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.