change so much of which is based on the exploitation inherent in systemic racism. Yes indeed, Black lives matter as do the Indigenous peoples of this continent whose naturally holistic values understand humanity in the context of the source of our existence….spirit and matter. 

Men — biologically built to lead, to dominate, to be strong, to inseminate, to ensure our species’ survival (thanks to how Dr. Sam Keen described it back in the men's movement days: “when we men unzip our flies, our brains fall out”!) are programmed to fulfill their naturally inherited roles as “protectors and providers” vs. women’s biology which makes us more softly vulnerable — built to bleed, to attract, to conceive, to give birth, breast-feed, nurture, care-take and to embody the deep nature of mothering.

Thanks to eons of daring and discovery men’s bold and brilliant exploration, calculation, construction, invention, innovation has given us 'civilization' -- language, the law, engineering, electricity, radar, rockets, cars, trains, boats and planes. And today, AI, and with it a dehumanizing data-driven future.  For better and worse— our accelerated flexibility, mobility, comfort, complicity, complacency and the ease, speed, and luxury and consumption illustrate's today’s fossil-fueled “Petroculture”.

The primal and predominantly masculine drive for power and control has been about fighting for or defending turf, thus to kill or be killed.  Let’s not forget during this time of peace we take so easily for granted it’s a result of centuries of conflict and war when (rightly or wrongly) millions of (mostly) men have, and still do, sacrifice life and limb.  As that basic tribal impulse to attack and divide necessitates the denial of civility and commonality — how else could the patriarchal impulse have been conditioned to undertake eons of historically punishing and lethal tasks which one way or the other — like it or not — women have  enabled and too often played our part.

No surprise then, in innate response to fear, that testosterone-fueled competitiveness, violence and risk-taking is found more in the brains and hormones of men than women and the pro-social, oxytocin-enhanced feelings of empathy and relatedness — and with it more ethics* —- are more predominant in women than men. (*see Dr. Paul Zak). These basic physiological facts offer reasons to forgive ourselves and each other by better understanding the origins of the culturally conditioned patterns of power-dynamics we’ve unconsciously introjected & which neuroscience reflects and which we can learn from, now.

Acknowledging the roots of our limited individual and collective consciousness which has allowed our outdated polarizing political systems to remain so unquestioned is pivotal to encouraging frank and open conversations between women and men, and the young and old.  As women’s 'progress' increasingly threatens the ‘men-at-the top’ status-quo entitlements, it is ours to recognize why patterns of dominance are still rooted in primitive imprints of mammalian history and anatomy.  It is for us all to accept and appreciate our similarities and — thankfully — our differences,  and move on together harmoniously from here.  

Will this pandemic end Trump’s grotesque extremes and trigger the necessary regenerative transition? The predation and arrogance of toxic masculinity that we women (and that many good men) have suffered from for eons must be over. Increasingly, young people today are becoming crucial catalysts for vital systemic change. They deserve our total support and we are leaving them a heavy load. Time’s up for the tiny minority of male oligarchs who monopolize the world and time for more women to speak up and out and forget competing with 7” heels, skin-tight clothes and cleavage, and instead to collaborate and cooperate and keep the faith in the strength of feminine principles and cultivate the best of our common and shared human nature.

So a call to all of us — to good men and women alike — to heed the signals and respect and give voice to the unquantifiable human qualities of love and interconnectedness and caring that exist within us all.  To do it for ourselves, for each other,  for our children — and for Mother Earth — before we have no choice but to escape this little Blue Planet and head for Mars or the Moon again — ℅ Mr. Bezos and Mr. Musk’s “Big Fuckin’ Rocket” !

DRAWN FROM NEUROSCIENCE, THIS SYNTHESIS 

SEEKS TO TAP ESSENTIAL QUALITIES OF 

THE FEMININE PRINCIPLES of CONNECTEDNESS 

 STRENGTHENING THE CASE FOR THE INNATE VALUE OF WOMEN

…as well as the very many good MEN WHO — THANKFULLY — GET IT!

With our current humbling of COVID from Mother Nature, which highlights
 the unstable lumberings of national politics, in turn reflecting our skewed priorities re the environment, 
the economy and global inequality,
 how different might this world be if the dominant systems that control us 
were updated to incorporate the Feminine principles of relatedness, empathy and ethics

in every decision made, everywhere, especially here in the chaos of The White House. 

•     In his decades dedicated to researching the Divided Brain (thedividedbrain.com) Dr. Iain McGilchrist stresses while we use the whole of our brains, the world today is paying an increasing price for the ongoing dominance of the brilliant, but blinkered, systematizing, hierarchical proclivities of the brain's left-hemisphere--exemplified by the current status-quo. McGilchrist's lament is the resulting lack of integration of the contextual, flexible, big-picture perspective of our more empathic, lateral, right-hemisphere.

•    Dr. Michael Gazzaniga, author of The Ethical Brain, makes the point that the left-hemisphere “will stick to its belief system no matter what". McGilchrist reiterates in his summation of the rigid left side as “the side that doesn’t know what it doesn’t know!” (Yes, political lefts and rights are the reverse!)

•     Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen’s research described in The Essential Difference and Science of Evil: On Empathy & the Origins of Cruelty differentiates between men and women by tagging "the extreme male brain" to be less empathic and more tending toward autism. According to Gazzaniga, Baron-Cohen’s book “lays the scientific groundwork for a brighter science of understanding of the dark side of the human condition.” 

•    In his book, The Moral Molecule: How Trust Works, Dr. Paul Zak presents his lab's research on the prosocial, bonding, qualities of the neuropeptide oxytocin -- 'the love hormone.' Zak describes oxytocin as inducing empathy which in turn fosters feelings of trust, safety and forgiveness. He applauds the resulting qualities of reciprocity and understanding as what stimulates respect for differences -- gender, race, religion, skin color, tribe, politics, belief, value systems, etc. The Golden Rule at the universal heart of our world's major religions -- now substantiated by science -- bids us 'do unto others what you would have them do to you.'

•  By contrast, Kray & Haselhuhn in Scientific American show in competitive situations (think politics and the corporate culture) men’s more naturally testosterone-driven impulse to win and succeed results in their having lower moral and ethical standards, more inclined to reactionary violence thus making men more inclined than women to sabotage and undermine opponents.

 • Nobel winner Joseph Stiglitz defines economics as America’s #1 religion clearly discouraging competition as he encourages co-operation and collaboration. Recent studies show students of business and economy (more frequently men and characteristically left-hemisphere motivated) to be more inclined to self-interest, competitiveness and sociopathy than those who opt for the fields of Law, the sciences, humanities.

 • Nobel Laureate Professor James Heckman’s work on "the economics of human potential” contextualizes the inherent costs of the 'empathy-deficit' that exists in society's over-valuing of cognitive (left-hemisphere) skills, particularly in the crucial fields of early brain development and education. 

 • Sherry Turkle, in her book Alone Together, adds research on the impact of technology and social media as significantly reducing empathy activation thus diminishing the ability to relate one-on-one. She makes the point that grounded face-to-face reality enables us to better relate to, and understand, each other’s similar and different experience. 

 • The Atlantic magazine's Lisa Mundy in “Why Silicon Valley is so Awful to Women” quotes Joelle Emerson and others describing implicit and explicit gender bias and sexism in the (very left-hemisphere) world of technology -- initiated and led by a handful of men -- that now dominates the globe. Women working in tech today make up between 15% and 30%. 

 • Decades ago, Dr’s Carol Gilligan, Deborah Tannen, and Riane Eisler's and neurosurgeon, Leonard Shlain's best-selling books focused on the inherent gender imbalance evident in our culture and exemplified in language -- a left-hemisphere strength. Today in Washington, the political Right's narrower, more direct and assertive left-hemisphere message proves simpler to convey in sound-bites than the Democratic Party's more all-embracing right-hemisphere platform. Currently in the US House of Representatives, 19% are women -- 78 Democratic, 26 GOP

*****

(To keep the above, very brief, synthesis simple, my take on how this understanding can change the world is obviously sweepingly general! That said, understanding our common (ok for this purpose, binary) physiological differences as well as similarities opens the door to more easily seeing -- though not necessarily agreeing with -- those who think or act differently. Best scenario--this understanding enables us to better "hold the tension of the opposites" so that an alliance between the left and right -- brain hemispheres and political parties --might be possible. A middle way? At a time when more women are speaking out, the intention here is to expand and extend the concept of Feminism by adding this science-based criteria extolling the virtues of the right-hemisphere's manifestation of the more 'Feminine principles’ of relatedness as defined by C.G.Jung. The 'soft' virtues that he and neuroscience tells us are not exclusive to women (although they may be more innately resonant with women) but also to the very many men who get it, customarily not corporate or political leaders! With particular thanks to the work of the men whose neuroscience is referenced here -- as well as the prescient women -- all have affirmed the blessing of the life-enhancing, consciousness raising, values of empathy. A level of mutual caring which should be a goal for us all to acknowledge and work toward -- if for no other ethical reason, for future generations. For the sake of all life on Earth, we urgently need to awaken from our easy Western complacency and apply this knowledge to how and where humanity goes from here -- personally+collectively, locally+globally. Lets hope…it’ll be soon enough).

We are all in this together....and reminder from Father Thomas Berry:

                                    "The destiny of this planet, is our destiny”

for Kosmos Journal....

While the World Holds its Breath? (OR Left, Right or Center?)

The day after the inauguration, 2017, flying back across the Atlantic — Edinburgh to Newark, Europe to the USA, British and Irish newspapers were full of it —“From This Moment On, It’s Going To Be America First” , “Trump Offers A Fearful Vision”, “Trump’s New World Order Begins” A clenched fisted “America First”, “Trump is Hired YOU’RE FIRED”, and The (Glasgow) Herald —“The World Holds its Breath”. 

Back home in the Hudson Valley, so many of us whipsawed daily by the increasingly divisive assault on democracy, seems like a prudent time to remember what John Muir said: —“that when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe”. One hundred years on, British psychiatrist and scholar Iain McGilchrist offers his expansive research into The Divided Brain (soon to be premiered in a ‘mind-altering’ documentary!) his thesis reflecting why Muir’s prescient perspective gets lost in our global shuffle. Today, thanks to neuroscience, we now have the benefit of ground-breaking research that takes on the unhitched thinking that dominates the workings of the Western World. 

As the Washington/Wall Street cabal takes over this country we’d be wise to heed McGilchrist’s warnings, distilled as they are from his extraordinarily wide fields of research in philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, history, literature, myth, art and music. His critical point: without recognition of longer-term, big-picture thinking we’re leaving ourselves, our children, and all life-on-earth increasingly vulnerable to irreversible environmental, economic, social and political instability. His evolutionary answers synthesized from two decades of research, prod us to take a hard look at the collective underpinnings of how we got to the current destabilizing state of American affairs.

With more neural connections in our heads than the 100 billion galaxies in the universe —from whence we came— it’s not hard to compute our brains are a tad more complex than the old ‘emotion on the right, reason on the left’. In his momentous and much acclaimed volume from 2009 The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World – McGilchrist defines the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between our brain’s separate lateral halves — left and right hemispheres. The left — more fixed, analytic, mechanistic, systematizing, and detached. The right — less linear, more flexible, holistic, synthesizing, and contextual.

Paradoxically, the polarizing political Left and Right, the reverse of our brains! The authoritarian, regulatory, silo’d metrics of the left-hemisphere tag the Republican Right. The less quantifiable, more inclusive, reciprocal and broader-based right hemisphere —more akin to the Democratic Left. 

By leaving the left-brain — which, by the way, “is the side that does not know what it does not know”! — to its customary hierarchical devices, we are cautioned it will compound the personal and planetary price being paid for the fractious inequality of our political and financial systems. That said, while McGilchrist credits the left-brain’s staggering scientific brilliance and stratospheric technological merits, he emphasizes that naturally and necessarily our hemispheres coexist and function together. 

Perhaps in the interest of stepping into fewer mine-fields and maintaining his position on the left and right brain (one that’s controversial enough for some with left-brained leanings?) McGilchrist steers clear of parallels with gender opposites. He leaves it to us — women, and thankfully also many men — who resonate with his unequivocal left-hemispheric affirmation of the right-hemisphere to speak out more clearly and firmly than ever for the vital ‘feminine’ qualities of empathy and interconnection. 

When what unquestionably governs our world is a masculinized concept of priorities, for me, McGilchrist’s neurologically (and physiologically) grounded stance is a solidly ’objective’ and credible argument adding muscle to the activism so many of us are engaged in. The ongoing visible persistence and protests — primarily and necessarily led by women — a timely and wholly appropriate reaction to the deeply engrained and ancient levels of misogyny all too painfully prevalent in this country today. 

The question is, while the world holds its breath — whether we be woman or man — can we integrate enough of this understanding about ourselves and each other to alter course and be at peace with the richness of our differences? Can we see far enough and act morally enough to meet this challenge, together, and cultivate a more balanced and humane understanding — Left with Right? Can we do it before it’s too late…We’re in the same boat, after all — and it is hitched to everything else in the Universe